[Playlist] How to avoid music download?

[Lucas Gonze]

It's not really an XSPF issue, but this is a question that comes up in the 
context of XSPF fairly often so it's worth talking it out at least a 
little.

Assuming that this is the typical case of wanting a download to not be 
absolutely completely trivial, you may be able to do it by checking that 
the Referer is your own site.  A user could easily fake out the Referer 
but by that time you will have blocked out 99% of the downloaders, and the 
remaining 1% are the ones who you aren't going to stop no matter what.

You can also set a cookie in the embedding web page and check it in the 
MP3 request.  But I doubt this will get you much beyond what the Referer 
check will do.

HTTPS won't accomplish anything.

-Lucas

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, José Renato wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I would like to know if it is possible to build a playlist avoiding direct 
> file referece. Because now we have:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
> <trackList>
>     <track><location>http://example.com/song_1.mp3</location></track>
> </trackList>
> </playlist>
>
> In that case anyone could save the playlist file and copy location. Finally 
> you can download it. Is it possible to use a Java Servlet, for example, to 
> delivery the mp3 content based on previous session information as streaming? 
> Is there another aproach to avoid music download?
>
> Actually I haven´t tried yet. But I was wondering if something like that 
> could be used:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
> <trackList>
>     <track><location>https://example.com/MyServet?songId=song1</location></track>
>     <track><location>https://example.com/MyServet?songId=song2</location></track> 
> </trackList>
> </playlist>
>
> So using https I would protect against sniffing protocol attempts. And with a 
> "controler" I could distribute the song only for the user session. Any 
> suggestions?
>
> Best Regards,
> José Renato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Playlist mailing list
> Playlist at lists.musicbrainz.org
> http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/playlist
>
>