Help reverse-engineer Vimeo's anti-downloading measures

JWZ wrote his own Vimeo downloader (and uses other Vimeo downloaders like Miro), but it's stopped working, because Vimeo's got new countermeasures.

I really rely on Vimeo downloaders for my own watching, since Vimeo's network buffering is so terribly broken and performs so poorly in bad network connections. Any time I really want to watch a video on Vimeo -- especially if it's more than a few minutes long -- I download it and watch it with VLC.

JWZ is looking for help reverse-engineering the measures Vimeo uses to stop video downloading. If you've got the time and inclination to help him, that would be great (it would also really help me write about and link to more Vimeo files here!).

On a private video, when you hit "Play" in either the Flash player or the HTML5 player, it loads "http://av.vimeo.com/Nx5/Nx3/Nx9.mp4?aksessionid=HEX&token=CTIME_HEX2" which returns the full MP4. Those URLs go 403 after some small number of minutes, and it loads a URL with different hex each time you hit play (though the decimal numbers stay the same), so presumably the ctime is a part of the hash.
The fact that this works in the HTML5 player means that they are computing those URLs from Javascript somehow, rather than with a secret key that is baked into their Flash player, so that's promising. But I don't have a lot of experience reverse-engineering gigantic Javascript apps.
Since it will be the first thing you find when googling, let me point out that the old moogaloop URLs like "http://vimeo.com/moogaloop/load/clip:ID" are 404. You used to be able to use those to get a signature, then construct a download URL like: "http://vimeo.com/moogaloop/play/clip:ID/SIG/EXP/?q=hd", but no more.

Vimeo download escalation

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Copyfight • reverse engineering • security • videos • web theory

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http://www.facebook.com/NotMyself Bobby Johnson

If the content creator wanted you to be able to download the video they can easily enable it via the videos settings on vimeo. See this video as an example there is a huge download button right under the video. https://vimeo.com/38447824
- xzzy
  
  The downloading isn’t the issue. Poor streaming or poor handling of slow internet connections is the issue. Downloading is a workaround for their shoddy streaming software, and I think is a reasonable solution until Vimeo fixes their streaming problems.
  
  Granted, some portion of users will use the software just to have an offline copy they can play whenever they want, which is certainly a cause for concern.
  
  But I don’t think the undesirable cases is a good reason to stonewall people from finding solutions to their problems.
  - http://www.facebook.com/NotMyself Bobby Johnson
    
    So you are saying that your desire to watch the video trumps the creators desire to control their content? Here are some possible legal alternatives to advocating cracking/stealing.
    
    1. Request vimeo fix their streaming software.
    
    2. Post a comment on the video informing the creator you were unable to view the video and ask for alternative options.
    - wysinwyg
      
      3. Reverse engineer vimeo’s software, download the video, then delete it after you’re done watching it.
      
      What’s wrong with that one?
      - http://www.facebook.com/NotMyself Bobby Johnson
        
        It is illegal. I am not trying to be difficult here. I am just of the opinion that the creators rights trumps your desire to watch the video.
      - wysinwyg
        
        @Bobby Johnson
        
        It is illegal.
        
        I’m not sure it’s actually illegal to do that. Can you cite the specific law?
        
        I understand you’re not trying to be difficult — neither am I. It’s just obvious to me that when I stream video I can pick up all the same data by using wireshark or some other packet sniffer. Whether I download or stream I still have a copy of the video on my computer. It’s just a question of how much trouble I want to go through to put it back together and watch it.
      - bjohndook
        
        If you can watch the video – you can record the video.
        
        This type of arms race is truly pointless in that regard as long as you can still just screen capture the video while it plays.
      - Cowicide
        
        3. Reverse engineer vimeo’s software, download the video, then delete it after you’re done watching it.
        
        I like that one.
    - foobar
      
      If you want to control “your” content, best not put it on the internets. We’ve never recognized that as a right.
      - signsofrain
        
        Damn straight. If someone releases content, it’s inevitably going to end up on the internet. Make it as illegal as you want, people are still going to do it. The technology is trivially easy to use and can’t be controlled/put back in the box by any amount of legislation. Copying and sharing are here to stay. Adjust your business models or you won’t have a business much longer.
    - xzzy
      
      Nope, the creators are free to protect their content as much as they want. Users are free to fix interface problems if they can.
      
      If established norms on the internet are not acceptable, the content provider always has the option of removing their content from the internet.
      
      Or come up with a security system that actually works, but no one’s managed that yet so good luck there!
      - Cowicide
        
        the content provider always has the option of removing their content from the internet.
        
