46 BROADBAND LIBRARY WINTER 2018

GUEST AUTHOR

Jack BurtonPrincipalBroadband Success Partnersjburton@broadbandsuccess.com

Jack is a principal of BroadbandSuccess Partners, a consultancyfocused on helping serviceproviders and their suppliersaddress their technology, productand marketing needs. PreviouslyJack was Senior Director ofSystems Engineering for AlticeUSA and Cablevision Systems.With over 35 years of industryexperience, Jack has also workedat MTV Networks,Tribune/United, andWarner/Amex. Jack has a BS inElectrical Engineering, fromRensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

VIDEO PIRACY THEN

In earlier days of video piracy, an “illegal box”was obtained through unscrupulous and possiblyillegal methods. Many of the boxes were stolengoods themselves — originating from legitimatecable company sources and then modified toreceive programming without properauthorization. Sometimes employees of the cablecompany would help (such as with the titlecharacter of Jim Carrey’s “The Cable Guy”).

Better security efforts by cable operatorsreduced these forms of theft to a trickle.

Bootleg videotapes and DVDs of Hollywoodmovies could be found being sold in the back ofthe barber shop or delicatessen. Just as with thelegitimate video stores they once challenged,these sources, too, have gone away in favor ofonline streaming.

VIDEO PIRACY TODAY

The ease with which users can availthemselves of unauthorized content makestoday’s problem different from the use of illegalboxes of the past.

Let’s look at the details:

No VSP Subscription Required

To stream video, a customer does not require avideo services provider subscription from theirInternet service provider. They only require anInternet connection. In fact, their Internet serviceprovider might not even sell video services.

Generic Hardware

The hardware used to receive and display avideo stream on a television screen is widelyavailable from a variety of retail sources. Many ofthese same devices are used by legitimatestreaming services. Streaming players are veryinexpensive; a teenager could afford one after anight of babysitting.

Easy Adaptation

The generic hardware can be modified toreceive illegal streams by installation of software.There is nothing inherently illegal about thissoftware or the process of installing it.

The installation process is so easy that apurchaser of the generic hardware could follow

EDIT

ORIA

L CR

EDIT

: DEN

NIZN

/ SH

UTTE

RSTO

CK.C

OM

SHUT

TERS

TOCK

.COM

The Sky is FallingCould OTT From Unexpected Places Herald The End Of Television As We Know It?

BROADBAND LIBRARY WINTER 2018 47

instructions available on the Internet toinstall the software themselves, or gothrough a third-party agent to perform themodifications for them.

Streaming Network Ecosystem

An entire global network of streamingsources and servers has evolved. Theseservices collect and catalog streams ormaterial from a variety of sources andmake them available for others to receiveor re-stream. This makes tracing the sourceof an illegitimate stream difficult. Manyservices are available for re-sale by brokersor middlemen, making it more difficult totrack down customers should oneestablishment become compromised.

In the course of preparing this article, Ifound it nearly impossible to tell an onlinestore of a legitimate live stream seller froman illegitimate one.

Cottage Industry

The third-party agents involved ininstalling the new software can also installthe appropriate links to purveyors ofunauthorized content. They can then act asagents of those parties and provide endusers with subscriptions to streamingservices from those services or their re-streaming partners.

OTHER STREAMING VIDEO SERVICES

There are many large companiesoffering completely legitimate streamingservices, such as Netflix, HBO, Sling TV,Hulu, Amazon, CBS, etc. There are alsosmaller legitimate sources of free materialsuch as Crackle, Viewster, PlutoTV, andSnagFilms. Some customers could start outintending to “go legit,” buy the requiredhardware and subscriptions, anddowngrade their cable service to broadcastbasic or Internet only.

These same customers could take thesame hardware, download a few bits ofsoftware, and enter the world ofunauthorized streaming. They can thenstop their subscriptions to the above-mentioned services and continue to watchthe same (and often much more)programming.

