CHESEAUX-SUR-LAUSANNE, Switzerland and PHOENIX—Nagravision has struck a deal with the English Football League (EFL) to use Nagra Streaming Security help detect, disrupt and deter piracy of its match telecasts in the 2025-26 season.

The EFL will use the security solution’s dynamic monitoring to quantify the scale of piracy threats against its live sports content. The solution’s anti-piracy intelligence capability will also let the EFL, which operates the three tiers of English professional soccer just below the top-flight Premier League, measure the impact of takedown and enforcement activities and provide an overview of pirate activities targeting its content, Kudelski Group-owned Nagravision said.

“Nagravision’s dynamic, real-time monitoring is an effective and important part of our work to protect our content, clubs and their supporters,” Russell Byrne, EFL head of broadcast operations, said. “The level of information available to us means we can better monitor, identify and take down illegal streams as they appear across various platforms and ensure that we are providing the best possible experience to those that pay for legitimate services.”

The company’s streaming security solution is designed to provide a holistic view of pirate activity across content rightsholders’ portfolios through AI-enabled insights. Based on a 30-year history of global pirate activity, the solution provides clear information designed to directly address the business goals of rightsholders, including revenue protection, brand integrity and compliance management and licensing, the company said.

“Nagravision is a long-time advocate of the need to protect the integrity of the content ecosystem for sports rightsholders and works across the industry to achieve this,” Morten Solbakken, Nagravision executive vice president and chief operating officer, said. “Our advanced anti-piracy monitoring and enforcement solutions empower rightsholders, such as the English Football League, to combat illegal streaming and safeguard their revenues, ensuring true fans enjoy content securely and legally.”

Nagra Streaming Security delivers end-to-end protection against content theft and content restreaming. The solution safeguards revenues and combats illegal streaming by leveraging technologies like advanced multi-DRM, forensic watermarking and real-time anti-piracy monitoring and enforcement.

More information is available on the company’s website.

 Adobe and Frame.io, which is owned by Adobe, have announced that they have joined TPN+. 

TPN+ was launched this week as part of enhancements to the Motion Picture Association’s Trusted Partner Network content security initiative. 

TPN is a global, industry-wide content protection initiative overseen by the MPA to provide a set of requirements and best practices to prevent leaks, breaches, and hacks of pre-released, high-value media content. By creating a single, global directory of “trusted partner” vendors, content companies have access to a centralized database with their TPN status, TPN said. 

To further improve security, TPN announced recently that it was expanding its security assessments from site security to include SaaS-based cloud providers and their apps and launching TPN+.

The newly launched TPN+ platform and the new Cloud Security Assessment are designed to help the industry benefit from the rapidly advancing requirements of enhanced security awareness, preparedness, and capability as more and more productions rely on the cloud, TPN reported. 

Eight of the biggest content owners are members of TPN, including Universal, Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Apple.

In a blog post, Jason Druss, product marketing manager at Frame.io noted that “Frame.io has always made security the cornerstone of its platform since day one. That’s why today we’re excited to announce that along with Adobe video cloud services, we are proud early adopters of the TPN+ platform.”

“Although TPN compliance has always been voluntary, Frame.io has always treated it as a requirement and has been compliant since TPN’s inception in 2018. Now, we’re redoubling our efforts with Adobe to provide even greater support for our customers—and to allow both our existing and new customers to discover faster, more efficient, and more secure workflows,” he continued. 

“That Adobe and Frame.io are among those invited to join as members and early adopters of the TPN+ platform speaks to the fact that these studios depend on our products to create their content—and that we pledge to provide them with the utmost in security,” he concluded. 

LOS ANGELES—The Motion Picture Association’s global film and television content security initiative, the Trusted Partner Network (TPN), has announced the launch of its enhanced program with a new membership model, application and cloud content security assessments, and the TPN+ platform.

TPN, which is fully owned by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), is leveraging the updated MPA Content Security Best Practices v5.0 to expand its scope to include software application and cloud security in addition to site and work-from-home security assessments. With this expansion and the launch of the new TPN+ platform, TPN is bolstering its program to keep pace with rapid change and evolution throughout the media and entertainment industry, the TPN reported. 

“With the launch of its enhanced program, TPN is taking a crucial step toward ensuring the security of all content produced by our members,” explained Karyn Temple, senior executive vice president and global general counsel of the MPA. “Content security is a top priority of the MPA, TPN and all of our member studios, whose ability to produce the films and TV shows audiences love depends on our ability to protect and secure that content.”