        Haha… that’s a good one.
    - retchdog
      
      it’s called copyright, not useright.
    - RichG2012
      
      There is no theft involved to download a video and then watch it at a later date. You are asserting that the only possible reason that a user could want to download a video is because he wants to claim that he produced it independently, or make a superficial modification and then claim it is his own work. It simply is not stealing to timeshift a video. You do not understand the meaning of the word.
  - wysinwyg
    
    That is, after all, how the internet works. if something doesn’t work right from a user’s perspective someone steps in to write some code to fix it. Whether the originator of the service wants it fixed is beside the point. The internet isn’t like a machine shop where each website is a discrete tool with its own specific uses and techniques — it’s more like an ecosystem where different organisms adopt many different strategies and the ones that work survive. It’s not an environment where you can expect to impose top-down control and still enjoy a large and enthusiastic user base. Successful internet services usually have a constant give and take with their user base.
    
    If the internet was structured to allow the sort of top-down control that Bobby endorses it wouldn’t be nearly as useful, dynamic, or interesting as what we have today. I’m glad that’s not the case.
    - bjohndook
      
      Y’know I was actually starting to like Vimeo – I still miss stage6. They had better speed and quality back in ~’06-’07 than I’ve seen anywhere else since.
  - Paul Renault
    
    Vimeo’s got poor handling of fast Internet connections too.
    
    I’ve given up watching Vimeo on my Boxee Box – with a 15mb connection. It’ll play for ten to twenty seconds, then it stops, never to resume again. It’s almost like Vimeo wants to be the Real Media of today.
    - SoItBegins
      
      “…the Real Media of today.”
      
      Who?
      - http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen
        
        Exactly ;)
http://johngoldsmithphotography.com/ John Goldsmith

@Bobby – Perhaps, but ultimately I would think the content creator wants you to see their work. If the platform doesn’t operate as intended for viewers, than it is potentially burning not only Vimeo but also the owner of the video. As a photographer who wants people to respect my copyright, I would, of course, wish for a website that supports my efforts to protect my work but more importantly I want viewers to have full access to my pictures. That’s why I generally upload 900 pixel images.
- http://www.facebook.com/NotMyself Bobby Johnson
  
  @John – I don’t think this is about what the content creator wants. The content creator can easily flag their material for download, I do so with every video I post to vimeo. But if I did want my video only viewable from my vimeo page or my website, I would want vimeo to take any action needed to honor that choice. Posting on BB asking for people to crack vimeo’s efforts to do that is kinda lame IMHO regardless of the reason.
  - ZikZak
    
    It is foolish to think that you can have that level of control over shared media, let alone that you deserve to have it. When people watch your videos they are downloading them. If you don’t want them to keep those files, ask them nicely and explain why. But you neither can nor should force the issue.
  - signsofrain
    
    @facebook-579714244:disqus - Answer me this – how is watching a video live on Vimeo different from downloading a copy? In both cases the bits travel through the internet to my computer and are copied to memory, then displayed on my screen. If I choose to copy them to non-volatile memory how exactly is that anyone else’s business? You can say it’s illegal all you want – I say those bits are in my home, in my computer, and I’ll do as I please with them. I have a right to privacy. If I develop a tool that allows me to do this, why should it be illegal for me to share it? If anything, I am doing Vimeo a favour by showing them where their countermeasures are weak. They improve their security, I improve my tool, and the result is innovation and progress. Hacking and sharing are the backbones of a healthy economy.
  - vincentreynolds
    
    But for many people who might want to view your work, if you don’t flag it as downloadable, you are essentially rendering it non-viewable. If protecting your copyright loses you viewers, what have you really accomplished?
  - donovan acree
    
    Posting a video on the internet in analogous to broadcasting it over the air waves. Your computer is the TV and DVR/VCR in this analogy with Vimeo being the station broadcasting content they did not create.
    
    It is not illegal, immoral, or in any way wrong to record a broadcast program. This has been tested again and again in the courts. Simply because the content creator feels there is a benefit to be had by forcing you to watch a video immediately by clicking play on a website does not effect your choice to do otherwise.
    
    There is no contract between the viewer and the creator and the viewer is not re-broadcasting, charging admission, or providing public showing of the original work. If you think otherwise, you need to spit that kool-aid out before it kills you.
    
