JamPlay - Ripping from jamplay.com subscription service

[Extremist]

Hi, I have this guitar tutorial site I want to download/record videos off (.mp4) and of course, video capturing is not allowed (confirmed it with the support service). It requires membership first so that I can view the premium videos which the downside is linking to my Paypal account therefore if they found out I have been ripping their videos I'm dead. However, they said that I can use VLC to stream the videos provided that I don't save any of it. My questions then:

1. Can they trace me back if I download? What about record?
2. After streaming on VLC, is there a save function?
3. I doubt that they will know I've saved the vid on VLC (if answer to question 2 is yes) since it is already in my local drive. Can somebody confirm this?
4. Is violation of their terms of usage enough to penalize me with civil or criminal punishment? Or just termination of my account?

[placebo]

hey, if it's against their Terms and Conditions and you're so afraid about the termination of your subscriber's account, then better leave it.
Otherwise, if you're not afraid, then tell me which guitar tutorial site (i want to learn guitar too! ) it is and share your login/pass account details with me (via PM, you can trust me ) and i will examine their streams. Depending on the stream url's, in many cases you can download them at some later point of time ("resuming") and you would do it with a vpn, hidemyass.com, etc.
When you play a video, it is almost always possible to catch the streaming url with a sniffing tool (Sharkwire, URL Snooper 2, Coojah, etc.) such that the server would not know that you are sniffing. Then log out of your account, take the url from the sniffer, and download it with rtmpdump (and with proxy or vpn).

In theory, this is possible (e.g. as with Kelby Training videos, where you can just download their videos if you know the rtmp video url), in practice, you need to share more info (which website, your account details) if you want us to help.

no such info from your part? then it means you want to try it on your own?? then go ahead.

i cant help then. good-bye

(Actually, you didnt ask for help with stream downloading... I dont know the answers to your other questions though lol. Recording streams with video screen capturing tools? i've never tried it, but yeah that's always possible and nobody would know that you do it, so dont care about its legality )

[Extremist]

Thanks for the info, somehow I found a way to "legally" download their videos without all the tedious work. I am not yet a premium member of the site. It is jamplay.com, so I was only able to test download their free lessons. I just used Quicktime Pro with it's save function, luckily the site operators didn't lock out their vids from this function (maybe because they didn't expect someone would play it on a 3rd party player). I said from my starting post that I have confirmed from the company itself that it is allowed to use 3rd party players, so by that I assumed sniffing the hidden urls are allowed as well. Now I am thinking if they are capable of knowing if I had saved the vid after streaming..then again maybe not, its impossible :P

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

hi. i dont know how to one can "switch" to the 720p jam play (=1500 kbps stream streaming streams, 1280x720 jamplay resolution), the automatic internet speed detection sucks. fact is, the guitar jamplay.com streams are not protected and some free lesson has the guitars streaming url

http://media-ecl.jamplay.com/member-videos/173/2-1200k-scene1.mp4?f51f38fef15b2ac18c08df965172dd2ab067186dd2986b2e9b2c78f6cf0c59eabe2452c819c1c572ea70f41e0da92c474e688cf7ef9387cc80c53571ee0b4770ed027cf1073c0ee5e41942affe0d19f5ca7c9beb25&ec_seek=0

General
Complete name                    : C:\Power Chords  Guitar Lesson.mp4
Format                           : MPEG-4
Format profile                   : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                         : mp42
File size                        : 11.5 MiB
Duration                         : 1mn 10s
Overall bit rate                 : 1 362 Kbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2009-08-19 18:31:47
Tagged date                      : UTC 2009-08-20 18:32:58
Writing application              : Sorenson Squeeze 5.0

Video
ID                               : 2
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP             : M=2, N=60
Codec ID                         : avc1
Codec ID/Info                    : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                         : 1mn 10s
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 1 200 Kbps
Width                            : 800 pixels
Height                           : 448 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate mode                  : Variable
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Minimum frame rate               : 29.970 fps
Maximum frame rate               : 30.000 fps
Standard                         : NTSC
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.112
Stream size                      : 10.1 MiB (88%)
Encoded date                     : UTC 2009-08-19 18:31:47
Tagged date                      : UTC 2009-08-19 18:31:47
Color primaries                  : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics         : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients              : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

Audio
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AAC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                   : LC
Codec ID                         : 40
Duration                         : 1mn 10s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 160 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L R
Sampling rate                    : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode                 : Lossy
Stream size                      : 1.35 MiB (12%)
Encoded date                     : UTC 2009-08-19 18:31:47
Tagged date                      : UTC 2009-08-19 18:31:47

Free lesson video capture was downloaded with Getflv (and pirate file name was created by Getflv), and any download record manager should be able to rip the MP4-videos (e.g. the world-famous Firefox plugin Video DownloadHelper).

Now it's time to sign up and pay for full record download access

[Extremist]

Yes I know the videos are not secure and are easy to download, what I'm asking is if they have anyway of detecting you downloaded instead of streamed, or you have saved a streamed video.

[placebo]

Originally Posted by Extremist

what I'm asking is if they have anyway of detecting

hi. i dont have the answer to your question. by the way, your question is posted in the wrong forum section (or even wrong forum):
the Video stream recording section of SRF treats technical issues regarding the feasibility of SR problems/tasks ("How do i download the video streams from site XYZ? Plz heeeelp!!!", etc). If you prefer to be fully safe, then dont do anything against their Terms and Conditions.

anyway, if someone knows the answers to your questions ("Can they detect me? I dont want to become dead!!!" , etc), then go ahead and shoot. Discussion should be moved to Storing audio/video files securely imho

As to legality, SRF has a discussion thread:
Is it legal to record video streams? Can it be considered as a piracy?

Or just search some publicly available jamplay lessons with Google.com. Often google hits point you to full JamPlay.com downloaded collections which someone posted in some other forum, good luck.

[JamPlay]

This is Kevin from JamPlay.com. The first tip for not getting busted for this type of action is to NOT post on a public forum.

As you mentioned, it is highly illegal to save the copyrighted files from our server. It is also of course very illegal to redistribute these videos. We will not hesitate to proceed with full legal action when necessary. It should also be stated that our support does NOT condone the use of any sort of 3rd party player. You MUST use the website to access the videos.

Come on guys...we've spent thousands an thousands of dollars and thousands and thousands of hours assembling a collection of guitar lessons. Every last bit of that, as well as updates with new lessons each day and live webcam lessons, is available for $19.95. Is it really necessary to attempt to negate all of our hard work and pirate our content?

If you want free lessons, go to YouTube. If you want our lessons, please just shell out a few bucks and avoid getting into legal trouble.