There are many less than legitimateprogram aggregation sources, each withtheir own software to load on the playerhardware. Some have an advanced userinterface rivaling the best legitimateservices.

It would be difficult for the end user toknow which are legitimate services and whichare not.

STREAM SOURCES —OUR OBSERVATIONS

Live streams from various cable andbroadcast networks we observed for severalmonths generally had IP addresses thatoriginate from Europe, irrespective ofwhether the source channel is anAmerican, Canadian, or European service.Recently, the European source used bymany live streaming aggregators wasblocked or shut down, and the streams re-appeared from a stateside IP address in lessthan 24 hours. Streams of unauthorizedrecorded content are available from manydifferent sources, usually including EasternEurope, the Middle East, and variousisland nations. The unauthorizedrecordings may have been received from aprogramming service, authorized streamingservice, DVD, over the air, or even shot witha camera in a movie theater. Many recordedTV shows and movies carry the logo bugsof the service that transmitted them.

Of course, an American live stream isnot really originating in Europe. Someonein the U.S. is receiving the stream andsending it to Europe for re-streaming.

This can be confirmed from the locallyinserted commercials, set-top box artifacts,or emergency alert broadcasts.

WHO IS DOING IT, AND IS IT LEGAL?

In a social media forum, I came across aperson acting as a player in the cottageindustry just described. He was respondingto complaints about their cable service. Heoffered people an alternative: Buy astreaming player and send it to him, pay alittle cash, and get back something that canget all of your TV from before and more.You can then disconnect your cable videoservice and save lots of money.

Of course, some were a bit leery aboutthe legality of doing such a thing andposted their concerns. He would respondthat lawyers, policemen, fire fighters, andother upstanding community memberswere customers, and that the current lawdoes not define end-user streaming asillegal. He is doing dozens of theseconversions every month, and has manyhappy “customers.”

While it may be true that under currentlaw end-customers face a limited risk ofcommitting a crime, the subscription sellerand software loader is almost certainlydoing so under the “Inducement Rule,”which was used in the Napster days to goafter those selling means to violatecopyright law. The inducement rulebasically states that one promoting orenabling copyright violation is committingsuch a violation.

What about the streaming sites?Obviously, having copyrighted material ona server and broadcasting it withoutauthorization is a direct violation.Copyright violations contained within thematerial advertising unauthorized streamsmay be used as indications of widerviolations of copyright to assist in legalchallenges against these services.

It is clear that we need better legal andtechnological tools to address this problem.

PAGE 48 u

here are many who say television is experiencing itssecond “Golden Age.” More content is availablethan ever before, from a growing list of sources.

Old television programs and movies are alsoavailable. Many networks and studios haveput their libraries of television onlinethrough both their own servicesand those of third parties, suchas Netflix and Hulu.

Live television in digital form canbe received over the air and through cableand satellite from stations and networksaround the world. Some of these sourcesstream their content on the Internet themselves.

All of this material, live and recorded, is at risk of beingstreamed by third parties without consent.

T

Amazon Fire TV Stick is oneof many legitimate consumer-

friendly streaming devices.

BROADBAND LIBRARY WINTER 2018 48

WHAT TO DO?

With the problem defined, what can bedone to combat this threat?

Legislate/Litigate

At a minimum, the existing protectionsprovided by the DMCA must be extendedto specifically cover unauthorizedstreaming. This type of change has alreadyhappened in Europe by courtinterpretation. New legislation at thenational level should make it clear thatstealing is stealing, and receiving stolen goods(or TV services) is a crime.

Those providing any of theunauthorized parts of the ecosystem couldbe challenged in civil court. Onceidentified, a streaming server provider orbox modifier could be sued for loss ofrevenue or other damages. End users couldsimilarly be targeted.

