Video distribution tools make it easy to reach people anywhere, but also increase the odds of video piracy. The moment a video loads, bad actors can try to capture and share it for their own benefit through illegal live streaming and other forms of online piracy.
In this article, we’ll explain what video piracy means and what it can cost your business. Then we’ll go through the best ways to protect your content, whether you’re creating training videos for internal use or sharing monetized streams with a large audience.
What’s video piracy, and how does it happen?
Video piracy is illegally copying, sharing, selling, or streaming content without permission from the copyright holders. A pirate takes videos they don’t own and redistributes them, often through dedicated pirate sites or private groups. This kind of theft can affect paid courses, internal company recordings, livestream events, subscription libraries, and premium TV content.
To steal your content, a pirate may:
- Download or capture a video and upload it elsewhere
- Record their screen while the video plays
- Share login credentials or private links outside the intended audience
- Embed your video player on an unauthorized domain to siphon views
- Distribute videos through torrent networks and file-sharing platforms
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What are the consequences of video piracy?
When an illegal copy of your video spreads through pirate sites and other illicit channels, the consequences may be:
- Lost revenue: If viewers can watch your content for free elsewhere, this undercuts sales and subscriptions.
- Weaker performance tracking: When your audience is split across video copies or mirrors, it’s a lot harder to measure performance and engagement metrics.
- Brand damage: Pirates often compress and clip videos or repost them with misleading titles. If the videos are branded, viewers will still associate them with your company.
- Data leakage: Internal training videos and customer walkthroughs often include details never meant to go public. Once content with sensitive data leaks onto pirate sites, you lose control over who sees that information and how far it spreads.
- Wasted time: If you deal with a lot of piracy, issues like takedown requests, copyright infringement notices, user complaints, and account-sharing problems can drain resources, especially as your video library grows.
- Legal and compliance violations: Depending on your industry and contracts, unauthorized distributions can trigger regulatory issues or breach licensing agreements with content partners.
10 tips for combating and preventing video piracy
There’s no single control that stops piracy, so the best approach is usually to tighten access first, then build out protections as you identify how people are trying to get through. These 10 tips demonstrate how to prevent piracy with software tools and best practices.
1. Choose a secure video hosting platform
Your video hosting platform plays a big role in what protections you can enforce and how easy they are to set up. Look for a secure tool that gives you control over playback and access, with scalable options so you can add more security as needed.
Vimeo Streaming supports everyone from individual creators to large enterprises. This platform provides robust video security, like restricted access and password protections, alongside Analytics that help you spot warning signs. Vimeo Enterprise adds even deeper controls to protect internal and external videos, such as DRM, SSO, geo-blocking, and custom permissions.
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2. Use video encryption
Encryption protects video data in transit and at rest, so that data is harder to intercept or tamper with. While encryption doesn't stop pirates from recording their screens, it does close off easy options like grabbing unprotected streams. For best results, choose a video hosting and sharing platform with built-in encryption.
3. Implement digital rights management (DRM)
DRM controls whether and how viewers can play protected videos based on device and playback rules. With DRM, you can block downloading and make casual redistribution harder.
However, setting DRM up can be complex because you’ll need encryption, a license server, and customized access rules tied to your video player or app. If you want the same protection in a simpler package, Vimeo Streaming centralizes content delivery with built-in infrastructure and asset management.
4. Apply forensic watermarking
Forensic watermarking adds identifying information to a video that makes leaks easier to trace. The identifying marks change for different sessions or viewers, so you can track down the source of a leak and add more security. Also, while watermarking won’t stop copying, it can change behavior when viewers see that your videos are traceable.
5. Use analytics to identify suspicious activity
Analytics can surface patterns that indicate piracy, such as unusual spikes or sudden drop-offs in viewing activity that suggests your content is being restreamed elsewhere. With Vimeo, you can use audience and engagement Analytics to understand who’s watching and how they’re engaging. When patterns don’t match expectations, that may be your cue to tighten sharing and access settings.
6. Set embed restrictions
If you embed videos on your website, you can use domain restrictions to prevent playback in unauthorized places. This blocks other sites from playing your videos to monetize their traffic, even if they copy your embed codes.
7. Limit credential sharing
Password sharing and reused logins often lead to unauthorized access. You can reduce the risks with stronger passwords, rate limits, device/session controls, and user management practices that match how your audience accesses content.
8. Enable single sign-on (SSO) for secure authentication
SSO centralizes authentication, enabling quick access changes when user roles shift or accounts are compromised. For corporate video libraries, SSO also cuts down on shared passwords, because viewers sign in through your identity provider instead of using generic logins.
9. Enforce geographic access restrictions
Geo-restrictions or geoblocking limits where a video can be played, which helps you cut risk and meet licensing and compliance requirements. Restricting access to specific regions reduces your content’s exposure, so it’s worth considering if your videos only need to be available in certain locations.
10. Restrict viewing times
If the average viewer watches your content for about an hour, and you notice eight-hour-long sessions, that could indicate someone trying to steal your content. It can be worth restricting session times and setting up automatic access expiration, so bad actors are kicked out after a while (and real viewers can simply log back in).
FAQ
What’s camcording?
Camcording is recording a video using a camera during playback, and it’s a common form of movie piracy. But this method can be used to pirate online videos too, since even when a platform blocks downloads, camcording still creates copies that can be uploaded elsewhere.
What’s stream ripping?
Stream ripping is extracting audio or video from a stream and saving it as a file. Pirates often use ripping tools to turn playback sessions into downloadable assets they can reuse.
What’s unauthorized streaming?
Unauthorized streaming happens when someone restreams a video without permission, often by rebroadcasting a live feed or reposting on a different service. This can include “free” streams that redirect viewers through pirate sites or apps designed to profit from stolen content.
What’s the difference between video encryption and DRM?
Encryption scrambles video data, so it can’t be intercepted or copied without a key. DRM protection builds on encryption, adding playback rules and licensing controls that restrict where and how videos can play.
Secure all your video content with Vimeo
To protect your videos from piracy, you’ll need to add friction and reduce visibility. If you make unauthorized sharing harder and keep control over where your content plays, fewer people can easily steal and redistribute your work. And because there are so many ways to pirate videos, it’s best to adopt a layered strategy that involves a range of forensic and preventative measures.
All of that is simpler with an already-secure platform that lets you add and customize new defenses. With Vimeo you can edit, host, share, and protect your videos, all in the same place. And if you rely on videos for internal use or monetization, Vimeo for Enterprise gives you an even larger set of tools to find and combat piracy.
