62 SPORTS FOCUS Content Piracy
“Pirated IPTV content is offered by subscriptions that allow access to international channels and other types of content, including music and films. It has special relevance for sports events, too. Live sports events are also being attacked via streaming websites,” Vicente explains. She is keen to emphasise that content piracy is an economic crime, and as such there is a money trail that can be followed. “The suspects in these crimes are committing their crimes for an economic purpose,” she says. “Organised crime is especially involved in IPTV piracy, and the money goes to tax havens in order to hide the criminal activity.” Madrid-based Coalition of Creators and Content Industries, representing the Spanish entertainment and cultural sector, publishes an annual paper on the state of piracy in the country. The most recent report (2018) noted that content piracy had dropped by 3% over the previous year, and dropped 12% since 2015. Despite the drop,
the report states that piracy still costs Spanish taxpayers hundres of millions of euros in tax revenue and the damage to the Spanish entertainment sector itself is almost two million euros. Álvarez Vicente believes that one of the best ways to combat content piracy is education. “In my opinion this is an educational problem,” she says. “It’s important to do awareness campaigns, but with a different perspective, something that shows who really makes up the sector, not a Hollywood star or a famous footballer. When I give a presentation, I like to show all the people who are necessary to making a film, the ones who are the most important – not just the actors and on-screen talent.” Every type of piracy has its own distinct characteristics – its own piracy tools and tricks. As such, Vicente and her team have to employ different tools for catching different criminals. She explains: “Their methods depend on the modality that we
are investigating. For instance, with illegal distribution through IPTV, the signal can be obtained in different ways. Authorised customers can illegally distribute through several means, including piracy servers, and they can use different types of software to alter the protection technologies in the content.“ She continues: “The illegal content might be obtained through peer-to-peer networks or streaming, or through a direct download. However, the uploader’s role is the one we are most interested in, because they are the ones who uploaded the content before it was made available through web links.” Investigating these IPTV pirates can be very complex. The organisations behind them sometimes use quite sophisticated international structures, and often organised crime is involved. Additionally, the countries in which these operate often only provide meagre investigative or judicial cooperation in bringing the culprits to justice. “Also, in these investigations it’s necessary to use technical procedures to try to identify the servers involved,” explains Vicente. “During the searches, it’s important to obtain the collaboration of the system administrators, because – in the vast majority of the cases – we will do searches in a data centre where there is a multitude of servers, and it can be difficult to find which were the ones used to commit the crime.” Ultimately, Vicente concludes: “Cooperation with other businesses and government agencies is essential in tackling content piracy. But pirated content will continue to be a problem as long as there are people willing to watch it.” In a world of content available everywhere at any time, viewers are starting to see instant and total access not as a privilege, but as a right.
COMPUTER CRIME The Grupo de Antipirateria investigates cybercrimes at a national and international level
feedzinesocial feedzinesocial feedmagazine.tv
Powered by FlippingBook