Members area bandwidth/download limits?
 

Anyone here running a paysite with bandwidth/download limits in place?

bump for answer

we do via the pennywize system

What do you set the limit at? What has been the reaction?

I know ftvcash does it, only allowed a certain amount per day, incase the surfer tries to download the whole members area in a day

some also limit the amount of downloads you can have at once

Yes we do that too. Interesting as I think that a lot of sites limit downloads now.

Bump for info please?

I've thought about doing it on one of my big sites. Right now it is the only site I don't have zips of picture sets and with 150+ sets if i added zips without some sort of control to stop members from downloading the whole site in one day it would be crazy.

So I will watch this thread to see what people are doing.

Punters have very fast connections now and download tools that are a fucker to block and this together with a growing number of security programs that can control downloads just made me curious.

Instead of setting a cap at Xgb you could throttle your bandwidth. Don't allow people to suck down your content at 2-100Mbps. Only allow download speeds of 500kbps or less, depending what you want the cap to be. Just assume Xkbps * 24 hours = hidden cap

well I want normal members to be able to download content as fast as possible to keep them happy only want to limit users from downloading over 30 or whatever full sets at once.. The whole recurring membership idea is to make the normal member happy so they will come back over and over.

The best settings for your site are going to be different from some other guy's site.
He might have videos of 12MB each and your videos are 900MB each (and need to
be split into reasonable scenes). it also depends very much on how smart your
bandwidth control system is. Does it count the full 800MB if someone just watches
the first bit of the video, streaming it? Most do. Does it count video, image, and
html bandwidth separately? I believe only Throttlebox does. Does it interpolate
bandwidth over time, allowing for peaks while controlling slow rips, or is it just a
naive "X GB per day"? With so many variables, another webmaster's numbers are
going to be completely wrong for you. An intelligent system, which only counts the
right bandwidth at the right time, may manage a limit half of what a naive "GB per day"
system could handle without pissing off users. Instead, look at the bandwidth usage
of your own members, and set whatever you are using to not bother 98% of your users,
but to control te 2% who are abusive. See the image for an example:

http://bettercgi/throttlebox/manual/...oosing_limits/

Why not have a trial members area that you allow your trial members to get into. If they rebill make sure they know they will have access to a special members area that has more videos images etc ? This stops trial members downloading the whole site for $7 without limiting their download speed etc :)

Hi Guys. If you are running a site and are concerned with having a good retention my advice is have no bw limits. This is 2009. BW is dirt cheap. Don't limit what your members can download or expect a mass exodus. The key to strong retention is giving the members what they want.

NOTE: if retention isn't your concern (for many sites/programs it isn't) then obviously my reply doesn't apply lol ;)

We have a very good relationship with our members. We have a lot of discussions about what they like and expect from a site. There is a wide spectrum of users nowadays. It goes from guys with really slow limited connections to guys with unlimited hyper speed connections. The slow guys want us to keep providing content they can enjoy without taking 10 years to download (ie smaller file size pics, zips and vids). The bigger guys want unlimited downloads, top speed and top quality and file sizes. My feeling on the situation is simple. Both of them are valued paying customers and I give both of them exactly what they want. By doing that I'm satisfying the entire spectrum of customers and removing a silly cheap issue like bw as a reason for them to cancel. I work too hard to attract new members. Once I have them the only reason I want them to leave is because we simply aren't the site they were looking for. If they've gone through Twistys and don't feel it's the site for them then that's fine, there isn't much I can do. But besides that I don't want any issues that I can influence and control to dictate whether I keep or lose a member.

I'm sure our affiliates appreciate us having that mindset. Our mindset and way of doing business is a major reason we have one of the best retaining sites in the business.

Shap is, I think, exactly right and dead wrong.
I think there are four very good reasons to control this kind of abuse, four reasons
which all help increase retention, but you have to be smart about it - or rather, you
need a system which is smart about it. I'll explain what I mean, but first, back to the
question of what is a good limit.

Another way to look at it is "what is legitimate usage?" You probably want the customer
to be able to use the site twice in a day. That's 40 minutes of whacking it in a day.
If your video runs about 5 MB per minute, that's 200 MB / day. Then add a bit extra
because happy customers are important. If someone downloads 2GB, that's 400 minutes
of video - probably more than they need in a day. If your video runs at 10 MB per minute,
you'd double the limits that you'd use at 5 MB / minute. Whatever your mix of video and
images, just figure up what someone can watch in say, an hour total for the day.