    The internet did not change the rules. As Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, concluded “One may search the Copyright Act in vain for any sign that the elected representatives of the millions of people who watch television every day have made it unlawful to copy a program for later viewing at home, or have enacted a flat prohibition against the sale of machines that make such copying possible.”
Lothario Escobar

I just tested my Firefox plugin and it still works on Vimeo.
- http://www.pattayamail.com John Thomas
  
  And I tried the first result on Google for “download Vimeo” , works fine too.
- Cowicide
  
  Yes, but does it work with a Vimeo video that doesn’t already have a download link?
  - http://www.pattayamail.com John Thomas
    
    I tested it on this video: http://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/44446467
http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

I don’t know why people still use Vimeo. The player is crap and half the time (or more) refuses to even start playing for me until I reload at least once or twice. The buffering issues, and now this. Can people please start getting a clue?
http://www.facebook.com/NotMyself Bobby Johnson

I don’t endorse top down control. I endorse the creators right to distribute their works as they see fit.

I also disagree that the internet would be less “useful, dynamic or interesting” if we choose to respect the creators rights. A service that blocks you from downloading or in other ways inter fears with your ability to consume the way you wish will quickly have a competitor that is more user friendly.

I can’t break into my local safeway after hours because they are closed and I want a bag of Doritos.. but I can go to the corner store that is open 24/7 and give them my business instead.
- wysinwyg
  
  First of all, it would be better if you responded in-line or as close as possible. Second of all, you’re not responding to what I said. You made up something with some of the same words in it and responded to that:
  
  I also disagree that the internet would be less “useful, dynamic or interesting” if we choose to respect the creators rights.
  
  I didn’t say “choose to respect the creators rights”, I said imposing top-down control would stifle the dynamicism and utility of the internet. Respond to what I say, not to what is convenient for you to respond to.
  
  I mentioned “deleting the video when I’m done.” That is respecting creators rights. You’re not talking about that — you’re talking about imposing creators’ demands. Those aren’t the same as their rights.
  
  Can you also please respond to me question below? You said my proposal was illegal; I’d appreciate if you could specifically point to which part of it breaks which specific law.
  - http://www.openbuddha.com/ Al Billings
    
    He can’t because it doesn’t actually break any laws, only Vimeo policies.
    - wysinwyg
      
      That was my guess. Somewhat perversely I wanted to continue giving him the benefit of the doubt even after he insinuated that I’m against “creator’s rights” somehow.
- http://www.edmstudio.com futnuh
  
  You still a vestige of my attention until the flawed metaphor of the store and theft of physical goods. Then it went ‘poof’.
- http://www.openbuddha.com/ Al Billings
  
  Boy, you’re trolling this thread like there’s no tomorrow, aren’t you?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715871829 Byron Hancock

The Vimeo video creators have made a choice to share their content on a particular platform, and in a way that deliberately excludes downloading. Your technical problems with their chosen distribution method don’t somehow give you permission to go against the wishes of the artists and make a completely stand alone copy offline. The ethical and legal implications of making this copy are worth at least consideration here. And yet this post is completely devoid of any such discussion. A rallying cry to the community to find a way to download content artists have made clear that they don’t want downloaded seems a worrying move from this website and this author.

Obviously there will always be a way to get at this content in this manner somehow. That’s a choice for individuals to make. Boing Boing posting this on their front page, specifically asking for someone to do it is a completely different matter. I’d be genuinely curious if Cory actually knew about the download feature as an option for those uploading their videos. This entire aspect of the request seems strangely missing from his post, given his obviously intimate knowledge of the various ins and outs of distributing free content in different manners. I feel that if this was his content and he didn’t want it downloaded, but rather only consumed online that he may have a different opinion.
- wysinwyg
  
  That’s a choice for individuals to make. Boing Boing posting this on their front page, specifically shouting for someone to do it as a rallying cry is a completely different matter.
  
  This is an opinion, one with which many people clearly disagree.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715871829 Byron Hancock
    
    Pointing out that my opinion is just that seems a tad reductive in this context. So I’ll directly ask a question to you and others with differing opinions to me here. Do you think your need to consume content overrides the desire of the content creators to control how that content is consumed? Everyone seems caught up about the legal ins and outs of downloading these videos. I’m curious as to how comfortable people are doing so when the video makers have clearly indicated they don’t want you to.
    
    Is it really just a simple case of saying that their wishes to control the medium their content gets shared are over ridden because the platform it is shared on is of poor quality? That seems an astonishing thing to say, and I’m surprised Cory Doctorow of all people appears to be advocating it.
    - wysinwyg
      
      Do you think your need to consume content overrides the desire of the content creators to control how that content is consumed?
      
