Here's how online platforms are trying to outplay pirates as digital piracy rises

Though data breaches can be a national security threat, 86 percent are about money, and 55 percent are committed by organized criminal groups, according to Verizon’s annual data breach report. (Representative image)

Video-streaming platforms are looking at advanced security measures to make their service watertight against piracy. It is estimated that over-the-top (OTT) platforms are losing 30 percent annual revenue due to online leaking of content.

In a webinar last year, ZEE Entertainment's OTT platform ZEE5 India’s technology head Tushar Vohra had said that the platform had witnessed a big spike in piracy due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Adding to this, Shahir Muneer, founder of Divo, a digital media and music company, which has content partners like film production houses, said that before the pandemic, in fact, OTTs helped in reducing piracy to an extent.

“Comparatively, the downloads the pirates were getting were lower than before. But there are new issues. High-speed bandwidth apps like Telegram have full feature films,” he said.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) help

Hence, OTT players are looking at more measures to tackle piracy. They had even pointed out that they need legitimate CDNs, or content delivery networks, to curb piracy.

CDNs are geographically distributed networks of servers/data centres. But there's more that CDNs can do to help online platforms protect content.

Avinash Prasad, Vice President and Head for Managed Security Services and Content Delivery Network, Tata Communications, said that CDN plays a role in live, recorded content as it is directly in the path of content consumption.

There are three ways through which CDNs can help digital platforms protect content.

“One is identifying your content and building traceability like who was accessing my content at that time, and whether they tried to copy it into some other device. For this, there is digital watermarking solution. It is utilised by CDNs to create traceability while the watermarking is done by the content creator itself. Watermarking can identify and get linked to the consumer when he/she is viewing it,” said Prasad.

Enter tokenisation

Another important built-in solution in a CDN is tokenisation, said Prasad.

“It is an intelligence session that helps us go through the CDN and locate where the end-consumer is and start collecting metrics from whatever is the viewing application. That way, we can find out that this content was used by this party at a given time. For example, during a live-viewing session, if someone tries to share the link with someone else, we are able to intervene through tokenisation,” he said.

He said that the efficiency is high here. “So wherever content has been tokenised, the ability to misuse is not easy and the theft can be discovered in real time."

He added that tokenisation is a standard feature which Tata Communications offers to all OTT customers.

Stream revocation can kill

Then comes stream revocation. Here, if someone else tries to view a piece of content, their streaming would be stopped, said Prasad.

“Stream revocation is important for mobile consumption, where the platform is giving free content with a package. Typically, a lot of sharing happens and stream revocation feature becomes important,” he said.

While piracy is an issue in all forms of digital content, Prasad said that recorded content, including music and video, are more vulnerable.

One recent example of a video OTT facing issue of piracy is ZEE5. One of the platform’s biggest additions -- Salman Khan's Radhe -- was leaked online immediately after its release.

Film trade analysts note that piracy has not only hit domestic revenues but also overseas collections as online pirated version of the film was easily available.

According to a Digital TV Research report, OTTs in India are expected to lose $3.08 billion by 2022 due to piracy.

Mukul Shrivastava, EY India, Partner, Forensic and Integrity Services, in a recent interview, had said that while there are solutions to fight digital piracy, OTT players have other priorities due to the pandemic.

This is why Muneer says that OTTs need to have consistent methods to tackle piracy and that it cannot be a one-off effort.