Security Feature | Content Piracy
INSIDE THE PIRACY CONTINUUM
Rory O’Connor | Irdeto
Live event streaming is big business but also a tempting target for content thieves. Rory O’Connor, VP of services at Irdeto, delves into the murky world of stream piracy.
Live event broadcasting has seen monumental highlights in the past year – the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games drew in a UK audience of 27 million, while the Super Bowl commanded audience figures of 108 million viewers in the US.
Sport has long been the ultimate “must- have” for operators. In delivering live and on demand sports content across multiple screens, operators have the opportunity to build customer loyalty and create new revenues. But unlike Video on Demand (VOD) content, the value of sports content is intrinsically linked to its “live” nature, as viewers join to watch events unfold in real time.
Piracy now
The main challenge faced by broadcasters with regard to live content is ensuring that they are monetising what they have in the short window where it is at its most valuable. Last year Google’s report with PRS addressed the rise in piracy of live streams and the findings revealed that traffic to live gateway piracy sites was up some 61
percent over the previous year, meaning that content security is a key factor to ensure revenue.
Live stream piracy has wide ranging, detrimental effects on everything from a broadcaster’s revenue to its standing in the eyes of content owners. Broadcasters who fail to adequately protect premium sports content could lose their content rights altogether. Identifying and isolating the source of the illegal content should therefore become top priority for those concerned with live event broadcast.
Live content piracy is big business, with the number of people viewing pirated versions of popular sporting events now tipping one million per stream. This represents a significant loss of revenue in terms of subscribers, not to mention the reputational damage suffered by broadcasters in the eyes of sports content owners.
Social Media – Disseminator’s Dream
Increasingly, social media is being used as a tool to distribute pirated content. The 2012
30,000 illegal streams of Premier League football matches were shut down in the 2011/12 season
Olympic Games were referred to as the “first social media Olympics”, and other sports are increasingly being discussed on social media sites.
Social networks have greatly increased the ease of legitimate and pirated content discovery. Those looking to access pirated content no longer have to actively search for it in hard-to-find online locations frequented by criminals – instead, links can
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| May/June 2013
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ibeconnects.com
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