1325026 - API to disable user controls to easily download media

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Video/Audio Controls, enhancement)

Description

[Andrei Boros]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Build ID: 20161208153507

Steps to reproduce:

Open a web page that contains media player (audio or video) using HTML5 <audio> or <video>. 
The content is either supplied as static files hosted on http server or audio live stream via Shoutcast server (at least).
Right-click on media player UI, Save as. 



Actual results:

Media file is downloaded.

(for live stream, a temporary download file is created, the download never stops, it must be cancelled, but the temporary file may be copied at any time to store data downloaded so far)


Expected results:

This is a feature request for an API way for website authors to have control over this functionality, using HTML, without the need to heavily customize / rebuild the media player controls using CSS and JS. 

That is, to allow or disallow access to the "Save as" functionality for these media files. 

A simple HTML API to disable this function is preferrable to more complex solutions that involve additional web programming and changing media file hosting solution or changing live stream distribution infrastructure. 

The "Save as" function for such media files is sensitive regarding copyright accords between website owner and authors (or organizations representing authors), accords which may include listening but not downloading. 
Both parties acknowledge that downloading the media content may not be technically impossible to achieve, however offering the content either explicitly or by obvious or easy and readily available means is not allowed. (such as download link, download button, or functions such as "save as" that are native to the browser)

A similar request has already been submitted to Chrome development team : 
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=675596
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=650174