Keeping an eye on piracy civolution viacess orca whitepaper may2014

Keeping An Eye On Piracy

Using Advanced Security Solutions to Find, Verify and Fight Today’s New Pirates

White Paper

Viaccess-Orca Copyright 2014

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Table of Contents

Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Current Situation .................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Who Are the New Pirates? ................................................................................................................................................... 7

Mainstream TV security ....................................................................................................................................................... 9

Conditional Access ........................................................................................................................................................... 9

Digital Rights Management ........................................................................................................................................... 10

Other Security Measures ................................................................................................................................................ 11

Current Responses to Piracy .......................................................................................................................................... 11

Piracy Remains a Risk ........................................................................................................................................................ 12

Active Monitoring with Eye on Piracy .............................................................................................................................. 13

NexGuard Video Watermarking Adds Trust Through Verification ................................................................................. 16

Eye on Piracy and NexGuard ............................................................................................................................................. 18

Track and NexGuard ....................................................................................................................................................... 18

Fight and NexGuard ....................................................................................................................................................... 18

The roles of CAS and DRM are Reinforced, Not Diminished .......................................................................................... 19

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................................... 19

About Civolution ................................................................................................................................................................ 20

About Viaccess-Orca .......................................................................................................................................................... 20

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Introduction

Revenue losses due to video piracy continue to plague pay TV. Now that the Web is a well-established

channel for video distribution, and the amount of available bandwidth is high enough to ensure good

video quality, pirates have lost no time in making themselves look legitimate; even to the point where

consumers may not know that their favorite online video sources are actually pirate sites. High-value,

high-cost live sports programming is especially at risk for piracy.

Video distributed by these “New Pirates” originates as legitimate content. But if content is captured

and redistributed online after being decrypted and decoded at the point of legitimate consumption,

then the traditional content security frameworks of Conditional Access (CA) and Digital Rights

Management (DRM) would have been insufficient to stop it.

This white paper identifies two supplementary content protection techniques that complement and

reinforce existing CAS and DRM. Active content monitoring can identify live re-streaming of pirated

content in realtime, anywhere in the world. Digital watermarking can then confirm that the suspected

content has indeed been pirated, and even identify the individual pirate.

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Current Situation

Four factors are driving video piracy today: the rising costs of premium content, the rise of OTT and

online distribution, the increasing availability of high bandwidth, and improvements in video

compression.

The high value of live sports programming has made it a high priority for pirates, and revenue lost to

operators and content owners becomes the pirate’s profit. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers,1

revenues generated by live sports programming in North America alone is expected to grow from

$8.54 billion in 2008, to about $17B in 2017. SNL Kagan says that the cost of sports programming

overall increased by 12% in 2013, to $17.2 billion annually.2 Some of this revenue growth is due to the

increase in the amount of available content, and some is due to the rising cost of the content itself.

In the United States, the ESPN sports network charged operators an average of $5.53 per subscriber

per month in 2013, increasing at an average compound rate of about 20 percent per year.3 In Europe,

BeIN Sports and Canal+ recently obtained the French rights for UEFA Champions League football

(soccer) for the 2015-2018 period. Under the previous agreement, the two companies paid about €111

million per year. The new agreement was said to be about 30% higher.

The second concern is online distribution. There are two groups of premium content stakeholders:

distributors and owners. Both have an interest in security, but for slightly different reasons. Content

distributors (Pay TV operators and premium online storefronts) want to make sure that content is

available only to legitimate end users that pay for it. This situation is evolving: at one time, distributors

didn’t care as much about piracy outside of their networks, because their subscribers were captive.

Now, there is the risk of cord-cutting by these subscribers, which results in lost subscription revenue.

Also, the distributor may have its own stake in online distribution, and want to make sure that all of

that distribution is monetized as well.

In addition, because sports programming is often the single most expensive content component in a

pay TV operator’s overall programming line-up, it’s a major reason that operator margins have been

squeezed. Losses due to piracy can go right to the bottom line.