      I don’t think this is what’s really being debated. What I’m arguing is that:
      a) the technology with which the content is being shared physically cannot allow the kind of control you and others think creators should have.
      b) to allow the kind of control you and others think creators should have would require crippling or locking down hardware in particularly scary dystopian ways
      Since it’s physically impossible to give creators the control you want to give them without creating more serious threats to personal and economic liberty I think the situation just factually is: creators can’t have full control over their content when they put it on the internet. As everyone in this thread is pointing out it doesn’t matter how good the technology gets — streaming video puts the bits on your box, and once the bits are on your box you can find a way to save it to persistent memory.
      
      So when we talk about “respecting creators’ wishes” we’re talking about voluntarily not ripping them off. This is the case even if they only allow streaming — I can still put together a system to save their video down (there’s at least three approaches to this outlined in this thread alone). Respecting the creator’s wishes would include downloading the video and deleting it when you’re done watching it — at least from my perspective. Can you tell me what’s ethically wrong with that approach (after trying to stream three times and having Vimeo lock up at 0:43 each time)?
      
      If the video makers put their videos on Vimeo they clearly want people to be able to watch them. It’s certainly not clear that they DON’T want me to watch the video if I happen to have troubles with Vimeo in the attempt. So if I attempt to work around my problems with Vimeo, watch the video, and then delete it how is that really different from the creator’s point of view from me just streaming the video in a scenario where Vimeo actually works right?
      
      In other words, it has nothing to do with my “need to consume content.” It has to do what “sharing content” and “consuming content” mean in the real, physical world.
    - foobar
      
      When that medium is my computer, yes, of course my wishes trump any desire of a content creator to control it.
      
      Otherwise: By reading this comment you agree to release all current and future copyrights, patents and/or trademarks into the public domain on behalf of yourself, you current and future employers, business partners and clients.
morze

Vimeo’s a bit of a mystery to me. My best YouTube video just broke 200,000 hits after being posted about two years. An HD version of the same video, which is identical apart from improved colour and sharpness, has about 400 hits after one year. I have trouble finding stuff in Vimeo, even if I’ve seen it there before; I usually only look in Vimeo if a Google search points there.
3eff_jeff

You can create a shared library with a function that takes a file descriptor (integer), and dumps it to a known file in /tmp.

Then, you add this library to the LD_PRELOAD environment of your webbrowser, so it gets inherited by your flash player. Hit the video page, let it pre-cache all the way and then use lsof to find the deleted tmp file and get its file descriptor. Finally, attach gdb to the flash process and use it to run your trojan library function supplied with the descriptor from lsof. Copy off the file from /tmp and do what you want with it.

This should work with just about any flash video site.

You cannot beat me. I have a disassembler.
- Cowicide
  
  This should work
  
  Famous last words.
  - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
    
    ”Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it” –Donald Knuth
Brendan Hogan

I don’t see what the debate is here. If the creator wants you to be able to download the video they can do that. If they don’t then that’s their prerogative. You can pile on as many justifications as you want but if the creator has blocked downloading and you download it anyway then you’re going against their wishes. Not that I’m a saint in this department but don’t paint a cow and tell me it’s a horse.
- foobar
  
  By reading this comment, you agree to forgo any and all copyright, trademark, and/or patent protections and release said works into the public domain on behalf of yourself, your current, former and future employers, business partners and clients.
  
  I presume you won’t go against my wishes. That would make you a hypocrite.
  - BrendanJH
    
    “By reading this comment, you agree to forgo any and all copyright, …. and release said works into the public domain….” What “said works” are you referring to here? No one is suggesting that the wishes of the creator concerning the use of their product can effect anything other than the use of their product. If I loan you a wrench it is perfectly reasonable for me to make stipulations. For instance “please get this back to me in 5 days”. It would not be reasonable for me to stipulate that by borrowing the wrench you forfeit the deed to your house. That would be ridiculous and no one is suggesting anything of the sort.
    Besides. A contract or an agreement requires both parties to knowingly enter into that agreement for the purposes of some form of exchange. Thankfully, simply reading a statement does not constitute consent.
    - foobar
      
      Copyright maximalists most certainly are demanding that people sign over the deeds to their computers.
      
      If they can slap an EULA on content and expect it to stick, then so can I. If I can’t, then neither can they.
- Cowicide
  
  don’t paint a cow and tell me it’s a horse.
  
