Risks to Recording...? Can I be detected and sued for capturing streaming lectures?

This might be a really stupid question, I'm new to this... but if I record a streaming video, can the website detect what I'm doing?

I'm taking some University courses, I don't think they want you downloading the streams, and it would suck if they end up blocking me, or suing me because I was recording the stuff.

Anyway, might be not be the best question... but I'd appreciate any advice.

When recording streaming media you should always make sure you do not violate the Terms of the Service. Also you should make recordings for personal usage only.

To make sure your University allows streaming media recording, you can write to it and ask about it.

Media stream recorders work the same way streaming media player work so it is often hard to detect that you record any stream. However there are some tips that can make your recordings more secure and harder to detect:

• Use single thread instead of multiple threads when recording streaming media. It is a more reliable method of recording anyway.
• Download one streaming lecture at a time.
• Make sure you don't have separate simultaneous streams delivered to your computer: the first one coming to your streaming player and the second one to your stream recorder.
• Do not download too many videos a day.
• If videos are streamed through the HTTP protocol, make sure your stream recorder is set to use a user-agent that is identical to the one that your streaming player uses when connecting to a streaming server.
  Examples of user agents:
  • "NSPlayer/9.0.0.2980" - for Windows Media streams
  • "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)" - for Real Media streams
  • "WinampMPEG/5.0" - for Shoutcast streams

You may also use WM Recorder in the PRO mode (to record Windows Media and Real Media streams), FLV Recorder (to record Flash streams) or MovRecorder (to record QT streams). These programs allow you to capture packets coming to your streaming players. Because they get stream packets from your local computer you can't be compromised unless you download too many videos.

If you record videos with screen video capture software, you can't be detected. There is one exception though. A content provider can use a custom ActiveX object for playing audio/video streams in your browser. ActiveX does have access to your Windows, so they can be used to track software that you use. You can get a virus with an ActiveX object as well

Note that a few companies use ActiveX players. Most content providers use Adobe Flash Player, Windows Media Player or Real Player for embedding audio and video streams.

Stream capture software that allows to capture packets from streaming media players:

1. WM Recorder in the PRO mode and freeware WebVideoCap can capture packets from your Windows Media Player.
2. Jaksta (in the recording mode) and freeware Orbit Grab Pro can capture RTMP packets from flash player.
3. 
   Freecorder 4, Jaksta Free Media Recorder, WebStreamDumper of Replay Media Catcher and many other programs can capture HTTP packets from flash player or save HTTP streams from the cache of your web-browser. See the following FAQ for more:
   How to record/download/capture/save Adobe Flash .FLV video HTTP stream from embedded player

I do NOT recommend to use FLV Recorder, MovRecorder and other products from Streaming Star, because the company stopped supporting clients long ago.

[kotrab]

Originally Posted by Stream Recorder

...there are some tips that can make your recordings more secure and harder to detect:

• Use single thread instead of multiple threads when recording streaming media. It is a more reliable method of recording anyway...
• If videos are streamed through the HTTP protocol, make sure your stream recorder is set to use a user-agent that is identical to the one that your streaming player uses when connecting to a streaming server.
  Examples of user agents:
  • "NSPlayer/9.0.0.2980" - for Windows Media streams
  • "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)" - for Real Media streams
  • "WinampMPEG/5.0" - for Shoutcast streams...

Thanks for drawing my attention to this post. Because I'm a newbie, I'm afraid I'm not sure how to follow some of this advice:

1. How can I tell whether I'm using a "single thread" if I'm capturing streaming media? Does this mean the same thing as only having one stream capture going on at the same time?

2. I'm not sure what a "user-agent" is. The site I'm talking about has a video "screen" on the web pages themselves, and the videos play right on the page. (The format seems to be .flv.) Is this what you mean by the media streaming through the HTTP protocol? If so, how do I use one of the user agents you suggested, and how do I decide which one I need? Sorry to be so far behind in understanding these things.

Originally Posted by kotrab

1. How can I tell whether I'm using a "single thread" if I'm capturing streaming media? Does this mean the same thing as only having one stream capture going on at the same time?

Many Download managers allow you to set up how many threads to use when downloading a particular stream. As for stream recorders, try not to use turbo like modes.

You should download one stream from a particular web-site at a time and download this stream using one thread only. And it is safer to capture packets from a streaming media player, than to download the stream.

Originally Posted by kotrab

I'm not sure what a "user-agent" is.

A user-agent is used to identify software that accesses online content. Web-browsers, download managers, streaming media players, ... have their own user agents (or they pretend to be Internet Explorer, for example).

Originally Posted by kotrab

The site I'm talking about has a video "screen" on the web pages themselves, and the videos play right on the page. (The format seems to be .flv.) Is this what you mean by the media streaming through the HTTP protocol? If so, how do I use one of the user agents you suggested, and how do I decide which one I need?

Flash video .FLV files can be streamed via HTTP, RTMP and RTMPE protocols. I don't remember any FLV streams that required a user agent to be changed.

HTTP streams can be copied from the cache of your web-browser.

For capturing HTTP and RTMP streams you can use software mentioned above.

rtmpsuck is the only program I know that can capture RTMPE streams.