34 SECURITY FOCUS Content Protection
Bidard identifies the three primary threats at present as: the illegal availability of content through links farms, social networks and cyberlocker sites; multiple types of restreaming, including bringing illegal set-top boxes to the market to access a large choice of premium live content and video from illegal IPTV offerings; and viewers who employ a VPN connection to stream or download content from other geographical territories. Like Poppelsdorf, Bidard indicates that a combined approach is likely to reap the greatest rewards, and points to the popularity of watermarking in tandem with its Eye on Piracy service. “The service provides an automated way to crawl the web, identify content theft, and help remove them from websites
and social networks. In one Asian country where there was no prior cleaning of illegal streaming, the operator observed a 25% subscription increase over the first quarter once our service was running.” THREAT TO EMPLOYMENT Ian Munford, director of product marketing at Akamai, points to a recent report by the Global Innovation Policy Center that contrasts the 927,000 jobs supported by the US movie and television production
windows pertaining to sports, in particular, will become increasingly critical as rights holders make more decisions about contracts based on those who can “consistently and effectively protect their content”. Of course, it would help if all broadcasters were treating piracy with the same level of importance… “There is a distinction in the industry as a whole,” observes Munford. “Some treat it seriously and invest in the right tech in the right way, but there are also those who – for whatever reason – do not necessarily have this as their top priority. So it is hoped that the current prominence of piracy in media coverage, and the steps that many are taking, will have an impact in terms of encouraging everyone to raise their game.”
and distribution industry with the potential loss of 223,000 to 541,000 jobs due to digital video piracy – primarily of US content by non-US residents. Looking ahead, he anticipates that the licensing
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