Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything

Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by giantrobot on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @12:18PM (#34068968)

The issue is I as a scammer can create a paid link to any arbitrary URL, including your URL. There's no verification of control like how say LetsEncrypt works. As a user I'm taken to a link with no verification of what I might be paying for. There's no preview of the content or even a declaration of who might own rights to the linked content. So I get a link that says I need to pay $10, what the fuck am I paying for?

Even if I followed a link and expect to be paying, a scammer could also send me a link to the same content. I expected to pay through this site so I go ahead and pay for the content. Since I followed the scammer's link they get paid instead of the content owner.

This is a system just rife with abuse potential.

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by lmm on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @05:35PM (#34073735)

> The issue is I as a scammer can create a paid link to any arbitrary URL, including your URL.

Sure, but that was a problem that already existed. People already sell other people's artworks / pictures / etc.. Having to copy a file rather than a link is not a significant barrier.

> Even if I followed a link and expect to be paying, a scammer could also send me a link to the same content. I expected to pay through this site so I go ahead and pay for the content. Since I followed the scammer's link they get paid instead of the content owner.

Presumably you're getting the link from somewhere reputable - the creator's own site, or their patreon/twitter/etc.. Sure, a scammer can create a fake profile to impersonate them - but again, that's something that already happens.

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by iopq on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @06:38PM (#34074496)

You can put a video behind DRM. You can screen record that video, but it's going to lose quality.

If it's a link, it's available to anyone if they have it

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by lmm on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @07:16PM (#34074906)

Theoretically you can. In practice I've never seen that done, and certainly anyone big enough to do that has their own store infrastructure already.

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by TylerE on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @08:49PM (#34075695)

I’ve done it plenty. Got hours of live concerts that were live-streamed during the early part of the Pandemic. All screengrabbed with OBS.

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by iopq on Thursday December 22, 2022 @11:49PM (#34102435)

I've watched DRM videos, couldn't do anything unless I logged in even after downloading it

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by giantrobot on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @03:20AM (#34078042)

Since it's something that already happens and it's a known issue, it's pretty ridiculous a brand new project doesn't have some mechanism in place to prevent it. Something as simple as a signed file at the site's root would let a content creator make paid links to their content but not a scammer.

It's not helped that there's no preview of the content or creator's site branding to give some indication of an intentional connection between the creator and paid link.

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Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything by lmm on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @05:24AM (#34078859)

> Something as simple as a signed file at the site's root would let a content creator make paid links to their content but not a scammer.

How does anything like that help though? The scammer can download the file and host it themselves and you're right back where you started, and that's always going to be the case.

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