roundtable_round 30/08/2013 12:05 Page 1
Once again, Euromedia gathered content security experts together to discuss industry challenges as providers push content to the limit so that their consumers can access as much as possible, as widely as possible.
also sometimes gives operators business intelligence that is useful. If a broadcaster in a particular country finds his content is pirated and very popular in another part of the world, maybe that’s a sales opportunity to a local provider.” “Monitoring is key today,” says Leporini, “everything is much more real time, an operator wants to know what’s happening and react. Obviously, this is crucial when live events are involved, so we are monitoring and reacting to a lot more data. And this does hat are the prevailing mean that, as well as prevention, you can piracy risks – is provide relevant business information in real organised criminal time to the service provider in terms of who is activity still the major using their content. For us it is a natural challenge? combination of working on content protection “There is a shift from traditional piracy – and also user experience and engagement. control word distribution, smart card They are two sides of the same coin.” hacking – to Internet distribution and “For a client we recently tracked a that change needs to be ta ken into Real Madrid v Barcelona game,” account by operators,” says Peter Oggel, explains Oggel, “we found an VP products at Irdeto. “The trend is enormous number of streams all over towards Internet distribution and the the world, with potentially tens of prevention techniques are different. millions of viewers. So, you have the People will always go for the weakest technology to take down the streams link and with HD cameras and and remove the links from search broadband links simply copying and engines, but you don’t always have the redistributing content is on the jurisdiction to enforce a takedown increase.” notice, so you put a banner up telling “Pirates are following the path of least resistance.” “Pirates are following the path of viewers it is an illegal stream and Mathieu Bonenfant, Civolution least resistance,” agrees Mathieu directing them to where they can see Bonenfant, product manager with it legitimately, i.e. up-selling. So Civolution, “we certainly see redistribution “And the problem is, with all this potential broadcasters need to fight in the old world of growing everyday alongside the growth in for hackers to get access, it is not easy for the protection but use the data made available by broadband capacity.” provider to know why his service appears to the new world to generate new business.” “The same technology advances that allow be underperforming; is it a problem with user “Yes, ultimately it is all about user providers to supply new, and more, services experience or piracy? We can provide him experience, our job is to increase user provide the same opportunities for pirates,” with the relevant information to take the right experience for legitimate users and decrease says David Leporini, EVP marketing products decisions.” user experience for illegitimate users by and security at Viaccess-Orca. “It is essential you know what is going on whatever means,” warns Leporini. So, is there a shift from organised hacking on the Internet by monitoring,” says “For sure, only two things drive subscribers to more consumers trying to save money? Bonenfant, “is the content leaked, are people to content and that’s exclusivity and, or, “Both, there are professionals, if you like, enjoying it for free? Content identification quality of experience and in that comes taking pay-TV content and redistributing it, technology is there to tell when content has quality, accessibility, the release timing; if even with their own advertising sold on top, been shared, how it was shared, how much these criterion are fulfilled for free, or for less and you also see a lot of low level content has been shared and who is sharing it, and than the operator provides them, then it has a sharing, mainly because the tools are there to enable you to react. It is a feedback loop for big problem,” says Bonenfant. do it,” says Bonenfant. operators to know what is going on and be In a TV Everywhere, multi-device world “And you have to have different tactics as a able to react.” will the Set-Top Box and the smart card begin provider when you approach those two “Yes, watermarking gives us a lot of insight to take a back seat? problems. With the criminals you go in with into what is being used,” agrees Oggle, “This is a long debated question,” says the heavy guns; the legal approach, technology “obviously piracy is a negative thing we need Leporini, “but I think they will be around for a disruption and hit them hard before it to fight, but tracking it down over the Internet long time yet. Leave aside the smart card or becomes a real problem. On the other end of the scale with ‘casual pirates’ you need to persuade them to an offering that is giving them what they want, how they want, it for a price that is reasonable,” advises Oggel. “You will face various forms of piracy and this becomes even more complex when you talk about multi-screen, because to access the service the pirate only needs to break one device. So there will still be attacks on the set top and smart cards but also, for instance, on the games console and that brings in all the hackers who have been used to attacking consoles to access games,” warns Leporini.
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