52
X-PLATFORM
May-June 2017
IPTV piracy:
The fight against a
new breed of pirates
BY PABLO ARGON
There has never been a better time
for TV entertainment. According
to most predictions, content for
TV is only going to boom from
Hollywood to Bollywood. However,
despite the success of the media
and entertainment industry, there
is the persistent and menacing
trouble of online pirates who ille-
gally access content and distribute
them via direct downloads from
websites, torrent sites and stream-
ing services.
IPTV piracy isn’t a new phe-
nomenon, but with the mass pro-
duction of premium content such
as 4K/Ultra HD (UHD), HD with
high dynamic range (HDR) and
with new business models for on-
line content distribution, its market
share has started to threaten the
revenue of legal pay-TV operators.
What makes the new breed of
pirates especially threatening is
that they have made IPTV piracy
user-friendly and easier to access.
They have established a bold and
savvy business model that directly
and openly competes with legal
pay-TV operators. They package
illegal streams and serve them to
consumers on more than 100 chan-
nels and some even stream more
than a 1,000 channels through their
illegal platforms.
They claim to provide customer
support and offer high-quality
content such as HD channels at
staggeringly lower prices com-
pared to their legal counterparts.
Complemented with effective
marketing campaigns via social
media ads, professional websites,
and legitimate packaging with set-
top box devices, it leads consumers
into thinking that these are legal
services.
There are also technological
factors that have accelerated the
growth of IPTV piracy. The avail-
ability of high-bandwidth digital
content protection (HDCP) strip-
pers creates an easy way for pirates
to grab video streams right out
of the HDMI link. For consumers,
improved bandwidth is the likely
reason for the recent popularity of
illegal content streaming.
Access continues to be the
defining theme for any conversa-
tion about the role of consumers
in online piracy. It is worth notic-
ing that in many markets, piracy is
driven by the lack of legal offerings.
There are many examples of high
piracy markets where the arrival of
legal streaming services has curbed
the volume of illegal content dis-
tributed. What is often ignored is
that consumers who are able to
afford legal services prioritise user
experience and consistent content
quality.
While pirates explo