As Shap said, bandwidth is cheap, but that's not really the point, in my mind.
To me, if someone is downloading several hours of video each day, I know they
aren't watching it. At worst, they are putting it up on their own sites and probably
spreading it all over the peer to peer networks. If I don't want all of my content
out there for free, I don't want this guy downloading 12 hours of video every day.
At best, he's downloading 12 hours of video every day so that he can cancel after
the minimum membership period and keeps using my stuff for free. I want to do
whatever I can to keep him around. I think I can keep the punter around longer
by making it not quite so easy to download everything I have in a week or two.
Not by having super strict limits, mind you, but give him plenty of material for today,
then tomorrow he can gets all that he needs tomorrow. As long as he's a member
he gets what he wants. But I'm not going to give him a two year supply from
his two week membership.

Also as Shap mentioned, some of the members with high speed connections want
fast downloads. Often, half of the available server speed is taken up by the two
guys ripping the site. They are each using 16 connections, squeezing out 30 legit
members who are trying to download a video to watch. If those two guys have FIOS
they can easily load down the server to where it's hardly usable. By controlling those
two members, the site will be faster for all of the other members and retention goes up.

So for me, those are the three more important points - reducing the spread of my
content on peer to peer networks and such from people ripping, in order to
increase sales, retaining members by encouraging them to keep their membership
going rather than doing a drive by "download all you can and leave", and keeping
the site responsive for the vast majority of members. those points are more
important, probably, than raw bandwidth cost.

Even bandwidth cost shouldn't be ignored by many sites, though. The bandwidth
cost to support a legit member is cheap, no problem there. We're not talking about
legit members, though. The bandwidth cost of constant ripping can easily double
may overall costs, though, and that along with the other three reasons to keep
it under control shouldn't be ignored.

Simplistic controls that have been used in the past can certainly have drawbacks,
though, which I think has given the whole idea a bad rap. For years our own web
site had an explanation of why bandwidth limits, as commonly used, were probably
not a good idea. Maybe a guy is really horny today and wants to have three "sessions"
on your site today. That's actually OK, as long as he doesn't download a shitload
EVERY day. So you really need to look past just "today". Throttlebox extrapolates
usage out over an infinitely long period of time, so it's considering all activity the user
has ever had to decide if he's generally abusive or not. Along with looking long term,
you also want to control the ripper using 16 connections to download a shitload
right now, slowing the server. You don't want to let him hammer the server for six
hours before you tell him to chill for a while. So to really be smart about it you look
at both the very short term and the long term. There are other ways to be smart too,
of course. Fifty minutes of video is about 500 MB. 5,000 pictures is also about 500 MB.
One is clearly reasonable usage, the other clearly is not, though they are both 500 MB.
Throttlebox can tell the difference. Throttlebox would allow 500 MB if it's fifty minutes
of video, but would not allow 500 MB that consists of 5,000 pictures.

So in summary, I think there are four very good reasons to control this kind of
abuse, four reasons which all help increase retention, but you have to be smart
about it - or rather, you need a system which is smart about it.

You are forgetting about the impact HD is having on things. 30 minute hardcore scenes are now 2 gigs in size. I don't think it's reasonable to say a member should only be able to download one scene a day. I understand what you are saying. In 2005 calling it abuse was justified. In 2009 downloading one 2 gig file can't be considering abusing a site and as a site owner if I lock someone out after they download 1 video I can't pretty much kiss them goodbye.

That's the way we have been doing it since 1999 but last month alone our members area used well over 30000GB and we are getting hammered on hosting.

and you guys (except for shap) wonder why people prefer unlimited access using torrents.

now if we could only get those leachers to seed to parity like tv shows and we could do hd quality episode in 15 minutes.

Can I use Throttlebox with Password Sentry?

How much has it dropped in the last couple of years?

We are with Ray, great service.

If you want to retain members maintain a throttle. Otherwise you end up with 2% auto downloading the whole site and slowing it down for the other 98% or spending a fortune on servers to look after the 2%.

Had a few complaints from members who wanted to DL the whole site on a 3 day trial. I tell them if they like it so much it costs $30. They accept it most of the time.

So how will you handle 100 people auto downloading the whole site of 2GB scenes, without spending a fortune on servers or slowing the site down?

You can always set the limit to 10GB a day. That's 5 scenes.

email me at mrshap at twistys. HUGE!

If you joined a site and were only allowed to download 5 scenes would you be satisfied? Especially if the 5 didn't quite float your boat.

I don't think internet connection speeds are going to get slower. Which means the number of people that can download that amount of content is increasing daily.

