Broadcast
With
illegal streaming on the rise Broadcast explores how technology is
helping content providers protect their multibillion pound
investment.
Experts
dub it 'cat and mouse' or 'whack a mole' but piracy is not a game to
broadcasters who have paid, in some cases billions of pounds, for
rights to content which is being leaked in ever greater numbers
online.
The
issue is particularly acute around the high value properties of live
sports, more and more of which are pouring onto OTT platforms.
English Premier League matches for example are available via Sky Now,
and in the US, Twitter will stream a package of live NFL matches next
season.
Illegal
streams start as legitimate transmissions (such as a Sky Sports
Sunday afternoon live match) but are then captured and re-broadcast
for non-subscribers or they are being captured outside of the
geographic restricted areas.
An
accurate assessment of the problem is hard to come by. The EPL, which
collects £5.136bn from Sky and BT Sport and another £3 billion for
the sale of overseas rights in its most recent deal, doesn't divulge
figures relating to theft.
A
check on aggregator websites – which list URLs that link to the
content being hosted – suggest that the
audience of unauthorised streams is in the millions.
Brand
protection service NetNames reckons that more than 23% of web
bandwidth is used for digital piracy costing the global economy more
than $75 billion per year. Analysts MUSO [in its Global
Piracy Report] states that
58 billion visits to illicit websites were to stream pirated film and
TV content last year, 28% of them using mobile devices. The EU's
Intellectual Property Office report that 19% of British 15-24 year
olds illegally accessed content in 2015 (albeit 14% less than youth
in Spain).
“Given
the ease with which content can be re-streamed online and watched for
free, rights holders need to protect revenue and ensure that this
market remains viable for investment,” warns Alistair
Cameron, European
sales director
of content protection firm NexGuard.
“With
the growth of availability of live streams there is a natural growth
in people stealing the content,” says Arik Gaisler, Sr. director of
product, infrastructure at video management platform Kaltura. “In
parallel this has made security something of a commodity.”
There
is no silver bullet but a combination of approaches can being used to
limit the scale of damage.
A
first step is to secure the stream with encryption (and/or
conditional access systems (CAS) in set-top boxes) and add digital
rights management (DRM) to authenticate usage.
Kaltura
encrypts content as part of the ingest process or on the fly. Then it
adds a Universal DRM which is integrated with Google Widevine,
PlayReady and Apple Fairplay for content protection which Kaltura
says will work regardless of the browser, device or platform being
used.
“DRM
makes sure that those watching content have relevant access rights,”
says Gaisler,
who adds that
this is the approach taken by most pay TV broadcasters.
“To
overcome DRM it would need to be hacked in a deeper, sophisticated
way.”
Traditional
DRM and CAS do a good job of ensuring that only legitimate viewers
can access content through paid services. But once the video is
displayed, it is still vulnerable to re-streaming through numerous
methods, including camcorder capture and screen-scraping in which
data is copied in realtime and rebroadcast as a live stream.
“Traditional
access control works up to the point where the customer starts
watching the content,” argues Cameron. “From that point, all bets
are off. Most pirates will pay for a subscription or will buy the pay
per view. The DRM checks are done, but the security mechanisms have
not accounted for human behaviour.”
According
to Ampere Analysis, most viewing of illegal streams is among people
with low income (and therefore can't afford to view) and/or who live
with others (so that their control of the TV is limited).
“These
are demographic
issues rather than a fundamental business threat,” says
research director Richard Broughton. “Making multiplatform streams
available is important for operators so that they can reach consumers
on different devices.”
However,
illegal uploaders can turn
a profitable business by selling ads around the site or in some cases
selling a subscription service.
“Some
sites are so professional even down to the small print of terms and
conditions,” says Cameron.
By
embedding an invisible forensic watermark (such as NexGuard's) in
each video stream, content that is improperly re-distributed can be
traced back to its source. “By knowing the source, immediate action
can be taken to interrupt the pirate stream while the event is still
going,” says Cameron.
As
further back-up, monitoring and analytics
technologies are required. “HTML-based
video players allow you to look at reference urls to get an idea of
whether the content is being accessed in unusual places or whether
stream volumes are in line with expectations or if you have a
leakage,” says Mark Blair, vp of EMEA at video player developer
Brightcove.
Once
illegality is verified operators have some choices. Sending cease and
desist notices works in some cases, legal action in others.
“The
problem is that when people do take content down it will respawn
quite quickly on a new website,” says Blair. “Pirate
organisations will often
use web servers in countries where intellectual property enforcement
is difficult.”
A February 2016 study by Stony
Brook University, found
that 25%
of live streams originate from servers hosted in Belize.
“Another
way is to starve the supply pipe to viewers illegally viewing those
sites,” he says.
“Unfortunately,
it is a mammoth task and one that becomes harder over time due to
increases in technology which allow faster, better quality, streaming
of data,” says Stuart
Fuller, director
of commercial operations, NetNames. “There's
also the catch 22 of broadcasters having to increase subscription
costs to cover their increased investment in brand protection
mechanisms to counteract illegal streaming, which leads to more
people turning to illegal streams due to the increase in costs.”
While
there are instances of net piracy funding criminal organisations,
there are more illegal views among those characterising themselves as
digital robin hoods and others who have turned to torrent out of
frustration with being able to access a decent quality legal stream.
“Illegal
views represent an important but
relatively small business impact on broadcasters,” says Broughton.
“Most
people are generally happy to pay for sports.”
The
social streaming challenge
Social
streaming apps like Meercat, Periscope and Facebook Live present
another challenge to rights holders.
Twitter's
Periscope
came to attention shortly after launch last March when ringside
streams of a Floyd Mayweather boxing bout gave some viewers free
access to a fight which HBO and Showtime had paid a fortune to air
pay per view.
Use
of mobile phones are also banned at events like The Open golf,
ostensibly to reduce distraction for the players. However, it is
believed not practical to police use of video phones going forward.
Such forms of amateur live broadcast are viewed as more of an
irritant than a serious breach of rights and could be turned to a
broadcaster's advantage.
“Watching
social streaming for a whole match is not an enjoyable experience and
is not a viable alternative to pay TV unless professionally done,”
says Cameron.
“This
summer, the IOC are not going to be able to prevent everyone entering
the Olympic stadium from using their mobile phone,” says Blair.
“This should be treated as a business issue.”
While
bandwidth capacity restraints at crowded events currently hinder mass
live streaming, WiFi advances mean this will likely be overcome
“Rather
than a big brother approach it makes much more sense for a
broadcaster to create an app for fans to download which make it
easier for them to stream,” says Chris Knowlton, vp Wowza, whose
media servers support Periscope. “You might have a curation
committee moderating all the live streams and encouraging action. You
could challenge fans to send in streams via your app so that you
control the experience.”
As
it happens Wowza has developed a software development kit called
GoCoder
enabling organisations to launch streaming apps. One idea is that
a broadcaster would be able to identify by GPS the position of every
mobile device/camera at a venue and offer these angles up online.
“It
could be really interesting to crowd source this video and give it
back to fans as an experience, allowing them to choose different
angles and, if any videos are of high enough quality, to use them in
the main live broadcast perhaps for another view on controversial
incidents not caught on camera.”
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