Introducing Playback Restrictions with Referrer Validation

Today we’re excited to share the launch of Playback Restrictions, a new set of capabilities to prevent the unauthorized playback of video. We know content creators big and small are in an ongoing and unrelenting battle to protect their video content so our mission to reduce the complexity of working with video, of course, includes security.

The first method of restriction is Referrer Validation. With this, you can create a list of domains where your video is allowed to play. Plus, you can set custom rules around playback such as:

• Prevent playback using hotlinks on social sharing apps
• Apply restrictions to long-form, valuable videos but not on shorter videos like previews/highlights

Link42IconHow it works

Playback Restrictions are only applicable to signed URLs and you can apply restrictions on each playback session to implement any custom business logic. You can update the list of domains at any time and the validation will take effect in less than 20 seconds. Check out our docs and API references for more details.

POST /video/v1/playback-restrictions

Body
{
  "referrer" : {
    "allowed_domains" : [
      "example.com",
      "*.example.com",
      "*.foo.example.com"
    ],
    "allow_no_referrer" : true
  }
}

This feature works for playback on browsers, but not on native iOS and Android apps. For native apps, you can set "allow_no_referrer" to true to allow anyone to play videos from native apps.

(Side note: We’re aware the header is actually Referer but since that’s a misspelling, we decided to go with the correct spelling.)

Link42IconAvailability

This feature is available for Mux Video customers at no additional charge. As always, we’d love your feedback on using this (or any) feature.