M+E Connections

Broadcasters, TV programmers and movie studios continue to face the problem of piracy, according to experts who spoke Oct. 19 during the panel session “How Video Programmers Anticipate and Respond to Piracy” on day one of the first Video Security Summit.

The panelists, who represent (or have represented) global media organizations with multi-national distribution, explained that they must respond to the challenges posed by business models that differ across distribution mediums, release windows and territories. Additionally, they pointed out that licensing terms must be crafted so infringement can be measured and mitigated, and so that countermeasures can be enforced.

Consultant Chris Odgers, who noted that he worked with Warner for about 20 years, said his team there was responsible for the technology portions of the company’s licensing deals.

“We wanted to be sure that [licensees] had the appropriate technology in place and helped them understand the requirements,” he told viewers. “While we had a lot of large, sophisticated licensees that understood the issues around content protection, we also had a lot of smaller entities that were very inexperienced at handling studio content so we had to be sure that they really understood the issues, and that was sometimes a problem.”

His team also advised the Warner business divisions about additional content protection they might need for new business models including premium video on demand.

The team also sometimes dealt with production security issues “because protection begins at production, not distribution, so there are a lot of issues around production,” Odgers noted.

Movies in production can’t be seen by just anybody; that is on a “need-to-see basis,” he pointed out, noting only certain people working on a production have access to it. And when content is sent to vendors, it’s “very tightly tracked” with watermarking, he said, adding those vendors have to sign confidentiality agreements and they are typically only given what they need to see to do their work, not an entire film, to reduce the risk from any potential leak.

After all, it could cost millions or tens of millions of dollars in damages if a movie is leaked before release, he said.

Geo-filtering, meanwhile, is a “big concern of ours” because a studio or others in the chain may not have rights for content in a particular region, he also told viewers.

If a studio learns a device had been compromised, “we might require licensees to downgrade the content to” standard definition, he said, going on to compare piracy problems to a game of “whack-a-mole.”

“One of the incredible challenges” that BBC Studios has, meanwhile, is that, in the U.K., its content is “free at the point of consumption” and “there’s no mandatory sign-in in order to” receive and view it, but the same is not the case with other countries, Diane Hamer, head of business and legal affairs, brand protection, at BBC Studios explained.

While the content is free in the U.K., “we’re very much trying to commercialize that content” in other countries and “that gives rise to a real sort of challenge in relation to protecting that content globally,” she said.

Asked how she finds out about pirated content, she said: “It comes to us,” often from licensees who inform her company.

“We know that piracy impacts our ability to license our content. We know that licensees feel the pain of piracy of our content,” she added.

And “one of the biggest challenges” that sports and entertainment network beIN Media faces is “ managing content across multiple territories,” according to Lee Kent, content protection manager at the company. He pointed to issues that include the differences in contractual obligations and other legal issues, as well as the technology used by pirates in each territory.

Pirates are hosting content and using the same devices as consumers,” he said, noting many pirates “mirror exactly what we do,” only they’re not paying for the content. They are “using our bandwidth” on his company’s content delivery network (CDN) and “stealing our content,” he added.

One of Kent’s suggestions for other companies in his sector: “know your vendor” including their tech and whether it’s a good fit for you and whether that company is a good fit for you in the territory you are using it in.
Hamer noted that pirates are using the same technical tools legitimate companies are using and “what that means quite often is that the pirate experience is so good and looks so professional that it’s very hard for an ordinary user sometimes to actually discriminate between what’s legitimate and what’s not.”

Pirates are also not confined to national boundaries like laws are, making it difficult to pursue legal actions against them, she noted.

Steven Hawley, founder and managing director of Piracy Monitor, moderated the panel session.