Watch Diggnation early?

[psychoaliendog]

Alright this post got deleted from the Revision3 forums, but here it goes... (all right so it doesn't get immedately deleted here, make sure to read the last few paragraphs).

I'm a long time fan of Diggnation, but last week I really wanted to

watch the live show but I was not a paying member, so, I couldn't get

early. So, I wrote a script that allows someone who's not a paying

member to watch any episode of Diggnation, including the episodes that

are Members only ([not] attached). It uses Revision3's flash player and all

downloads are available.

It combines the MP3 feed with the naming conventions that they use on

their other files (WMV, AVI, etc.). The only drawback is that in order

to get around the lack of cross-site scripting it uses a small PHP

script to reflect the MP3 Feed to the HTML page.

<rant>

So to clarify, I don't want to do harm to Revision3. I like their content, but apparently they don't get it. They never looked at my code or even really read my post. It is extremely easy to download Diggnation early directly from their site. Thats the kicker, its direct from their site. They have put no measures in place to prevent it. It not like I'm posting about Diggdown or something like that.

</rant>

Well, so this is just about me frothing at the mouth. I think we should create some mechanism to prevent "unauthorized downloading of premium content". So here's my Idea, tell me what you think. It involves putting hash of the the content in the url for the video.

for example:

the current url of diggnation is (go ahead try it):

http://videos.revision3.com/diggnation/008...-large.h264.mov

My idea is:

http://videos.revision3.com/diggnation/0081/[Hash of video file]/diggnation--0081--2007-01-12--large.h264.mov

The only drawback is that a paying member could still post the link somewhere, but if you're a paying member you could just redistribute the video file.

[cooper]

Isn't there a paying member out there that chooses to redistribute DiggNation from its first day of release from his own site? The vid license allows it, so there's not really much they can do about it.

[wetelectric]

So they removed a post that encourages circumventing their pay-for-early-view system?

Well how odd.... :roll:

[psychoaliendog]

Isn't there a paying member out there that chooses to redistribute DiggNation from its first day of release from his own site? The vid license allows it, so there's not really much they can do about it.

Yes, thats Diggdown.net but my hack did not involve that at all it was a direct download from Revisioin3's site. Which, according to this post the main reason they don't want people to download it from diggdown is they don't get ad revenue, and clearly in this case they do.

I'm not crying that they deleted my post, because I admit I was really dumb for posting it there. The point I'm trying to make is they do nothing to prevent early downloads (except deleting forum posts). I'm not talking DRM or anything like that, just make the URL even the slightest bit harder to figure out.

Here's the code http://rapidshare.com/files/12852314/rev4.zip.html

[Darren Kitchen]

locks only keep the honest out

[Guest ABC]

its digg .. you should pay anyway, its well worth it and they need the cash :)

[SomeoneE1se]

its digg .. you should pay anyway, its well worth it and they need the cash :)

It's not digg it's rev3 and I thought Kevin Rose had $60 mil.

[VaKo]

its digg .. you should pay anyway, its well worth it and they need the cash :)

Man, I'm totally in the wrong trade. People happily pay to watch a couple of guys get drunk and chat about random things?

[Sparda]

Does Rev3 actually make a profit? I realise they have sponsors, but they must have a huge bandwidth bill.

I also noticed that Alex has become a walking advertisement for Vista, he should put some stickers over that logo ;)

[SomeoneE1se]

Does Rev3 actually make a profit? I realise they have sponsors, but they must have a huge bandwidth bill.

I also noticed that Alex has become a walking advertisement for Vista, he should put some stickers over that logo ;)

it's a good show becasue there's two fanboys battling it out... and Alex is totaly going to win windows is sooooo much betterer then stupid apple os x

[Darren Kitchen]

I don't have any inside info but I read in a business week article around the time that revision3 was relaunched that they're making a quarter million a month, which based on my calculations is totally fesible with their numbers, frequency, and advertising.

Edit: I reran those and it only came out to 100K. Maybe they were talking about the whole network. Or maybe they have higher CPA & CPM rates. Either way congrats to them for making a living off something they love.

[natural_orange]

fences are only to keep the honest people honest

[Duelus]

http://diggdown.net

[mubix]

I have so many podcasts that I (listen to|watch) that I am actually happy that I don't get all of them on Sunday.