Content creators (Sports leagues, TV programmers and movie studios) want to minimize piracy so they

can maximize the amount of revenue they can capture for that content, through multiple channels of

distribution. They are certainly aware that piracy occurs after distribution, but historically, there has

been no way to track it, so relatively little has been done about it.

Piracy has even forced some content stakeholders to place limits on legitimate video distribution, to

reduce exposure to piracy. In November 2013, for example, the English Premier Soccer League reduced

the number of matches available for broadcast in the Middle East by Al Jazeera, because pirates were

redistributing that programming back into the UK, cannibalizing distribution through its home market

1 At The Gate And Beyond: Outlook for the sports market in North America through 2017. Page 1. Special Report. November 2013. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. See: http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/industry/entertainment-media/publications/assets/pwc-sports-outlook-north-america.pdf 2 Sports Rights Costs Increasing Dramatically, Fears Exploding Pay TV, Article. August 13, 2013. Variety. See: https://variety.com/2013/tv/news/sports-fans-to-spend-more-money-to-watch-favorite-teams-1200577215/ 3 To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense, Article. August 26, 2013. The New York Times. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/sports/ncaafootball/to-defend-its-empire-espn-stays-on-offensive.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Content owners and distributors know that the theft of their intellectual property may be all that stands between profitability and business failure,

making them highly motivated to protect themselves from piracy

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distribution partners, BT and BSkyB.4 In 2012, the Premier League was shutting down about 75

streams for every match. 5

The third concern is the near-universal availability of broadband access, at speeds that can support

high definition, high quality television distribution. A decade ago, the best available speeds were a few

megabits per second, only over fixed line access. In the early 2000s, the US Federal Communications

Commission had defined “broadband” to be 200 kilobits per second, but what a difference a decade

has made. Today, the FCC recognizes “broadband” as ranging from 200kbps to 30 megabits per

second, and that speeds of up to 100 mbps are now available.6

Also, where switched access over fixed lines was the primary distribution option a decade ago, a wide

range of newer access and transport options are now taken for granted. These range from bonded and

vectored DSL, Ethernet over Fiber, Carrier WiFi, to LTE cellular broadcast. All of these methods

commonly offer ten megabits per second and increase from there.

The fourth concern is the improvement of video quality, enabled by ongoing advances in video

compression technology. A decade ago, the most common compression method was MPEG-2 and the

distribution of standard definition TV required at least 6 megabits per second. High Definition TV was

at the stage that 4K UHD (Ultra High Definition) TV is today: in technical and market trials, with

mainstream availability still about two years away. Early MPEG-4 compression enabled distribution of

high definition TV at about 10 megabits per second, although this has fallen to about 6 megabits per

second, with good video quality. The next generation, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, or H.265)

compression, promises to cut that in half. An acceptable HD video picture can be distributed today at

two megabits per second or less, which is well within the capabilities of most fixed line and many 4G

cellular broadband providers.

Content owners and distributors know that the theft of their intellectual property may be all that stands

between profitability and business failure, making them highly motivated to protect themselves from

piracy.

4 English Premier League Limits Soccer Games Broadcast By Al Jazeera Sports. Article. November 25, 2013. The Wall Street Journal. See: http://online.wsj.com/article/DN-CO-20131125-004334.html 5 English Premier League Closes 30,000 Illegal Streams. Article. August 17, 2012. The Wall Street Journal. See: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/08/17/english-premier-league-closes-30000-illegal-streams/ 6 Getting Broadband. Informational Web site. US Federal Communications Commission. See: https://www.fcc.gov/guides/getting-broadband

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Who Are the New Pirates?

Over the past decade, a new category of video pirate has emerged, which we identify as the New

Pirate. They know that sports content carries a premium price and understand that piracy of live

broadcast content can be a lucrative business. Unlike the pirates of earlier times, which did not have

the technical resources or the available bandwidth to look legitimate, these New Pirates have the same

easy access to greater bandwidth, better video compression and online production technologies as the

legitimate stakeholders do. Instead of operating in the dark, the New Pirates operate completely in the

open and use high-quality live streaming.