“At the MPA and TPN, our goal is to support content creators from script to screen,” said Terri Davies, president of TPN. “This new iteration of the TPN program is a huge leap forward that provides an enhanced solution for content security. TPN is designed for all companies in the media and entertainment ecosystem who are committed to keeping content safe. We very much look forward to continued collaboration with our Service Provider and Content Owner members, as well as our Assessor partners, as we maintain forward momentum to keep pace with the rapid transformation and technology advancements in our industry.”

TPN’s new membership model is tiered to encourage participation from all global stakeholders, ranging from individual contributors to large-scale pre- and post-production companies, software application providers, and all Content Owners, it said. 

TPN reported that its new platform TPN+ is custom-built for member companies to manage and communicate content security status, including non-TPN security certificates such as ISO and Soc2, as well as complete TPN questionnaires and assessments based on the MPA Content Security Best Practices and guidelines.

The TPN+ platform provides standardization, expanded functionality, greater flexibility, and multi-layered transparency of security status to global Content Owners. The new platform unlocks self-serve functionality for Service Providers to communicate their content security status in a centralized and accelerated manner, resulting in enhanced visibility to Content Owners, overall time savings, and a reduction in duplicative assessment efforts, it explained. 

For Content Owners, TPN+ provides guidance that enables independent and informed decision-making. The new platform achieves this with a simplified process of assessing Service Provider partners’ security preparedness to ensure content is secure throughout the media supply chain.

For more information, please visit www.ttpn.org. 

DENVER—The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) today announced its newest member, The E.W. Scripps Company. The addition of Scripps marks IBCAP's initial expansion into piracy protection for U.S. television channels, including popular channels such as Ion, Bounce and CourtTV.

"With this addition, IBCAP is now offering anti-piracy protection services to U.S. channels, beginning with the full suite of Scripps channels," said Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP. "Our lab monitors hundreds of services offered through set-top boxes for existing IBCAP members and increasingly detects piracy of U.S. channels on those services. We have succeeded in disrupting or entirely removing other IBCAP member content from those services, and we are pleased to now expand that protection to Scripps channels."

"By joining IBCAP, we are enhancing our content protection strategy by leveraging IBCAP's lab and know-how to shut down unauthorized providers of our content," said Dave Giles, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Scripps. "We have a robust and effective anti-piracy strategy already in place, but by becoming part of the IBCAP alliance, we look forward to adding additional levels of content protection, particularly for the multicultural-focused pirate services that are already part of IBCAP's enforcement efforts."

Scripps channels under IBCAP's protection include Bounce, Bounce XL, CourtTV, Defy, Grit, Grit Xtra, Ion, Ion Mystery, Ion Plus, Laff, Newsy and True Real.

International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy, Inc. (IBCAP) is a coalition of leading international and U.S. content owners, broadcasters and distributors representing more than 170 television channels from the U.S. and around the world. As the largest anti-piracy organization focused on illicit services offering multicultural content, the non-profit organization proactively monitors and identifies unauthorized video services, collects evidence and assists with legal actions and criminal investigations against organizations and individuals engaging in pirate activities. 

IBCAP coordinates with government agencies and law enforcement both in the U.S. and abroad, reports suspected infringers to the appropriate authorities, initiates investigations and promotes the prosecution of persons or companies who participate in the illegal distribution of its members' video content.

With Disney’s new streaming service finally launching in the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands today, Nov. 12, there are still millions (or even billions) of viewers who won’t be able to access its content, in some cases for at least four months.

Disney+ has been promoting its exclusive original content for months, whetting fans’ appetites with glimpses of a new live action “Lady and the Tramp,” “The World according to Jeff Goldblum,” and new Star Wars TV series “The Mandalorian.” But with the announcement that the new SVoD won’t launch in western Europe until the end of March 2020, how does Disney protect content that many fans would give Darth Vader’s missing right hand to watch now?

“High-value shows like 'The Mandalorian' will drive incredible consumer demand, and just like 'Game of Thrones,' will be a target for pirates,” Tim Pearson, senior director, product marketing, at NAGRA tells TV Technology's sister publication TVBEurope.

“In today’s increasingly fragmented digital world, there is a segment of the market that will just pick up their smartphones and search for what they want to watch and find illicit options. For providers like Disney+, competing with such free alternatives is just not sustainable.”

“With the right technologies in place, service providers like Disney+ can identify which legitimate clients the stream is leaking from, and then stop the distribution through that point,” Pearson continues.