My programmer worked closely with Ray from day 1. We used to have a download limit. We'd get a lot of flack. Both from guys trying to download the entire site and guys just wanting to watch a significant amount of content. I'm a firm believer in giving the members what they want. So we removed the download limit and decided to find ways to run the site without any limits. It's been a few years now and (knock on wood) we've had no problems. The site's speed has been fast and reliable the entire time. I believe it has a lot to do with the infrastructure we put in place as well as little tricks my programmer implemented to keep me happy and him sane. If you want to limit the guys using download managers you just have to think about the process they go thru vs the process a regular live surfer goes thru. The answer and solutions are there. You just have to think about it :winkwink:

We've never had that problem. Obviously I'm no tech wizard so I couldn't tell you exactly what my programmers have done but we've never had an issue with the site being bogged down by the members.

Since 1999 we've never imposed a BW/download limit on our sites.

Granted, we don't have video - strictly still photography...so bandwidth isn't as big a consideration for us.

But I have to agree with Shap on this. Limiting a paying customer's ability to download as much as he/she likes could cause the customer irritation and potential loss of retention at some point.

Imagine if you were to rent 3 DVDs from your local BlockBuster - got home and watched the first two...only to find the DVD manufacturer has built in a two-movie limitation circuit and you have to wait 24 hrs. to watch the third.

Or...

It may sound like a silly analogy, but put it in terms of a mag subscription. You pay for the mag but they only give you half of May's edition. You're forced to wait for the second half of the edition.

Thanks :)

email sent. :)

Good thread. :glugglug

That's exactly what I said, so if you're replying to me I must not have made myself clear.
I said you should allow enough that they can jack off two or three times on their high
usage days and how many MBs that is depends entirely on what kind of content you have.
The other way of figuring that I suggested, and showed the graph, was to set it so that
most people wouldn't trigger the limits - only the people using twice what the next
highest users are would trigger it. Again in that section I said not to use the numbers
from our graph, but your own numbers which will vary depending on what kind of content
you have.

Also you said "if you lock someone out after one video ... ". Did you notice I specifically
said we track the NUMBER of videos and images as well as the MBs, because that
absolutely makes sense to make sure they can get a reasonable number of videos,
where reasonable depends on how long your videos are.

Yes, absolutely. Of course there are much better choices. Password Sentry's
simplistic IP counting was deprecated as of 1999 or so, but there's no compatibility
issue with Throttlebox.

Certainly you can do a lot by thinking along those lines when it comes to worst site rippers,
and as you know Strongbox has some built in protections against those kinds of rippers and
features that you can activate apart from actual limits. Those do certainly help.

Coming from a security background, I always prefer multiple layers, so if a site ripper gets
past my first line of defense I have a second, detecting and stopping gross abuse, then a
third is properly done watermarks so at least when they share it I get some marketing
benefit from it.

A magazine subscription is a perfect example of a limit done right. If you want a year's worth
of content, you have to buy a year subscription - you don't pay $4.99 for May's edition
and also get everything they've ever published. That's what site ripping is - you give them
everything you've added to your site since you first started and they only pay for one week or
one month. Why would they pay for another month afterthey just downloaded 15,000 videos
from you? If you do like the magazines and give them a solid month's worth of content for a
month's payment, they'll come back next month for more. Certainly as you said you don't
give them just half of what they pay for, but you also need not give them 1,000 times as
much as they paid for.



Note that if you want to watch three movies, you have to PAY for three movies.
No limit would be this: "You walk into Blockbuster and pay $5. You walk out with
600 movies". How long do you think Blockbuster would stay in business if they
allowed that? Once you got your 600 movies for $5, resulting in a net loss for
Blockbuster, would you ever have any reason to come get more, when you already
have those 600 at home? Why would you want to allow that?


a) You're not going to retain someone who has already downloaded your whole site.
They've already got more of your content than they'll ever watch and they have plenty
to post on the tubes, so they have no reason to pay you another $35.

b) You don't WANT to retain a person who costs you more than they pay you - it's a money losing
proposition.

Download managers are common amongst our members. If we disallow them we'd lose a decent percentage of our members. That's not something I'm interested in. We've talked to these people. Some are on trial and ripping the site but many are real customers who are used to using download managers to make their lives easier. I would never implement any sort of bw limit. It just doesn't make sense. There are so many other solutions.

In my opinion it comes down to one question. Do you mind how much someone can download on your site in one day. I personally do not mind. They paid. They can download the entire site if they want. So based on that mindset I don't set bw limits. And we've worked hard to find other ways to prevent people from hogging server resources or trying to download 2,000,000 files at once ;)

i love you keep equating physical goods which have a per unit cost of distribution to digital goods which do not.