  What if you paint a little horse on a cow and point at the horse?
  - foobar
    
    Then you’re a horse thief and should be hanged.
    - Cowicide
      
      [cow jumps on stolen horse while high on stolen ecstasy and hauls ass to movie theatre and sneaks in without paying]
howaboutthisdangit

From the comments on the linked blog it seems as if JWZs problem is already solved, not that anyone is going to notice.
- Cowicide
  
  Haha…
  
  The reason many won’t notice is because the it’s a green font on a black background. Ugh…Thank goodness for my Quickstyle extension and some “background-color:white;color: black” CSS I added.
  - http://burntheflag.ca Jardine
    
    You son of a bitch! Don’t you realize that you’ve changed that website without the express written permission of the content creator and Major League Baseball? You’ve gone against their wishes!
    - Cowicide
      
      I’ll change it right back, I swear!
http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins

A lot of the comments here are pretty disheartening. Quite a few seem to boil down to ‘If it’s on the internet I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it,’ ‘Creators’ copyrights and wishes are less important than my desire to freely consume their creations,’ ‘If you lock your door you’re a douche. It makes it harder to take your stuff. Stop being a douche.’

I get the impression that most people espousing these views aren’t people who try to make some portion of their living off of creativity. There may be very good reasons a creator would want their videos not to be downloaded. It’s kinda like when I see fellow artists slap huge watermarks across their images. They want to sell the art. They didn’t just draw it and say “Here, Internet, I made this for you for free. Do what you will with it.” What do people do? Instead of buying the art they photoshop out the watermark (sorta like downloading a video the creator doesn’t want downloaded).

Sad fact is, people probably won’t buy a cow if they get the milk for free, and they sure as hell won’t buy the milk.
- http://twitter.com/matthjones Matt Jones
  
  I don’t think I have *ever* been able to stream a video on Vimeo. My internet connection isn’t the best- About 3-4Meg. There are a lot of people with worse.
  
  To the content creator, who presumably put the video up with the hope that people will watch it, is it better that I watch it by downloading it, or just ignoring it?
  - http://liquiddark.myopenid.com/ Mike Burton
    
    To the content creator, it is better if you participate in the business model in effect, which is to say, that you use the viewer provided, which has an inbuilt business model. Downloading it to view at any time without hitting the vimeo viewer means the artist isn’t making any money from your attention.
    
    Is that the right way to view things? Well, it’s not a question of whether that’s right or not. It’s a question of how much you want professional artists. As a purely practical matter, if artists cannot make money from their art, then there will be no professional artists. That’s not the choice before us, of course. But free content paid for via Vimeo-like delivery mechanisms is something people are trying, and the plain fact is that if they’re not making money from it, the good ones are going to move on.
    
    So while there are many questions of right to answer, there is only one of practicality: Are you helping the creator make money? If not, then they have a valid complaint against you when you circumvent their intended means of doing so. It may not be a “right”. It may even be a broken business model. But it’s entirely their right to complain about it, because frankly you’re obviously not thinking about their benefit at all.
- wysinwyg
  
  Quite a few seem to boil down to ‘If it’s on the internet I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it,’ ‘Creators’ copyrights and wishes are less important than my desire to freely consume their creations,’ ‘If you lock your door you’re a douche. It makes it harder to take your stuff. Stop being a douche.’
  
  I don’t see anyone saying any of that. Would you care to quote specific comments or argue against specific points rather than putting words in people’s mouths?
  - foobar
    
    I’ll go ahead and say it. Your desire to make a profit does not obligate me to play along with your business model.
    - http://liquiddark.myopenid.com/ Mike Burton
      
      No. But your desire to continue to consume my content does.
      - foobar
        
        You can choose to withhold it, but once you release it: Nope.
  - http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins
    
    “It’s just obvious to me that when I stream video I can pick up all the same data by using wireshark or some other packet sniffer. Whether I download or stream I still have a copy of the video on my computer. It’s just a question of how much trouble I want to go through to put it back together and watch it.”
    
    “If you want to control “your” content, best not put it on the internets. We’ve never recognized that as a right.”
    
    “Damn straight. If someone releases content, it’s inevitably going to end up on the internet. Make it as illegal as you want, people are still going to do it. The technology is trivially easy to use and can’t be controlled/put back in the box by any amount of legislation. Copying and sharing are here to stay. Adjust your business models or you won’t have a business much longer.”
    
    “That is, after all, how the internet works. if something doesn’t work right from a user’s perspective someone steps in to write some code to fix it. Whether the originator of the service wants it fixed is beside the point. ”
    
    “It is foolish to think that you can have that level of control over shared media, let alone that you deserve to have it. When people watch your videos they are downloading them. If you don’t want them to keep those files, ask them nicely and explain why. But you neither can nor should force the issue.”
    