“In the case of 'The Mandalorian,' preventing leaks and, if needed, identifying the source of any leak is critical. Anti-piracy actions can also be taken to bring down pirate resellers and illicit streaming services. Finally, in markets where it is legally possible, blocking access to pirate services is another effective approach to stopping piracy.”

At heart, it appears content is the main reason behind Disney’s decision to hold back its launch in the U.K. and western Europe, as Futuresource’s principal analyst David Sidebottom explains: “If it were to launch simultaneously globally, it would have differing content line-ups in different countries, due to the existing licensing deals that are still running in most countries with third-party pay-TV and/or SVoD providers.

“The most high-profile content is movies in the first pay-window, particularly given Disney’s stellar Box Office line-up in 2019, therefore it is set to hold out launching in a country until it can offer these first run movies,” he adds.

In the U.K., Sky currently has exclusive rights for Disney’s first run movies, with the deal thought to run well into 2020. “Therefore, for first run movies, it should have little bearing on piracy,” says Sidebottom. “But on the Disney+ exclusive 'The Mandalorian,' it won’t be available until 2020. Given the likely pent-up demand to watch the show, it will be interesting to see how fans react or choose to access the shows if they can’t wait.”

Sports has been famously referred to as the “battering ram” for global expansion of pay-TV subscriptions. With recent advances in live streaming technology and the introduction of new OTT sports viewing options such as subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) packages, sports fans are moving from traditional broadcast to online streaming services.

However, not all live OTT sports services are from legitimate sources. Piracy of live OTT sports broadcasts has proliferated with rising global demand for streaming and the ease of access to this content on consumer devices. Estimates from research firm Parks Associates peg the cost of video piracy this year for pay-TV and OTT providers at $9.1 billion in lost revenue. Consider that NBC agreed back in 2011 to pay $4.38 billion for the rights to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 games—the most expensive broadcasting rights deal in Olympic history. It all adds up to an unparalleled need for comprehensive content protection and anti-piracy solutions.

But protecting the revenue of a premium live sports broadcast or streaming service with legacy conditional access systems (CAS), or even modern digital rights management (DRM) technology, may not be sufficient to block piracy services and redistribution of live sporting events. Pirates effectively restream live sporting content, after it has been decrypted, using various circumventions such as screen-recording software, external camera recording or HDMI-capture devices with a high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) “stripper.”

CONTINUING THE INNOVATION

As the competition heats up and improvements in technology bring the live OTT viewing experience closer to broadcast TV, live OTT sports service providers are starting to innovate in other areas as they look to attract and retain new viewers. Consequently, as with other streaming media technologies, there are certain well-accepted platform considerations that guide delivery.

For example, consumer interest is growing worldwide in lockstep with pervasive use of IP networks and global cloud-based platforms such as AWS, Alibaba, Azure and Google Cloud. At the same time, local CDNs allow content to be served from the edge, putting resources closer to users and providing a superior user experience. DRM technology is an essential enabler for OTT video as content delivered at the edge must be encrypted at rest and played on trusted clients.

Scaling for peak viewing is also a factor. Live sports are appointment-driven viewing, creating peaks in traffic during major events. Scalability for millions of simultaneous viewers is daunting, and DRM is not trivial to master. A poor implementation results in a frustrating viewer experience, and ultimately may lead to costly subscriber churn. With live events, this challenge is compounded by the need to quickly deliver a large number of DRM licenses to a global audience on a broad range of devices. A managed multi-DRM service is one alternative to in-house development.

Advancements in delivering live OTT sports, streaming services continue to experience latency, potentially leading to spoilers and ultimately subscriber attrition. Recent industry innovations, such as low latency Common Media Application Format (CMAF) and Low-Latency HLS (LHLS), provide an “equivalent to broadcast” transmission delay of 3-5 seconds versus 10 times or more in typical adaptive bitrate encoding and delivery scenarios.

Traditional broadcast services, using managed networks, have honed their high-availability performance. In order to retain subscribers, OTT live streaming must match and exceed that performance and OTT services look to achieve this by utilizing a scalable and redundant architecture that is deployed across multiple data centers and CDNs for performant access to content, and a reliable and scalable solution for DRM license delivery.

FORENSIC WATERMARKING AND PIRACY MONITORING

Pirates typically use screen recording software or an external camera to record and restream the content. Acting as a crucial complement to CAS or DRM, user-specific forensic watermarking technology embeds a unique identifier for each session, enabling identification of the device that is “leaking” or restreaming the content. This allows for real-time shutdown of the illegal redistribution or the ability to take other actions subject to the service provider’s policy.