The New Pirates can easily masquerade as legitimate operators. They are highly sophisticated players,

backed with good technical resources and a strong working knowledge of the Internet. They can easily

present a legitimate-looking face to consumers, and look just like pay TV. Zona offers a dedicated

football section.

Figure 1 – Zona User Interface

Source: Zona.ru

This particular service is also a multiscreen service: an Android app is promoted on this site’s home

page. Actual video quality is on par with legitimate online video sources, with high definition video

programming streaming at bit-rates of 3.5 megabits per second. Excellent Quality of Experience has

historically been a major differentiator of Tier 1 pay TV operators, but if the Tier 1s can no longer

demonstrate their superiority, their message starts to ring hollow.

These sites also threaten legitimate online video sites in countries where the pirate does not have a

direct presence. Virtual private networks (VPNs) provide portals between legitimate and illegal use.

They are highly sophisticated players, backed with good technical resources and a strong working knowledge of the Internet

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The content source can be in one country, the hosting of the service in another country, and finally the

CDN provider can be in a third one.

The New Pirates use sophisticated business models, including:

Ad-insertion with ads from major advertisers that don’t know their ad server is linked to a pirate

site. Pre-rolls, mid-rolls, banners, etc.

Consumer-paid subscriptions, where the user thinks it’s a legitimate service that offers the

same programming for a lower price than competing services. Furthermore, a consumer

provides the pirate company with a credit card, and that credit card may be subject to fraud and

abuse by the pirate

For content providers whose business model also involves advertising, loss of ad revenue to pirates

also constitutes a significant risk. A 2014 report released by the Digital Citizens Alliance7 estimated that

video pirate sites captured $227 million in online advertising revenue in 2013, across about 600 Web

sites.

7 New Study Shows Content Theft Sites Hijacking Online Ad Business to Make Hundreds of Millions in Profits. Press Release. February 18, 2014. Digital Citizens Alliance. See: https://media.gractions.com/3DE696054309A422E45E08789A37B98CA008EEE5/3af3edc2-db51-46ee-9274-456636276f55.pdf

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Mainstream TV security

Security and anti-piracy measures are a basic component of all pay TV and premium content services,

and over time, they have grown very sophisticated. Today’s operators must implement a security

ecosystem that addresses of three essential needs: to secure the end-to-end delivery chain, to secure

the content itself, and to ensure secure playback at the consumer device, which includes the secure

transfer of the video from the decoding device (e.g. the set-top box) to the TV screen.

Conditional Access A Conditional Access System (CAS) secures the end-to-end delivery chain and manages the business

rules associated with content, devices, and users. When the consumer requests a content service, a

process of authentication takes place, which grants entitlement to the service or content. A CAS

scrambles (or encrypts) content so it cannot be viewed by unauthorized (unauthenticated) users, and

sends messages (known as ‘keys’) to the consumer’s set-top box to unlock (de-scramble or decrypt) the

content upon authentication.

Figure 2 - Conditional Access System

Source: Viaccess-Orca

Security and anti-piracy measures are a basic component of pay TV and premium content services; over time, they have grown very sophisticated

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In order to perform these functions, both the server-side processes and the client device must be

‘trusted environments’ that are safeguarded both physically and technically from intrusion, so that keys

and other secret data cannot be intercepted. Pay-TV systems have historically used client-side

smartcard hardware modules that enable operators to uniquely identify the set-top boxes connected to

their systems, which, in turn, enable decryption of the video content. More recently, the industry has

developed cardless CAS clients, which are used in IP-connected (IPTV) set-top boxes, some cable TV

set-tops, and in some IP-connected non-set-top devices. Both smartcard- and cardless-based systems

are in use today.

Digital Rights Management Digital Rights Management (DRM) secures the content itself. Similar to conditional access, DRM is

used for the secure licensing of streaming and file-based content, and can control what the consumer

can do with it. Also like CA, DRM systems require a trusted environment both client- and server-side

that is resistant to intrusion or tampering. But unlike CA, DRM embeds security within the content

itself and is device-independent.

