A 3-Part Series from Verimatrix

The New Perspective on Using Watermarking to Battle Piracy

Part 1

RISING TIDE OF UHD CONTENT INTENSIFIES NEED FOR ADVANCED SECURITY MEASURES

Introduction

With online theft of premium video continuing to cause industry concern as the introduction of higher quality video formats accelerates, there is increasing agreement that the time has come to implement forensic watermarking as a primary weapon in the fight against piracy.

It’s long been understood that the emergence of distribution services carrying content formatted to ultra HD (UHD) and high dynamic range (HDR) parameters would trigger a pan industry move to more rigorous levels of content protection. With a huge base of 4K UHD TV owners now in place, the flow of enhanced-format content is intensifying rapidly.

Watermarking, entailing automated insertion of invisible digital codes that can associate a stolen piece of content with the viewing device and its owner at the point of theft, is the best tool rights holders have to find and act against commercial content pirates who attempt to capture and redistribute live and on-demand video streams. Consequently, after a long period of uncertainty about how serious the watermarking mandate might turn out to be, pay-TV and OTT distributors should anticipate wide-scale adoption of content licensing policies that put watermarking at the center of new requirements for securing end-to-end distribution of premium video. Read more >>

THE STATE OF PIRACY AND PROSPECTS FOR EFFECTIVE ACTION TO THWART IT

Introduction

Global theft of premium content has reached the point where losses stemming from business as usual can no longer be tolerated.

The threat is far worse than in the past now that online streaming of purloined content has become the dominant mode of piracy, rapidly supplanting peer-to-peer downloading as a far more effective way to capture and retain viewers, including people who are fooled into thinking sophisticated pirate sites, supported by advertising and often charging subscription fees, are legitimate. Adding to the alarm is the growing volume of 4K UHD programming and the prospects for large amounts of HDR-enhanced HD content, as discussed in Part 1.

In part that’s because the higher the premium video quality gets to be on legitimate MVPD and OTT outlets, the higher the quality will be for camcorded video or otherwise captured from 4K UHD displays for digital distribution. Demand for stolen content is expected to increase as ever more current movie titles and first-run TV episodes entering the UHD pipeline inspire new payment tiers, including long-discussed premium pricing for early-window distribution of movies to the VOD market. Read more >>

MAJOR ADVANCES FUEL INDUSTRY COMMITMENT TO WATERMARKING

Introduction

Many enhanced protection measures specified by MovieLabs’ Enhanced Content Protection (ECP) specifications are already well-established practices in the protection of pay-TV services.

These include encryption based on AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 128 or better ciphers, random number generation for encryption keys, HDCP 2.2 or better link protection and “secure media pipeline,” which is defined as “end-to- end protection that encompasses, as a minimum, decryption through to protected output,” although with this last and some other well-established measures there are some new wrinkles which MVPDs may need to accommodate depending on how far rights holders’ go in adopting them.

But many other MovieLabs-mandated measures stand out as important new stipulations MVPDs need to be mindful of as they look for vendor solutions that will meet requirements in the years ahead. First among these is watermarking. Watermarking is already moving into the content licensing mainstream, especially where new licenses are being negotiated, as evidenced by a recent surge in deployments of Verimatrix VideoMark® and other state-of- the-art platforms worldwide. Read more >>

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