Civilizing smart pirates who access HD and 4K OTT content

For premium OTT content piracy, high-resolution video files are preferred. Content consumers expect high-quality streaming due to global improvements in internet speeds, regardless of the legality of the OTT platform they access the content on. There are ways for pirates to stream  DRM protected content copies of HD and even 4K content over their own networks.

Hackers can get their hands on high-resolution premium content in several ways. Amazon Prime and Netflix are popular OTT platforms that can be used to steal legitimate subscriptions. Pirates buy OTT subscriptions with prepaid credit cards to remain anonymous because the multi-DRM licencing system protects and manages content and users and client devices. Mobile devices are then used by pirates to stream the  video watermarking embedded content they have illegally obtained from premium content providers. Streaming content via inexpensive mobile devices shields them from revealing their physical locations.

Smart hackers and pirates go hand in hand. Unwitting viewers’ user credentials and encryption keys are also targeted by these criminals, who hope to steal content directly from CDNs. In a multi-DRM system, the content has no value if its corresponding encryption keys are unavailable for decrypting premium video content.

Each frame of streaming content is watermarked with a unique identifier to help content owners track down a thief, even if they have the best security measures. File-sharing and illegal streaming sites are then targeted to remove pirated content.

As with the original watermarking process, content owners return to the same multi-DRM vendor for this step. They have all the forensic watermarks on file in their cloud storage. An entry in this database matches the watermark from the pirated copy. When a match is made, the owner of the content can find out who leaked the video and take legal action against them.