Figure 3 – Digital Rights Management System


In DRM authentication, rights information and usage rules are stored in a centralized location and

associated with an identifier within the content. When someone wants to use it, a transaction occurs

between a content host and a user, to confirm key information within the content, and to impose

conditions for access based on business rules. Each encrypted content file or stream is evaluated as an

unique item (session-based encryption), which must be authenticated before use is permitted. The

authentication process can also be designed to look for unique identifiers in the device (hardware-

based), in which the content would not be unlocked (decrypted) unless there is a match with the

hardware ‘root of trust.’

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Other Security Measures Another widely-used security measure beyond CA and DRM is obfuscation, which is a computationally-

applied process that disguises the characteristics of a software player or client hardware device, to

conceal its purpose. Software obfuscation disguises software executables to make them difficult to

reverse-engineer. Key obfuscation hides the secret cryptographic key embedded within or generated

by the client. Yet another technique is clone detection, which is used to identify whether or not the

content or software client being consumed is the same as what was originated by the content provider.

If not, playback could be disabled.

Another safeguard is the common link-layer protection known as HDCP (High Definition Content

Protection), which secures the connection between a TV set-top box and a high definition television set.

Fingerprinting is another: data extracted from video files can be kept in a database and compared with

video clips encountered in online distribution. If a match is detected, the distributor could be asked to

take the content down from its servers.

Current Responses to Piracy Once piracy has been detected, a number of responses are available to content stakeholders

Responses implemented through technical means include suspending or removing rights to the

content, decommissioning the smartcard in the user’s set-top box, subscriber blacklisting, and device

revocation. Additional responses include sending warning letters, fines, and legal prosecution.

Responses differ from country to country.

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Piracy Remains a Risk

So far, we have seen two approaches to content security. CA systems are designed to protect the

transport of valuable content from a service provider’s facilities to a set-top box or other video end-

device. DRM complements CA by locking the content itself against unauthorized use. Although they

were originally designed for different content distribution situations, CA and DRM happen to

complement one another very well, and are always used together in multiscreen pay TV deployments.

But the nature of video piracy continues to evolve. New Pirates will pursue high quality content any

way that they can. If they can breach an operator’s CAS, they can gain direct access to the highest

quality content. This means that the CAS supplier’s job of keeping the solution robust and secure is

never finished, and that CA and DRM will always be essential elements of an end-to-end content

protection framework.

Existing post-decoding content protection technologies are also at risk. For example, Version 1.0 of the

High Definition Copy Protection (HDCP) link protection technology used to interconnect video

consumer devices such as set-top boxes and game consoles with high definition TV sets (HDMI) was

breached in 2010.8 The current release, Version 2.2, remains secure; but millions of pre-2.2 devices are

currently in use. Also, copy-control rules such as “Copy Once” and “Copy Never” can be applied to

the content, but there is no guarantee that these rules can’t also be circumvented.

Once a legitimate end user has been authenticated and the content has been unlocked and decrypted

at the consumer end device, there is no guarantee that it can’t be redistributed - either immediately, or

later. One content security expert once said “Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than

water can be made not wet.” 9

For this reason, we believe that additional post-consumption safeguards are necessary. Sometimes,

the term “post-consumer” is used in context with recycling, and has little to no value. But it’s not

difficult to argue that pirated content has more value than it did in legitimate distribution. For one

reason, it creates an impression of legitimacy and brand equity for the pirate. For another, unless it’s

put to a halt, pirated content can be recycled endlessly.

The remainder of this paper highlights two additional content protection categories that supplement

CA and DRM: active monitoring and watermarking. Combined, these methods identify streams and

items of content that may have been pirated, and even confirm the identity of the actual pirate. Again,

even though their original purposes were not related to one another, active monitoring and

watermarking happen to complement one another. What’s more, they also complement CA and DRM

extremely well.