Forensic watermarking can be applied either at the head-end during content processing and delivery (server-side) or within the client device and video player (client-side). For live sports OTT services, avoiding latency when adding a forensic watermark is crucial. Server-side technology requires heavy integration with the live encoders and CDNs, and can add additional latency to live events.

On the other hand, the major requirement for addressing the piracy of sports content is the capability of the fast, real-time extraction for the embedded watermark. Therefore most vendors are focusing on client-side watermarking technologies as the best approach for live sports. This does not require significant watermarking integration nor add to system overhead, which is currently required for server-side solutions.

It is important to note that the first step in combating live sports piracy is to detect the pirated service. It is essential to also take advantage of monitoring services and web crawling tools, in conjunction with session-based watermarking. Combining digital fingerprinting technology, which is required for automatic content recognition (ACR) applications, with session-based forensic watermarking will achieve the most effective end-to-end anti-piracy service. This combined approach enables monitoring of known piracy sites for pirated streams and ultimately the detection forensics required to prosecute pirates and take action to disrupt the entire value chain from illicit source to consumer.

CAPITALIZING ON ALL THIS INTEREST

OTT technology offers a unique opportunity to deliver live sports without regard for geographical borders, allowing global audiences to access content on a broad range of devices, platforms and networks. By way of example, with the ubiquitous ExpressPlay DRM platform, the service provider can employ any monetization method, including pay-per-view, subscription or freemium. As an integral element of content protection, it allows for forensic watermarking of live, linear and on-demand OTT services to prevent piracy.

It is also possible to build on DRM to reduce copyright infringement and minimize losses. While traditional and streaming broadcasters have long used both conditional access and DRM to protect content, particularly live sports, technology cannot be the only line of defense. Tackling piracy also requires pursuing offenders through legal remedies, such as in the courts, sending a message to others. In addition, collaborative efforts to monitor the web, as well as closed pirate networks for content leakage, must be front-and-center in the response.

As the business of delivering live action to sports fans around the world changes rapidly, new challenges take the field for media and broadcasters. Ensuring that OTT content is received by the intended user in a secure, high-quality manner and based on subscription service, device and location can be complex. Content publishers, network operators, and broadcasters must be supported by technological means to receive their full media monetization, so they can continue delivering live OTT sports content to eager fans.

Ali Hodjat is a director of product marketing for Media Solutions at Intertrust Technologies. He has extensive experience in leading product management and product marketing activities in the fields of pay-TV security, multimedia, watermarking and anti-piracy solutions. Before Intertrust, Ali worked at Verimatrix for seven years as a senior director of product management and at Broadcom for six years managing security certification with major CAS and DRM partners. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA, and an MBA from the University of California at Irvine.

The popularity of ‘Game of Thrones’ is evident not only in its massive weekly ratings, but also in the amount of viral content that its fans end up creating. For those behind “GoT,” and for other broadcasters and their content, it is important to know how and where that content is being used. That is where Pex’s fingerprint technology comes into play.

Started five years ago, Pex developed its initial technology to be a “Shazam-like” product for video, allowing people to simply aim their smartphone at a television screen to find out what is playing. “There wasn’t much support for that, so we pivoted to doing more analytics and rights management work,” said Amadea Choplin, Pex’s chief operating officer.

Today, Pex uses that same fingerprinting technology to identify audio or video that matches the content of a rights holder as soon as it is uploaded online by forgoing metadata and instead tracking the content itself. Choplin says this accomplishes two goals: “It helps rights holders see where their content is getting uploaded by you and me or other rights holders … and then act on whether that is damaging their rights; but also understand the virality of their content.”

“So if a TV show is getting tons of memes and gifs created off of their characters, then they would be able to see exactly how many of those have been uploaded, how many times it’s been viewed and shared and liked, and better understand their audience for their content.”

Choplin says Pex could help broadcasters, gain a better understanding of the audience beyond their own channels (think Facebook or other social media platforms), as well as be used as an anti-piracy measure.

Pex also serves as its own kind of discovery engine, according to Choplin. Rather than having to manually search for uses of content, the fingerprinting technology automatically identifies content—even from clips as short as a half a second—and makes them easy for users to find them and address.

As it pertains to “Game of Thrones,” in the final season’s first five episodes, more than 38,000 copies of content that have earned more than a billion views and 46 million engagements were discovered by Pex across social platforms using its technology.

Find out more pex.com.