Modern Problems
Media Piracy
35
BY ANTHONY ROGERS
Piracy on the Media Ocean
Piracy isn’t just on the seven seas anymore. - it could be lurking as close as your living room or den!
Piracy isn’t always some dashing swashbuckler-swing over the ocean onto a target ship. For that matter, piracy isn’t just on the seven seas anymore, either. Piracy could be as close to you as the nearest computer terminal. Parents don’t have to police just adult content online anymore - now they have to guard against pirated content as well. Children, most teenagers, and even a few adults aren’t quite grasping what media piracy is.
Those who do understand, but indulge their larcenous side anyway, often have a ready excuse: “The media company is the real pirate!” or “Everyone does it” etc., etc. Computer-related crimes are one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises. There are so many different types of computer crimes, for the sake of brevity, let’s focus (albeit broadly) on the category of media piracy; piracy to plunder the content, and wealth of Cable TV, films, music, and video games.
The latest victim from ‘fleets’ of media pirates are the beleaguered presenters of the World Cup 2014. The targets of piracy aren’t always as clear-cut as you’d expect, either. In the case of the sports media on cable TV, it is surprising to find that the World Cup wasn’t the most pirated soccer game this season. Pirating cable TV is typically accomplished via illegal cable boxes (often obtained over the internet) and streams of live feed on various social media websites. The most common excuses for those who aren’t running a “for-profit venture” in this branch of media piracy are price and availability. Price is the main recurring motivation in all forms of media piracy. Companies that service the broadcast industry and offer services to help counter piracy will have a presence in the 2014 IBC Show in Amsterdam this year. Disruption of Piracy in this field is often accomplished by taking down illegal broadcasts in social media sites as soon as they are discovered, and protecting a company’s networks, access points and content via enhanced security measures.
Film Piracy differs from music piracy.
Film piracy is more technically intensive; for one thing, it requires more tech and more thought to pirate films than music. For those buccaneers attempting to plunder the wealth of cinema directly from the theatre, a number of methods are available from the relatively simple camera-phone, to the camera-in-a-coat all the way to specialized hidden cameras built into glasses or innocuous objects like drinking cups or candy boxes from that particular theatre that have been taken home and modified for piracy with a hidden camera. (Continued on Next Page)
Broadcast Beat Magazine / Sep-Dec, 2014