Public Relations

Faced with losses from illegal musicdownloading, the music industry ultimatelyreached a model of distribution based oninexpensive authorized downloadscombined with free or inexpensiveauthorized streaming subscription sources.They also waged a public relationscampaign designed to make it clear whatwas legal and what was not. Efforts startedby the Alliance For Creativity, for example,help to educate the public about theultimate costs of unauthorized streaming.Internal industry efforts are also underwayat NCTA and CTAM. New campaignscould be undertaken to emphasize the risksto the end user, outlined below, and to helpthe public determine the differencebetween a legitimate streaming providerand an unauthorized one.

The home user of unauthorizedstreaming services faces several risks:

Legal Action

When effective laws can be enforced,the users risk criminal or civil action. Theymight be traced technologically or from asubscriber list of an unauthorizedstreaming service to which they subscribed.

Downloading of malware couldjeopardize the security of their home

network and all devices connected to it

The software required to playunauthorized streams and catalog theunauthorized products can have hiddenmalicious programs embedded withinthem. Software tools required to install theplayer software products to a streamingdevice from a PC are even more at risk.Malware could range from password-stealing trojans to ransomware and spamgenerators. With the software installed ona device behind a user’s router, otherdevices in the home network can betargeted.

Unreliable service as streams and theirproviders come and go

As unauthorized stream sources aretaken down, the user will lose service. Weobserved that sources may not operate on aregular basis even under normalcircumstances. Once a source is lost, theuser may need to take direct action to finda new way to obtain a replacement,including loading a new player orspecifying new access credentials.

As stated previously, the end user may becompletely unaware that their choice ofstreaming service provider is sellingunauthorized streams.

TECHNOLOGY

On the player front, one could mandatehardware protection (as with the HDMIinterface copy protection scheme) but itwould take years to end up in the products,and unprotected products or hacks wouldlikely still be available.

Why not go after the illegal streamingservers? Internet service providers have themeans to detect and determine the IPaddress source of illegal streams, once theyhave been identified as such. Those IPaddresses could be traced back to their ISPand ultimately to the source server via thesame means used to locate filesharingservers. This would mean that the contentowners and ISPs would have to cooperate,or at least respond to court orderedrequests, as they do with filesharing today.

Watermarking technology provides agood basis on which to build a means toidentify streams. If all legitimate streamsare uniquely marked at as many points inthe distribution chain as possible, a peekinto the watermark in the unauthorized

stream could point to the source or at leastthe video service provider involved. Thesame techniques could be used to tag VODstreams as their authorized originals aretransferred into an unauthorized streamingsource library.

Encryption

If the stream user employs a VPN, thesource address of the streaming server isencapsulated in the encrypted stream. Ifthe user’s ISP blocks that address, thestream will still go through as an encryptedflow from the source IP of the VPN serviceproviding the encryption to the user ratherthan the streaming server itself. For thisreason, the only truly effective means tostopping the stream would have to beemployed at the ISP of the server ratherthan just the user.

Blocking streams involves networkneutrality considerations. Most networkneutrality laws and regulations allow forblocking “illegal” transmissions — all themore reason to make certain that lawsdefine unauthorized streams as illegal.

SUMMARY

The plethora of streaming hardware,coupled with widespread availability ofunauthorized sources of aggregation andstreaming content is a growingphenomenon which, if unchecked, willbecome larger and larger. The “cottageindustry” could grow bolder, sellingsubscriptions and “loaded” boxes at retailoutlets. Streaming video fromunauthorized sources represents achallenge to the very existence of thetelevision industry.

Programmers and service providersmust come together to step up to thechallenge. Only programmers can help tomake their authorized streams moreidentifiable, and only service providers cantrace those streams to their unauthorizedsources and hopefully stop them. Theactions we, as an industry, take now willhelp determine if television’s new GoldenAge turns out to be “Fool’s Gold.”

This piece reflects the opinions of Jack Burtonand Broadband Success Partners, and doesnot necessarily reflect the views of thispublication.