24 TECHFEED Content Protection
Most of this piracy is the work of sophisticated, well-equipped organisations, using set-top boxes, Conditional Access (CA) technology and mainstream payment systems. But with a good screen and a good camera, anyone can create their own instant illegal streaming facility, redistributing content using Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, Twitch or other platforms and apps. Awareness is being raised on all fronts. Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon and Sky are among more than 30 studios and broadcasters to form the anti-piracy Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Earlier this year it shut down Florida- based SET Broadcast, pending a lawsuit alleging content piracy and it has also initiated legal action against Kodi set- top box makers in Australia, the UK and the US for providing illicit access to copyrighted content.
As the technical quality of content is raised to UHD and HDR, its value and therefore attractiveness to pirates has risen too. MovieLabs, which was formed by the Hollywood studios to set technical specifications for the distribution of premium content, identified watermarking as one of the key security mechanisms for securing 4K UHD content back in 2014. A forensic watermark, also called a digital watermark, is a sequence of characters or code embedded in a video to uniquely identify its originator and authorised user. Forensic watermarks can be repeated at random locations within the content to make them difficult to detect and remove. Last year, the Ultra HD Forum, a promotional body for UHD founded by Dolby, Harmonic, LG and Comcast, included forensic watermarking in its guidelines, and in August MovieLabs updated its own specs for systems to securely mark video both at the server and/or the client end. “There are a variety of use cases for watermarking, and different approaches are required for video-on-demand and live content, but the defining moment for watermarking has undoubtedly come with the rapid growth of 4K UHD content,” says Peter Cossack, VP of cybersecurity services at Irdeto. He expects that, over the coming year, rights owners will increasingly mandate watermarking and other anti-piracy requirements into their licensing contracts.
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