    “Answer me this – how is watching a video live on Vimeo different from downloading a copy? In both cases the bits travel through the internet to my computer and are copied to memory, then displayed on my screen. If I choose to copy them to non-volatile memory how exactly is that anyone else’s business? You can say it’s illegal all you want – I say those bits are in my home, in my computer, and I’ll do as I please with them.”
    
    “creators can’t have full control over their content when they put it on the internet. As everyone in this thread is pointing out it doesn’t matter how good the technology gets — streaming video puts the bits on your box, and once the bits are on your box you can find a way to save it to persistent memory.”
- xzzy
  
  Can you quote where anyone specifically said any of that?
  
  (let me save you the trouble: no one did)
  
  The core issue is users wanting to enjoy a movie that a creator put on a website specifically so people can watch and enjoy it. The only problem is that Vimeo’s crappy software prevents some people from watching it. Where’s the harm in writing software to save the stream to disk and watching it offline, and then presumably, deleting it?
  
  The fact that a user does not have to delete the downloaded copy is completely irrelevant to this conversation. Just because a person has the capacity to use a tool for some immoral purpose does not mean the tool itself is immoral.
  
  If that thought process were applied to other debates, we couldn’t own guns, we couldn’t own baseball bats, we couldn’t own knives, we couldn’t own hard drives, and web browsers with a “Save as” option would be illegal.
  - wysinwyg
    
    That’s my take as well. What I don’t understand is what there is to disagree about. It is simply a fact about the physical world that it is impossible for creators to prevent streaming video from being downloaded. Since that is simply a fact about the world then it’s also simply a fact that “abiding by the creator’s wishes” means voluntarily not ripping off the work. No one here that I can see is advocating ripping off the work.
    
    The only sources of disagreement I can conceive of are that Eddie Perkins & co. want one of the following to happen:
    1) general purpose computing is outlawed. This is the only way to prevent people from turning streaming content into static files.
    2) crowd sourcing hacks on personal blogs is outlawed — since people are specifically complaining about Cory’s OP. I’m curious what they think the penalties and exact wording of this law should be.
    - http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins
      
      Yes, streaming video is downloaded. But, as you’ve said yourself, you can “find a way” to make a permanent copy of this download. Streaming isn’t designed to put a downloaded copy of a video on your desktop you can watch whenever you want. You have to go out of your way to take streamed data and make it into something you can watch offline. You have to work around creators’ wishes.
      
      You know, I could “find a way” to get anything I want out of the store display window across the street. It’s called a hammer. But, being behind glass the owner’s wishes seem pretty clear. So, I’ve decided to “voluntarily not rip them off.”
      
      If Vimeo is shit, why is the first step to figure out how to download a video the uploader doesn’t want downloaded? Why isn’t the first step to contact the uploader and say, “Hey, Vimeo is crap and I can’t watch your video on it. Could you enable downloading or also upload the video to another site?”
      - foobar
        
        The difference would be that you don’t have any property rights to data.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        You know, I could “find a way” to get anything I want out of the store display window across the street. It’s called a hammer.
        
        If you can’t make a sane and sincere argument, please can it. There’s no reasonable comparison between downloading a video and smashing a store window.
      - SoItBegins
        
        You know, maybe it’s just me, but you are missing a fundamental point here:
        
        The uploader of a video to Vimeo has placed it there for anyone who finds it to view. For free.
        You have to purchase the items in a store window.
      - Cowicide
        
        I could “find a way” to get anything I want out of the store display window across the street. It’s called a hammer.
        
        So when’s the last time someone broke into a store with a hammer just so they could download a video onto their computer to watch it later when they are going to be at a slow hotspot?
        
        Hmmm?
      - http://liquiddark.myopenid.com/ Mike Burton
        
        The answer is not to fix Vimeo. If Vimeo is a broken provider, the answer is to get artists to leave Vimeo. If a store owner shoved a shotgun in your face and demanded you leave your wallet at the door before you were allowed in, you might be more inclined to come back with a hammer.
      - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
        
        @Cowicide:disqus “So when’s the last time someone broke into a store with a hammer just so they could download a video onto their computer to watch it later when they are going to be at a slow hotspot?”
        
        Well, I _might_ have, but I _might_ have been high on bath salts at the time….
        
        I probably shouldn’t have broken into The Body Shop with a hammer just to snort some bath salts. THE STING! But everything _did_ smell so nice afterwards….
      - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
        
        @openid-37089:disqus and sometimes you just the like the rest of the store so much that you get a hammer and fix the nail sticking out of the telephone-pole on the sidewalk that everybody keeps scratching themselves on.
- Cowicide
  
  people probably won’t buy a cow if they get the milk for free, and they sure as hell won’t buy the milk.
  