Anyway the key point is what you promise people when you sell them on the tour.

Unless you are explictly saying you are throddling them limiting what they can download is a cheat plain and simple.
Selling them one thing and delivering another is a rip off

You need to get better pricing on hosting. Cutting back on what you give your customers is not the answer in the long run that will hurt your business.:2 cents:

we set the limit at 7gb a day. The dl limit is stated in our terms and conditions and most people are ok with that. Apparantly Firefox has a "get all" option / download manager with it and were finding more and more members that simply log into the site and then choose the "download all" option

do you bury it in TOS or is it the very first thing they see.

ok with in is completely different with happy with in
i am ok with things i can rationalize as my own fault for not reading the entire contract thru

i would not be happy with it even if it was "my own dam fault" if you covered it up in anyway.

Nah, it's just in the standard TOS. Not covered up, just an item in the TOS along with the usual "Our content remains ours and is for your own personal enjoyment" bits 'n pieces

Whenever we have a query on it, we point to the T&C's, let the customer know about the limits, but also unblock their id there and then as well but ask them to keep the limits in mind going forwards. haven't had a bad reaction yet.

galleries vs vids vs HD vids clearly means limiting bandwidth is the key to prevent rippers, but the number of files downloaded.

However, this means that weighting has to be added to the files like
a pic = X
a vid = 10,000X
a HD vid = 100,000X

or just add member monitoring to know how much each member is downloading and have someone actually monitor it:Oh crap

Or the reverse of sorts, have bw capping and when a member caps, have a "monitor" alerted so they can investigate why etc etc to see if it's a new member going in and ripping stuff.

None of these ideas are practical in the real world, so, as you were

I didn't bother to read the full thread but wanted to give my .02

We currently allow 1GB per day. Which should be plenty even for heavy users as we do not offer full HD video yet.

At the moment we have no limits.
But have sure been thinking about it.
I will say after this thread, and looking at both sides I am still no farther ahead.
Great debate and a good read.
thanks for all the info on both sides of this issue.

Bump for responses

These are good ideas. So good that we put them in Throttlebox a couple of years ago. :)
1GB of HD video is not the same thing as 1GB of photos. 1GB of HD video may be reasonable
usae for a session. 1 GB of photos, which is about 10,000 pictures, is obviously way more
than anyone could possibly view in a session. So we divide up different kinds of content -
by default pictures are one category and videos are the other. Than we have both numerical
and GB limits appropriate for each.

What half of the posters in this thread seem to be missing is that we set the limits high
enough so that a surfer COULD NOT POSSIBLY watch that much in one session. There is
no way someone can look at 10,000 pictures in one session. If a surfer joins your site, they
are buying the right to jack off to your content. They are not buying the right to publish your
pictures in a magazine. They are not buying the right to produce DVDs of your content, and
they are not buying the right to distribute your stuff all over the web. They are buying only
the right to jack off to your shit. So to my mind, you are only obligated to let them have
plenty enough to jack off too - not rip 10,000 pics in an hour. That's where all of the counter
arguments completely fall flat.

Half of the posters are arguing against strict limitations which interfere with normal use of
the site. Interfering with normal use would be bad, they say. NO SHIT! That has little or
nothing to do with stopping people who are ripping the whole site, which is what the other
half of the posters are advocating. It's like having some people saying "you shouldn't drive
over 100MPH", then other people replying "it's bad to limit cars to no more than 5MPH!".
I have the feeling that those who are arguing against controlling this kind of behavior haven't
read my posts, because they are saying that they disagree with me, but then talking about
something entirely different than what I'm talking about, or completely ignoring where I
clearly addressed the concern they bring up.

Let me see if I can quickly summarize the two cons (the points that Shap makes),
and the pros (the reasons to have some limits, and why the points that Shap brings
up are easily handled).

1. Con - Keeping members happy helps retention.
Pro- Members are kept happy with the server is fast and responsive,
because it's not being beaten to death by rippers.
Pro - Members are retained when they come back for more each month.
Giving them six years worth of material in the first month only
encourages them to cancel.
Conclusion - to best retain members, give them plenty of content to jack
off off to today, but not enough to last them for years, so they
have a REASON to come back next month.

2. Con - A member who paid you $30 has a contractual right to get everything you
have and do whatever they want with it.
Pro - A member does not buy full rights to distribute your content, use it on their
own site, etc. For $30, they buy only the right to jack off to it. As long as
you allow them to watch a couple hours of video each day, you've fulfilled your
obligation and their reasonable expectation. $30 does not buy them the right
to rip 150 hours of video overnight and then cancel.