8 Intel HDCP HDMI Copy Protection Broken. Article. September 17, 2010. IHS Technology. See: https://technology.ihs.com/402973/intel-hdcp-hdmi-copy-protection-broken 9 Blog posting. Bruce Schneier. May 15, 2001. Schneier on Security. See: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0105.html#3

The nature of video piracy continues to evolve. New Pirates will pursue high quality content any way that they can

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Active Monitoring with Eye on Piracy

The first new safeguard is active monitoring, which tracks the distribution of content after its

authorized use. Eye on Piracy10 is a service-based solution from Viaccess-Orca (VO) which

complements the security measures enabled by CA and DRM by actively monitoring live video re-

streaming over the Internet. This active security framework works in real-time, to help content owners

and stake-holders find the New Pirates quickly. Eye on Piracy identifies the percentage of content that

is pirated, so operators and content owners can know the degree of risk, and make informed decisions

and decide whether or not to take action.

Eye on Piracy has several key business benefits:

Addresses live re-streaming of exclusive, high-cost, sports content

Protects content that’s beyond the reach of CAS and DRM, after original distribution

Helps operators avoid churn from subscribers that would access the same content from pirate

sites at a lower price

Confirms sources of illicit re-streaming to build the case to revoke services from pirates

Eye on Piracy has three main service components. The first component is Track: Global Marketing

Intelligence and Monitoring. Track helps the content stakeholder better understand the piracy problem.

VO starts by monitoring where piracy occurs, identifies the amount of piracy that is taking place and

determines who is actually watching these illegal broadcasts.

Figure 4 – Eye on Piracy - Monitoring the Number of Pirated Streams, by Pirated Event


10 Eye on Piracy. Informational Web site. Viaccess-Orca. See: http://www.viaccess-orca.com/security/eye-on-piracy.html

The first new safeguard is active monitoring, which tracks the distribution of

content after its authorized use

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To look at a specific example, VO used Track to monitor the redistribution of a football match between

Liverpool and Chelsea that aired on April 27, 2014, to identify how a particular sporting event went to

worldwide distribution through piracy.

For this match, Eye on Piracy identified widespread distribution through three pirate sites:

Sopcast, a P2P technology, with 27 unique links. Bitrates ranged from 1,500 kbps to 3,500 kbps

Acestream, another (and more recent) P2P technology, with 16 links. Bitrates ranged from 900

kbps to 2,000 kbps

115 instances of streaming unicast distribution, at bitrates ranging from 175 to 815 kbps

The global audience for Unicast viewers was about 68,000 unique viewers, plus about 600,000

viewers over P2P distribution

These statistics clearly demonstrated the piracy for one particular match. Ongoing monitoring could

help content stakeholders determine piracy trends. Track monitors where the live streams are

occurring, and then, based on that information, it crawls the Web to discern the audience. Track can

then create a map to show where the content was being redistributed illegally, as shown in the figure

below.

Figure 5 – Eye on Piracy - Geographical Distribution Map of Video Piracy


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In addition to identifying the locations and numbers of illegal users, Track also identifies the amount of

bandwidth (bit-rate) available to the illegal users, enabling it to discern the video quality that the users

were receiving.

The knowledge gained through Eye on Piracy also helps content providers fine-tune their business

tactics. Mapping the locations of piracy helps the content provider identify new market opportunities

where it can provide the content itself, legitimately, to capture this previously-lost end user revenue as

well as new revenue associated with advertising. The pirate has unintentionally helped the content

provider by having created awareness for the content already.

Figure 6 – Eye on Piracy – Tracking Illegitemate Content Redistribution


The second component of Eye on Piracy is Fight: Active Monitoring and Anti-Piracy Solutions. Fight

complements the safeguards provided by the existing CAS after the content has left the operator’s

network. Once Track has detected and pinpointed pirate distribution, Fight adds a layer of deterrence

that includes sending legal notices to pirates to cease and desist. Fight also uses technical methods to

prevent pirates from rebroadcasting premium content. To maximize their effectiveness, Fight can take

these actions during the pirate broadcast, in real-time.

