Is there any way to prevent/alert webcam recording?

[drug3188]

Hello,

A friend does cam shows and is looking for a way to prevent the recording of their cam feed or alerting them when their webcam feed is being recorded. Is there any software that could help?

thanks in advance
michael

[craigarta]

In principle, there is no way to prevent a user from recording a video/audio stream that has been delivered to their computer. Screen capturing software and direct audio recording software will allow to record most of the streams. Thus, the efforts of broadcasters to prevent this consist of making the process of recording inconvenient, or illegal, or both.

[drug3188]

Thanx, but anything specific that we can do?

[poisondeathray]

No

You can use a secure rtsp feed, which requires authentication and login credentials. Most paid streaming sites use something similar. These are expensive to setup, but this way you know who is watching (doesn't alert you to recording). But even that doesn't prevent stream recording, only makes it more difficult. Bottom line: if it is viewable, it is recordable; and there is no technology that can tell you if a stream is being recorded, you can only determine if the stream is being delivered, and to what IP address

[Noahtuck]

Thanx, but anything specific that we can do?

In principle, there is no way to prevent a user from recording a video/audio stream that has been delivered to their computer.

I guess that was not plain enough....

No

You can use a secure rtsp feed, which requires authentication and login credentials. Most paid streaming sites use something similar. These are expensive to setup, but this way you know who is watching (doesn't alert you to recording). But even that doesn't prevent stream recording, only makes it more difficult. Bottom line: if it is viewable, it is recordable; and there is no technology that can tell you if a stream is being recorded, you can only determine if the stream is being delivered, and to what IP address

What the bold text says....

If i am viewing something on my PC screen, i can record it, i don't care how it got there!

Just to make sure....

NO!!

[drug3188]

OK, thanx. I was just checking, but figured there was no way to do it. I heard there was a company working on software that alerts the user when his/her feed is being recorded and then gives them the option to terminate the feed. Seems like a great idea and wondered if it was available yet

[Ai Haibara]

How is the software supposed to be able to tell if someone watching the feed is using a video/audio capture program like Camtasia to record the contents of a screen or window to a video file? At most, all the webserver would see is that someone's logged on and watching the video, as mentioned above.

Or, if (for example), someone is able to pull the video data from their webcache?

Or even if someone's pointing a videocamera at the screen and recording it that way. I don't even know if there's programs that will know when incoming video streams are present and save copies of them, but it wouldn't surprise me - and those would be difficult to detect, too. None of the above methods transfers any additional information to the server, so...

[Verify]

What they said (or you could encrypt the data stream and only give the decryption keys to those you want to view the video - but they might have to capture then decrypt then play the file.

[olyteddy]

I plug the S-Video output of my laptop into the S-Video input on my Hauppage capture box...How would you detect that???

[Video Head]

I plug the S-Video output of my laptop into the S-Video input on my Hauppage capture box...How would you detect that???

By looking over your shoulder? Otherwise SOL