by David Leporini Issue 91 - July 2014
In todays connected world, TV content is everywhere. By facilitating the streaming of high-quality video content, the Internet has made it simpler and cheaper to consume content, including live TV. While this scenario presents obvious advantages for consumers, it has also created significant challenges for content service providers and rights owners, particularly when it comes to piracy.
Over the past five years there has been a marked shift in the way pay-TV content is pirated. Live redistribution of content over the Internet is becoming an increasing problem for content service providers and content owners as the technology becomes easier and easier to operate.
Four key factors are driving video piracy today: the growing costs of premium content, the rise of OTT and online distribution, the increasing availability of high bandwidth, and improvements in video compression.
The high value of live sports programming makes it a priority for pirates, and has contributed to lost revenue for operators and rights owners. Todays pirates have figured out how to share content in real time to others through multiple illegal retransmissions, leaving service providers competing with illegal services that offer the same content at a much lower cost. As the number of people illegally distributing sports and other content increases, this becomes a major issue for content service providers with sports programming as part of their TV lineup.
Traditional security solutions, such as Conditional Access Systems (CAS) and Digital Rights Management (DRM), are still paramount for protecting content and enforcing business rules; however, if content is captured and redistributed online after being decrypted and decoded at the point of legitimate consumption, then more advanced solutions are necessary to stop it.
This leaves content service providers and rights owners with many questions. How can live redistribution be monitored? How can it be fought? How can live redistribution of content be stopped to secure the content providers revenues?
Through an advanced security solution that features active content monitoring and digital watermarking, content owners, rights owners, and content service providers can effectively address these challenges. Leveraging active content monitoring, content providers can identify live restreaming of pirated content in real time, anywhere in the world. Digital watermarking enables them to confirm that the suspected content has indeed been pirated, and even identify the individual pirate at the origin of content redistribution.
By complementing their existing CAS and DRM solutions with sophisticated content protection techniques like active content monitoring and digital watermarking, content owners and distributors can prevent the theft of their intellectual property and protect their revenue streams.