The third component is Prove: Legal Support against Cyber-Piracy. Prove gathers proof of

infringement and legal evidence about the actual pirates and their activities. The VO team looks for

ways to identify who the pirates are and which organizations stand behind them. Then, together with

local law enforcement or government agencies, VO helps close pirate operations.

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NexGuard Video Watermarking Adds Trust Through Verification

A watermark, simply stated, is information that is embedded into a photo or a stream of video content.

Everyone is familiar with video content that has a logo in the corner, identifying the TV network or the

sporting league that distributed or originated the content. These kinds of visible markings can be

removed by scaling or masking the image. The fact that some of the image is lost is often not

significant: the viewer still sees the content and can follow the game or the show.

Civolution’s NexGuard watermarking system improves upon this concept by embedding invisible

watermarks into the content, which are undetectable to human perception and do not interfere with the

content in any way. The embedded information remains associated with the video content even after it

is decoded or decrypted, and even if attempts have been made to eliminate the watermark.

The first publicized use of this form of watermarking was in 2003, when watermarking was used to

pinpoint a jury member for the Academy Awards who had leaked a movie to pirates. Since then,

watermarking has been seen as a deterrent to piracy.

Civolution’s NexGuard Watermark Embedder uses a lightweight software client to insert a unique

identifier at the set-top box, before it is presented to the television set. Later, if there is suspicion of

piracy, the content can be processed forensically by a watermark extraction program, to find the

unique ID; as in the figure below.

Figure 7 – Identifying Suspected Content Using Embedded Watermarks

Source: Civolution

Civolution’s NexGuard watermarking system embeds invisible watermarks into the content, which are undetectable to human perception and

do not interfere with the content in any way

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Figure 8 - Concurrent Watermarking for Multi-screen Streaming

Source: Civolution

Just as piracy has become more sophisticated over the years, so have attempts to breach or remove

watermarks. Therefore, the watermark must be robust, and able to survive vrious attacks, including:

Video processing attacks, such as Digital-to-analog and Analog-to-digital conversions (including

multiple conversions),

Transformation, such as resizing, letterboxing, aperture control, low-pass filtering and anti-

aliasing, frame-swapping, compression, scaling, cropping, overwriting and the addition of

noise,

Format conversion, including the changing of frequencies and spatial resolution of NTSC, PAL

or SECAM, from one to another and back,

Re-sampling and re-quantization (including dithering and recompression),

Signal enhancements to image contrast and color,

Collusion, which is the combining of multiple videos in the attempt to make the watermark

unrecognizable,

Sync separation, the cutting off or damaging of the horizontal and vertical sync signals that are

embedded into a composite (analog) video as well as into a digital video stream.

A pirate using a PC to capture video from the analog output of a set-top box using a video capture card

could certainly re-stream the video, but the video would still include the embedded watermark.

Detailed identification of the piracy source can be made possible for multiscreen services through per-

session or per-device watermarking.

Modern watermarking techniques are an important ingredient in an overall content protection strategy.

They help content owners, distributors and law enforcement agencies identify pirated content and

trace it back to its owners even if a pirate has defeated the conditional access or integrated DRM

system that provided access to the content, because the watermark is part of the content itself.

Watermarks can be applied at any point in the content’s lifecycle: from capture, through production, in

distribution, and even at the consumer end-device. Eye on Piracy complements watermarking for

operators that may still have older set-top boxes in the field, without sufficient resources to

accommodate a watermarking client. Watermarking complements Eye on Piracy by helping verify that

the suspected content was in fact illegitimately distributed; by positively identifying the thief, or at least

identifying the content’s last legitimate point of distribution.

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Eye on Piracy and NexGuard

Traditional Conditional Access and Digital Rights Management provide well-defined frameworks for the

transport and use of premium content. But once the content is delivered through the video end-device,

the content could end up anywhere. Content is like traffic at a busy intersection that has nobody to

direct the traffic. If content is published – legitimately or illegally – it still has to be located and

identified. But nobody will find the content if nobody is looking for it. The New Pirates understand that

the possibility of being caught is low enough that piracy is worth the risk.

