Industry executives estimate that 17% of households worldwide now use illegal TV services on a regular basis according the 2019 Pay-TV Innovation Forum. As the consumption of pirate services accelerates, driven by the increase in streaming content, apps, devices, and the current health crisis, it’s creating huge business risk for the entire media and entertainment industry.
Agility and adaptability to mitigate the threat is vital, and operators need to consider implementing a wide range of strategies that will enable them to protect their services. One solution is IP blocking. Designed to help operators regain subscribers lost to pirates by reducing exposure to those services, IP blocking disrupts and removes access to the specific servers being used for illegal content streaming. Ian Nock, Managing Director and Founder, Fairmile West, and judge of the Videonet Connected TV Awards in which the NAGRA IP Blocking solution won the “Protecting Content and its Value” prize, says:
“As pirates evolve, so do the companies who specialise in providing services and technology to fight them… Providing the ability to take down the pirate by identifying them and then providing the tools to block them from sourcing and distributing is a key improvement to assure the value of content.”
The NAGRA IP Blocking solution is a key part of NAGRA Anti-Piracy Services, an offering that combines technology, investigations and legal actions to stop illegitimate streaming of premium content. Leveraging an intelligence-based three-pronged approach, our anti-piracy services focus on identifying and shutting down content leaks, monitoring streaming servers and working with ISPs to take down infringing services.
Alongside anti-piracy services, content value protection through forensic watermarking can also play a critical role in identifying a leak and tracing it to the source. Some of our recent announcements in this area included a partnership with Avid to integrate our new NexGuard plug-in with the Avid Media Composer, giving content owners piece of mind that their pre-release content, such as rough cuts or final cuts of their full feature films or TV series, can be protected in editing and collaboration workflows; the integration of our NexGuard Streaming forensic watermarking solution with the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform to bring an added level of anti-piracy enforcement and revenue protection to rights holders and content owners for live sports and premium VOD content; and the launch of NAGRA ClipMark, an industry-first solution designed to detect any source of pre-release leaks on very short video clips, such as dailies, proxy deliveries of full features and TV series, and trailers, down to thirty seconds in duration.
IP Blocking and forensic watermarking are two of the tools within NAGRA’s Active Streaming Protection toolset which enables operators to build a comprehensive service protection strategy for their specific needs. Formed of six building blocks and using multi-DRM as the baseline – Advanced Security; Secure Playback; Secure Streaming; Anti-Piracy; Forensic Watermarking; and Security Analytics – Active Streaming Protection helps operators form a cohesive and holistic strategy that is bespoke to each service, and that can be adapted as future threats emerge.
Pirates are rapidly building services with stolen content, and operators around the world must act now if they’re to protect themselves and their customers. With NAGRA’s award-winning anti-piracy solutions and industry-leading partnerships, service providers and content owners can be assured that their livelihoods will be protected from the piracy threat.
Contact us to find out more about NAGRA Anti-Piracy Services, and how an active streaming protection approach can support your OTT streaming strategy.