Releasing a film online; need advice on how to securely distribute it.

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bobsaget

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jan 24, 2004
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Hey,

I'll be releasing a mountain bike film online later this spring. I want to set up a simple website with the trailer, some info on the film and most importantly a link that sends you over to paypal to pay the 5-10 bucks for the download link.

What's the best way to set all this up so that I can limit the amount of people sharing a link to the video to other people that didn't pay for it. I know my way around html/css so that part isn't a concern.


Any help would be great!

Thanks.
 
ambientZ said:
And after one person pays for it and torrents what they downloaded?
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I hightly doubt that would happen. I'm expecting only a couple hundred sales. This is a pretty small endeavor.

But as my question asked: how could I at least take care of generating a random download link for each paypal payment?
 
Programming isn't really my forte so this is likely a stupid idea. Anyway, you could use some sort of hash to make a unique id, store it in a database then return it a the download link which would check it to the database values and if they match have the download start.
 
bobsaget said:
What's the best way to set all this up so that I can limit the amount of people sharing a link to the video to other people that didn't pay for it. I know my way around html/css so that part isn't a concern.
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One approach is similar to Netflix online streaming website: only show the content after someone has logged in, and simply stream the content via clientside Flash/Silverlight. As other users have pointed out, there are technical (and even non-technical) ways to circumvent this. But as long as you've accepted this fact (which it seems like you have), then my suggestion is one reasonable solution.
 
PTNL said:
One approach is similar to Netflix online streaming website: only show the content after someone has logged in, and simply stream the content via clientside Flash/Silverlight. As other users have pointed out, there are technical (and even non-technical) ways to circumvent this. But as long as you've accepted this fact (which it seems like you have), then my suggestion is one reasonable solution.
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Not really looking to do the login system, but thanks for the idea! Hmm.. There has to be a simple way to get around flash/logging etc..
 
I thought about using iTunes, but I would rather not. I'll go look into amazon video..?
 
bobsaget said:
Not really looking to do the login system, but thanks for the idea! Hmm.. There has to be a simple way to get around flash/logging etc..
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You either pay someone to handle the process for you, or you implement it yourself.
 
not going to happen. The movie studios with billions of dollars have tried and failed this very endeavor.

Release a trailer on youtube or vimeo thats pretty sweet but not the whole thing. When people paypal you money send them a DVD with some cool random shit like stickers or something.

That's it. Don't be a dick to the people that pay or want to pay, or no one will want to pay.

And, if you see a torrent of your shit, consider that a sign that you are at least half way decent, and get to work on going where the real money is: competitions and public performances. Shitty bands like the Black Eyed Peas don't make gobs of money because they are amazing musicians, because they suck at music. They make gobs of money because they are amazing performers.
 
Whatsisname said:
Release a trailer on youtube or vimeo thats pretty sweet but not the whole thing. When people paypal you money send them a DVD with some cool random shit like stickers or something.
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Yeah, I could even just send them a link to the video with a notice that it "expires in 24hrs" and change the name of the file on my ftp client after that time...? haha
 
bobsaget said:
Yeah, I could even just send them a link to the video with a notice that it "expires in 24hrs" and change the name of the file on my ftp client after that time...? haha
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No offense, but that is an incredibly stupid idea. You want people to pay for something that they only have 24hr to watch and then can never watch again?
 
Doesn't youtube allow you to rent videos? if they still have that program i'd look into that.

also for the whole torrent thing, you can look at it as a negative or you can look at it as free marketing for future films. just be sure to put your url/contact in one corner and something at the beginning and end. chances are you will see better results if a million people see your film for free than if nobody ever hears of it.

Lastly youtube does have partner programs for advertising. You can make decent money per 100k viewers. That is free, not doing nothing aside from keeping people on the site with ads.
 
its very simple to setup random or one-time download links. flowplayer is an example, and they have a good description of it and code example which can be tweaked for your application.

pretty much instead of giving a user a link to download such as:
website.com/video.avi

you would set up a script that adds a custom level to the link, like:
website.com/34999dfs99/video.avi

the /34999dfs99/ section is like a password, unique to each purchase, that the user has to get correct in order for the link to work. you can set it up so that either that "password" only works for one download, so they cant simply email it to someone else. or if you wanted to be fancy, on first download, link their unique "password" to the IP address, so they can redownload if they need, but the link would not work on other computers.
 
I have done something very similar but for a different product. It was for balancing unauthorized access and convenience.

When the user purchases access to the video, have them receive an e-mail with a unique link to download.

This link will allow up to 3 unique IP addresses to access the video.

When a 4th unique IP address tries to access it, a message will display telling the user to check the e-mail address the video was purchased with because the script has generated a new download link.

The new download link is only available to the original purchasers via their e-mail. Then they repeat the process.

With my ISP (Cox), my IP address changes maybe 3 times a year. Even if I have to access the product from a different ISP, I still have plenty of tries and time before I have to check my e-mail for a new link so its not too inconvenient.
 
Alternatively you can use one of the free ecommerce-in-a-box otions that has the "downloadable product" option available, such as Magento. This will auto generate URLs for customers, etc.
 
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