Now, someone is looking. Eye on Piracy helps broadcasters and other content stake-holders find

shared content, and then the NexGuard watermark proves the case. Content owners can be more

assured that the distribution of their valuable programming can be kept within legitimate channels,

because instances of suspected piracy can be identified and then confirmed.

Track and NexGuard Eye on Piracy finds a stream that’s suspect of piracy and monitors the content, but does not know

which TV channel it is. A Premier League game is the suspect. The NexGuard watermark that is

embedded at the headend can help identify that the programming came from a specific service

provider or broadcast source.

Track provided the intelligence about the “when” and the “how.” NexGuard added the “where” and

“which channel.” This intelligence shows the content provider how much of the total traffic for this

programming has been pirated, and enables them to decide whether or not this piracy is a significant

risk.

Eye on Piracy then draws a map of the piracy and shows the cities where piracy is most common.

Knowing where the piracy is taking place is important, because it helps them determine the actual loss

of revenue on a market by market basis.

Fight and NexGuard With traditional CAS and DRM, content has been protected up to the set-top box or connected CE

device. After decryption, content is still subject to theft. With Fight, the content stakeholder can know

which content platform is streaming the pirated content. Then a notification can immediately be sent,

to request that the content be taken down.

For other platforms and live P2P sources, content that is suspected of having been pirated can be

processed by extracting an additional watermark inserted at the client device to identify the end-device

and the subscriber based on the subscriber’s ID from the set-top box, or from the identifier of the

conditional access client. If a watermark is present, the information can be provided either live or post-

mortem to the legitimate operators and content owners, so they can take appropriate actions against

the source of redistribution. Depending upon local regulations, some redistribution can only be

stopped after a notification of a Court Judgment. Viaccess-Orca provides anti-piracy legal advising

and prosecution preparation based on its anti-piracy field campaigns and its legal worldwide expertise

in content protection and in anti-piracy cyber-law.

Eye on Piracy helps broadcasters and other content stake-holders find shared content, and then the NexGuard watermark proves the case

19


The roles of CAS and DRM are Reinforced, Not Diminished Operators enforce their security policies through the Conditional Access and Digital Rights

Management Systems. All of the personalization data associated with the operator’s TV set-top box or

with other consumer devices that are connected to the operator’s service over IP are linked to the CAS

and DRM to enforce content access and usage rights. Eye on Piracy looks to such systems for guidance

on effectively applying security responses that it can implement through technical means, after piracy

is detected. These were listed earlier in this paper.

Conclusion In the ongoing effort to minimize revenue loss through piracy and illegal redistribution, the

combination of active monitoring and watermarking can be a powerful deterrent. If a pirate shares

content, monitoring will find the corresponding stream. When the stream is found, the watermark is

retrieved and the individual is identified.

In conclusion, the New Pirate can no longer be assured of operating with impunity, and this knowledge

can serve as a powerful deterrent.

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About Civolution Civolution (www.civolution.com) is the leading provider of technology and solutions to identify,

manage and monetize media content. The company offers an extensive portfolio of cutting edge digital

watermarking and fingerprinting based applications for media interaction (Automatic Content

Recognition, Tv-Sync Ads and content triggering), media intelligence (audience measurement and

television monitoring) and media protection (content filtering and forensic watermarking for pre-

release, digital cinema, payTV and streaming).

Follow us on Twitter: @Civolution

About Viaccess-Orca As a leading global provider of content protection, delivery, and discovery solutions, Viaccess-Orca is

shaping the ultimate content experience. Through its integrated range of business-savvy products and

solutions, Viaccess-Orca helps service providers in the cable, DTT, satellite, IPTV, and OTT industries

gain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving multiscreen environment. By enabling service

providers to securely deliver an engaging user experience on any device, Viaccess-Orca is reinventing

the entertainment landscape. Viaccess-Orca is part of the Orange Group.

For more information, visit www.viaccess-orca.com, follow us on Twitter @ViaccessOrca and Linkedin.

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http://blog.viaccess-orca.com/

mailto:[email protected]


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