Actually you quoted where I compared digital video to digital video - both "digital goods" to
use your wording. Just like online video, the cost of producing hollywood movies isn't the
$1 to press a DVD, but all of the millions of dollars spent producing and promoting the movie.
DVDs have a very small per unit cost, just like online video has a small per unit cost in bandwidth
plus the number and power of the servers you need to meet the demand. DVD video and online
video are very similar in this respect. When you talk about RENTING a DVD, which is what the
discussion was about, it's almost identical to online video. Figure $1-$2 to press a DVD that
will be rented by say ten people - that's 10-20 cents per person - pretty much the same cost
as delivering two hours of high quality video online. So your argument falls completely flat -
the per unit cost of pressing DVDs for rental is the same as the per unit cost for a webmaster.

The reason that people who rent one video aren't allowed to take home a basket full is quite
simple - they want you to keep coming back the next time you want a movie. RETENTION,
we call it. If for $5 you could walk out wiht as many DVS as you wanted, people would go
to the rental store once, take home a shitload of movies to copy, then never return to the
video rental store again. The video store rents you a couple of movies at a time, then the
next month if you want to have another movie night you have to pay again - retention.


I absolutely agree. Do you promise them lots of good shit to jack off to?
That's what I would promise them. Do you promise to help them set up
their own site by providing them all of the content they need for their site,
which they can download overnight? I wouldn't promise them that. I would
promise them a good supply of hot bases to jack off to, and then I'd give
them plenty to jack off to and a little more, in case they want to jack off
four times that day.

but if you rent out the dvd from the store no one else can rent out that dvd until it comes back. The time it is out is a fixed property
digitally distributed goods where i am downloading a copy has no such restriction.

the key difference is that the video store explictly tells you that you can't just go in and take as many movies as you want for $5. Even the monthly plans like the blockbuster express limit you to 3 at a time.

They deliver exactly what they promise. nothing more and nothing less.
They also tell you upfront.

do you explictly tell them the download limits (like the video store does in there system)
right on your tour.

Do you say explictly or do you just expect them to get it on their own.

An infered promise is still a promise, a lie by ommission is still a lie.

do you give them a full refund if they say i wouldn't have signed up if you had put that on the tour.
or do you tell them tough you should have read the TOS.

it like the scummy sales person who buries some abusive conditions in the fine print.

Just as slimey and underhanded.

Do you explicitly say on your tour "rip the whole site in a few days and then chargeback if you like"?
Come to think of it, I've never seen a sign in any DVD rental store that says "price are per movie,
not unlimited movies". People walking into the video store know that a sign stating "video rentals - $5"
means $5 PER MOVIE because that's what's reasonable. No sign is needed. When you buy a car, you
expect that the car will drive - that's what cars are for. You don't expect the car to have unlimited speed,
able to go 500MPH, because that's what jet planes are for, not cars. The dealership doesn't need a sign
saying "this car will not go faster than 120MPH".

Similarly, porn sites are for looking at while jacking off. Porn sites aren't for downloading tens of
thousands of pictures to use to build your own site - that's what content providers are for. If you give
the customer good stuff to look at while he jacks off, you've held up your end of the deal. On the other
hand, if you give the customer all 20,000 images in one day, giving him everything you've got for a $3.95
trial, all you've done is shot yourself in the foot by making sure he has no reason to ever come back.

Really, would you REALLY feel like you ripped someone off if they joined your site and downloaded
five hours of video every day? You really think THEY are the ones who got ripped off because
they wanted to download 150 hours of video each day and then cancel after a week? If so, if you
REALLY can't tell when YOU are the one getting ripped off, I have some great stuff to sell you.

http://rogersvideo.com/
please show me that site that says $5 with no qualifier because i have never seen it
even those companies that offer an unlimited days (no late fee) like rogers still define it as per movie.


sure it does the odometer has an upper limit if bought a car with 500MPH on the odometer i would expect it to be able to go that speed.


and how does telling everyone that the limits exist stop you from getting any of the customers who are ok with those limits.

it doesn't the sole purpose of deliberately hiding that fact is to get someone who expects the ability to download all he wants because that was what he was promised to give you there money.

The whole arguement about not taking unprofitable customers is handled by being truthful with your customers in the sale message. Those who have the "unrealistic" expectation will simply not buy period.

Your trying to justify being dishonest by claiming that the expectation is unreasonable. But the problem is that the expectation is unreasonable because your being dishonest.