There is a storm brewing that is helping content pirates. The budget cutbacks many consumers are considering due to economic challenges in many countries are accelerating the number of people turning to piracy. This is accentuated further by a growth in users who are increasingly more digitally adept. The Nordic market has always been one of the most advanced leaders of online and mobile consumption; for that reason, companies like HBO have chosen this region to launch in first.
One lesser-known detail is the rate of piracy has always been matching the market’s growth. More than one in four streams in Sweden is now pirated. This number is high across the region and that will accelerate elsewhere, too, unless the streaming companies fail to improve the way they manage their content. This in effect is increasing the cost of content and that in turn is fueling piracy. It's a negative spiral but it can be turned around.
TV piracy is nothing new and has been an industry problem since the establishment of the first pay-TV services. Initial growth in cable and satellite TV was mirrored by equal and opposite growth in an illegal content industry, with pirates looking to undermine the smart card-based Conditional Access Systems employed at the time to encrypt the broadcast signal.
As the industry has moved to digital, the piracy problem has increased each step of the way. The widespread penetration of the internet and broadband services led to a growth in peer-to-peer networks and the introduction of piracy to the mainstream via technology such as BitTorrent. The introduction of streaming options from broadcasters, and especially the presence of sports on live streaming services, made a move to live streaming piracy possible and extremely profitable.
Organized crime got involved, and it is now possible for consumers to access incredibly sophisticated pirate services via special devices or widely accessible websites. For all intents and purposes, these offer the same features and functions as legitimate broadcasters. Indeed, it is possible that some consumers might not even realize they are hooked up to illegal services.
The figures involved are deeply concerning for an industry that needs to protect its revenues and investment in content at all costs. TV piracy is by far the most popular form of digital theft, representing 48% of all access to infringing sites, according to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). Movies and music, the latter long the unwanted poster boy for pirated content, only account for 11% and 6%, respectively.
Putting some real-world implications on these numbers, analyst Kearney says that online video-content piracy is estimated to lose the global media sector $75 billion per year. Even worse, this figure is projected to reach $125 billion by 2028, representing an annual growth rate of nearly 11%. The U.S. is the worst infringer, accounting for 11% of all video piracy demand thanks to what Kearney says is a potent combination of high penetration of superfast broadband, widespread access to computers and devices, a large population culturally focused on Hollywood and less-effective enforcement legislation.
So what can streaming companies do? How can they shore up the gaps in their chain to make sure there are no egress points where pirates can inveigle their way in and steal valuable content? After all, once it’s gone, it’s too late. After all, once it’s gone it’s too late. Too many are focusing on the golden bullet coming from AI and the way pirated content can be found while and once it has been consumed. This hype is driving a focus that misses alternative approaches to prevent piracy before distribution happens.
One of the key ways content rights owners can fight back is by taking control earlier in the chain. This is, of course, far more complex than before. Even niche broadcasters are delivering content to multiple different content platforms simultaneously. That means it is important to invest in a safe Content Delivery Network (CDN) architecture, as the CDN is the common touchpoint between the broadcaster and the end consumer.
Effective antipiracy action requires a holistic approach that permeates everything a company does.”
An optimized CDN architecture splits the CDN into a session-control layer and a delivery layer. Following this, the control plane can be enhanced with additional features such as in-stream switching of HTTP ABR segments and a built-in server-side QoE monitoring function to adjust quality in real time via the routing of fragments. This is the approach we have taken with our CDN Director, which provides users with an enhanced visibility of every request hitting the CDN at any given time, making it easier to deny access.
This feature includes the use of common access tokens, which show that customer requests are coming from the rights owner’s own authorized back-end layer and not from outside agents (i.e., pirates).
As an interesting data point on what can be achieved with this approach, Telenor Sweden says that utilizing this system enables it to stop from 150,000 to 200,000 invalid requests to access its streaming-server resources every day. This is a significant roadblock to pirate activities, especially as pirates look to become more technically sophisticated and insert hooks into the CDN infrastructure itself.
Securing the CDN is, of course, not the only action that broadcasters can take, nor the only one they should do. Effective antipiracy action requires a holistic approach that permeates everything a company does. But one of the advantages being able to more closely interrogate the CDN confers is that the QoE monitoring required to rebuff pirate attempts also enables operators to boost peak performance, adjust streaming capacity and keep services running smoothly even during high demand.
That saves them money and gives a boost to the company-wide ROI on its antipiracy investment. This is a key point. Despite all the evidence that points to antipiracy efforts being extremely effective in protecting revenues, C-level buy-in can sometimes prove to be elusive in times of economic uncertainty. To be able to present an effective antipiracy action that looks to reverse some of the trends identified by EUIPO, Kearny and others—and, at the same time, drives further efficiencies in the costs of operating a CDN—makes a compelling argument.