  What if the milk is already free and the milk is a video that someone wants to download so they can watch it later when they are going to be on slower Internet and the cow is the content provider who now gets her content watched that udderwise wouldn’t have? And said cow now gets more desired exposure (the point of putting the video online in the first place)?
  
  How now, brown cow?
Gregor J. Rothfuss

i really don’t get it why people keep using that junk site when capable competitors exist?
- Cowicide
  
  links please.
jwkrk

I’m posting this here, as bOING bOING is a fine medium for distribution, but it is my desire as the creator of these words that you don’t read them, so please respect my wishes and do not read this. Thank you.
austinhamman

ok i dont know if anyone mentioned this but the vimeo thing is pretty simple, the sessionID is hard coded into the HTML, its generated by the site based on a sessionID from the back-end server. if you want to get the sessionID you need make a request for vimeo.html at the very bottom there is a line like this:
{“request”:{“cached_timestamp”:1340924937,”source”:”cache”,”signature”:”6d86a47cf7522c51e9add1a8d3a8e2d1″,”timestamp”:1340924946″,cookie”:{“hd”:true,”scaling”:1,”volume”:100,”html”:2},”expiration”:21600this contains the pertinent information you need(signature is the sessionID) to get the video you need to make a connection to:http://player.vimeo.com/play_redirect?clip_id=the id of the clip you want to download]&sig=[the signature above]&time=[the timestamp above]&quality=hd&codecs=H264,VP8,VP6&type=moogaloop_local&embed_location=this will redirect you to a download link with the correct token (form of a 302)
http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

EDIT: I was attempting to reply to one of the previous posts, but Discus borked somehow.

I’m going to say this very slowly (it’s a reoccuing theme that many Pro photographers seem have a mental-disconnect on the subject) as to be easily understood:

That. Is. Not. Your. Choice. To. Make.

Like the NFL, you are claiming rights that you, in reality, do not actually have.

When I access your video, I’m not “going” anywhere, Vimo is sending that video to me (on your behalf). Vimo is sending me those little bits of your video to my computer so I can watch your video. I have NO contractual obligation to either you or Vimo as to what I do with those bits when they get to my computer, as my computer is MINE. So if I want to sweep up all these bits into a bucket (changing it into a .flv video) in order to time-shift to a watchable format to get around Vimo’s (deliberately, mind you) broken streaming; if I can, I will!

I will respect your copyright, in that, I will not claim what you made as my own, however copyright does not prevent me from time-shifting your video, which is fair use, and your claiming anything the beyond the limits of copyright, to deliberately prevent my fair use, is copyfraud.
- RadioGuy
  
  ^ This.
Cowicide

I’m part of a growing army of mobile professionals that has to deal with hotspots, limited bandwidth, etc. – It’s often better for me to download the video instead of streaming. That’s what I do with YouTube videos, but I can’t STAND IT when I can’t do it with Vimeo and it makes me despise Vimeo.

I have no evil intentions with the downloaded video except to watch it later when I’m at a slow Internet spot (or gawd forbid, no Internet at all) and if I did have evil intentions all I have to do is grab the video with Snapz Pro X on my Mac anyway.

Such a shame Vimeo does this stupid shit and this thread makes me happy.
Thomas Shaddack

The computers and their users are getting integrated closer and closer. Why can’t we just consider a file saved into a computer an equivalent of having eidetic memory? There are people who remember everything, what to do with them? You can argue that they are not normal – but what if it is *us* with faulty memory who are not normal? Isn’t it just easier to not artificially force a conceptual difference between streaming, saving-and-deleting, and saving-and-keeping? Can’t one’s computer and its disk space be considered an extension of one’s brain – a content viewed and saved to a file for later reference being equivalent to a content viewed and fully remembered?

Yesterday a computer was a beige box under the table. Then it morphed into a laptop in the evening, shrunk into a notepad and netbook overnight, and became a smartphone today. Tomorrow they will be in our skulls, directly enhancing our brains and augmenting our capability to remember. Will some of us still insist to argue about streaming-vs-saving then?
http://www.facebook.com/RichGhostWolf Rich Martin

Drama.

