Questions and honest answers.
Can viewers see it?
No. Every viewer's copy looks and sounds the same as every other. Side by side, you would not tell them apart.
Does it change my video quality or bitrate?
No. The title is encoded with the settings you choose.
Does it survive re-encoding, screen recording, phone capture?
It is designed to survive ordinary copying: bitrate changes, scaling, re-encoding and screen capture. Heavy compression, very low frame rates or aggressive filters can lose parts of the combination; Trace reports the odds with whatever it could read. We do not claim it survives every manipulation; no watermark does.
What defeats it?
Mixing copies from two different accounts so the result matches neither one. This defeats every per-viewer watermark, ours included. It costs the attacker two paying accounts and a perfect mix; an imperfect mix points at both accounts, and both can be closed.
Does it work on downloads?
Yes. The download is assembled from the same pieces in the same per-viewer combination. Clip downloads too.
Does it identify a person?
It identifies the account that received the stream, with a certainty figure. Your own records then connect that account to the transaction that bought the title: a card, a name, a billing address. That is the difference from an IP address, which only identifies a connection. What you do with the identity is governed by your terms and your local law.
Can we use it in a lawsuit?
That is for your counsel. What ICU gives them is an evidence sheet that ties a leaked clip to an account and a purchase, with the odds of a false match stated. Suits in this industry have usually been filed against IP addresses caught sharing a file, where the first defence is "someone else used my connection". A purchase record does not have that gap.
Do I have to move my site?
No. Members, checkout, billing and player stay where they are. You point a hostname at ICU and change the video URL your player loads.
Where are my files stored?
In Cloudflare object storage, either in ICU's account or in your own account with ICU bound to it.
Is it fast? Will it be up?
Streams are served from Cloudflare's network, which has data centres in 300+ cities and puts 95 % of the world's Internet users within 50 milliseconds of one. There is no central ICU server in the path; each viewer is served from the nearest location, and storage sits on the same network. We publish our own uptime figures once we have a year of them.
Which players work?
Any HLS-capable player: hls.js, Video.js, Vidstack, native Safari, and most VR players for 2D content. VR-specific formats —
What about 4K and 60 fps?
Supported; the production deployment serves 4K at 59.94 fps.
Can I keep burning in my own logo?
Yes. The mark is independent of any overlay; your logo stays as it is.
Multi-bitrate?
One quality level per title today. Ladders are on the roadmap; most paysites serve one high-quality stream and that is what the system was built for.
How much footage do you need?
Roughly two minutes of continuous footage to single out one account among a hundred thousand with negligible odds of a false match. Shorter clips are reported with their real odds.
How long does a trace take?
Minutes once the combination is read. Reading it from a difficult capture can take an analyst an hour.
Who sees my member data?
Nobody at ICU. The system works with opaque account numbers. The table that maps numbers to people stays with you.
Who is behind ICU?
See About →
Is this patented?
Proprietary.
Where can we meet?
XBIZ Los Angeles, January 2027. Book a slot on the demo page.