INTERNET ARCHIVE, PEOPLE!
http://twitter.com/dargaud Guillaume Dargaud

Vimeo obtained what it wanted in that case. I haven’t watched any of their videos in about 2 years because they simply stopped working on Linux around that time. Other video sites work fine so that’s not a Linux problem.
Robert Schmitz

Why reinvent the wheel? On WinXP and Linux Mint Maya, Firefox with the “Video DownloadHelper” add-on work fine on Vimeo. I have tested this just five minutes ago on a Vimeo video that has no download button.
onvyjivredqu

flash videos can be copied out of the browser’s cache folder (once they’re completely buffered, of course). e.g. for safari on macosx 10.6.8 the files would be in this folder: “/private/var/folders/-1/-1r6S(looks like random name)++TM/-Tmp-/” and they’re called “FlashTmp.bgACkG” or some other random extension. just copy&rename them and make sure to give them the extension “.flv”
- austinhamman
  
  some videos, youtube has made changes to their player, so far as i can tell it loads as much video as it can fit in ram then stops loading, as the video plays memory is freed from earlier and loaded in from later to keep a running buffer of x bytes (i think the x has to do with your flash settings) if this is a high def video this buffer could be only a second or two.
  i used to get videos out of /tmp on linux for youtube videos…i can’t anymore. might still work for HTML5 videos though
http://rikki.clavid.com/ Rikki

StreamTransport works just dandy on pretty much any website with streaming content – especially Vimeo.
Kaleberg

I’m impressed. I’ve never managed to watch anything Vimeo, except once from their site. It doesn’t seem to work with Firefox, Safari or Chrome. Maybe it’s Explorer only, but I’m on a Mac. I click on play and it sits there, sometimes for days.
Phloating Man

“Flash Video Downloader” add-on for Firefox still works on Vimeo for me.
http://microblog.ourcoffs.org.au/mjd mjd

The way that this issue is framed, even by people who should know better, is profoundly misleading. These are not “anti-downloading measures”. Viewing data from a remote machine without first downloading it would be a very neat trick.

It is therefore nonsensical to ask “Is it okay to download this video without the creator’s permission?” in this context. The creator has given you this permission. The question we should ask is “Is it okay for the creator (or some intermediary) to take control of my computer in order to delete some data I’ve acquired perfectly legally?”
teapot

This plugin for Firefox should solve your problems:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

As to the discussion of whether I should download something the creator didn’t want me to: My computer, my data. Come get me. If you don’t want your stuff to be saved locally, reinterpreted or remixed: Don’t release it in full online. Even if someone comes up with a sure-fire way of stopping code-based workarounds there’s always tools to take a raw capture of your display. Accept that if you want to show something to people online there’s always going to be ways they can jack it.

Also: Vimeo’s stream reliability isn’t as good as Youtube, but I haven’t been having anywhere near the problems others in this thread seem to be having. I notice that they’re worse on FF than in Chrome where I have almost no problems. As to why people still upload to Vimeo: The player window is much more nicely designed than Youtube, you can customize what meta information is displayed on mouse-over for each video, plus you can choose the colour-scheme for the player. All of these combine to make Vimeo a preferred option for many creative types.
bugmancx

Jaksta - http://www.jaksta.com/ seems to have no trouble grabbing these videos.
BrendanJH

Just because data is on your computer does not mean you own it. By downloading or streaming content you have entered into a license agreement. You do not own your copy of Garage Band, you don’t own the mp3s you bought off iTunes, you don’t own the data downloaded from Vimeo, you license all of it. The whole “the data is on my computer therefore I can do whatever I want with it” is simply not true.
So, there’s actually a very simple solution to this whole argument which is to look at the Vimeo license agreement.

“LICENSE TO OTHER USERS: You further grant all users of the Vimeo Service permission to view your videos for their personal, non-commercial purposes. This includes the right to copy and make derivative works from the videos solely to the extent necessary to view the videos. ”

So, it appears then that making copies for personal use is allowed. Makes me wonder what the point of the whole allow download/don’t allow download option is.
Nick Hayday

Vimeo’s own embed code doesn’t work on *some* iPhones (spinner spins forever and never plays) Vimeo have no idea why, so glad I found this out after the 6 months I spent working on an iPhone app….
signsofrain

Brendan: Just because something was made illegal, does not mean the law is enforceable or sensible. The fact is, having a website is akin to giving away data. You transfer it to other computers. Once that data is off your computer and on mine, what I do with it is my choice. There is no possible way that things can be otherwise without forever harming our privacy and destroying the net’s status as a (relatively) neutral platform of communication, cultural exchange, and commerce. Since the net remaining useful is FAR MORE important to humanity than entertainment companies getting paid for every eyeball or ear that touches their content, I choose to ignore stupid rules. If my friend wants a copy of the song I bought off iTunes, I give him a copy. Making that illegal is unenforceable, senseless, and the only people it benefits are entertainment companies too top-heavy, lazy, stupid, and greedy to adapt to the new marketplace.