for live events can be beneficial . Studios have been known to use a combination of visible and invisible watermarking , which serve different purposes . It depends on the situation .
Q : How do you find watermarked content in the field ? A : Studios have partners that constantly monitor the web for unauthorised leaks of video as a routine matter . When a file is found , it is sent back to the content provider . Studios first look for the distributor watermark , which identifies the distributor from which the file came . The file is sent to the distributor and they examine the file for evidence of the sessionbased watermark which will identify the specific device or user involved in the leak .
Q : Can you protect against pirates using VPNs to access and rip content ? What about users creating new accounts for each infringement ? A : Pirates using VPNs to access early-window and other premium content offerings might succeed in hiding their true IP address , but in the case of transactional VoD / EST or any SVoD or other subscription-based business model , they still have to register an account and pay for the content before it is sent to them . That account registration and payment information will be captured in the watermark payload and , once recovered , will be available to law enforcement authorities , along with the date and time of acquisition and any playback from the distributor ’ s servers . Even if the authorities are not able to see the pirate ’ s true IP address in connection with the acquisition and initial playback of the file , the subsequent upload of the file to the internet will also produce evidence as to the identity of the individual or group responsible for the upload .
In the case of users creating new accounts for each infringement , each such account creation will create its own evidence package , which can be linked together by the distributor and by law enforcement authorities .
In short , effective use of forensic watermarking and related techniques always provides content providers and law enforcement authorities with valuable anti-piracy evidence that would not otherwise exist and which raises pirates ’ risk of getting caught .
Q : How good are the latest watermarking technologies at surviving attacks such as collusion , down-res ( blurring ), mirroring and cropping ? A : One of the requirements for a good watermarking technology is that it needs to resist a certain level of attack and we certainly test against collusion attacks . What ’ s interesting about collusion is you may actually end up revealing all of the sources that colluded . Watermarking is not like cryptography where if you are trying to break something , eventually you know if you have succeeded because you see clear video . With watermarking , you never know if you ’ ve succeeded in removing or damaging the mark or whether you ’ ve just left the fingerprint of everyone who participated .
Studios and other organisations test visibility / perceptibility and robustness of watermarking technologies . Transcoding , lowering resolution , cropping , camcording and other attacks are included in these tests . There are certainly limits to what watermarking can survive but at the same time , if the stolen copy is of such a poor quality that the watermarking could not be recovered , that content has likely very little value .
Q : Can anything be said about the type of content and associated time it takes to apply / detect the watermark ? A : The most efficient insertion technique for watermarking is the hardware-based , preintegrated client-side insertion which supports UHD quality video . A pure software based client-side insertion is still efficient , but due to bandwidth efficiency may only be suitable for
HD video . In that case , operators may think about utilising a pre-integrated server-side solution .
Watermark extraction or detection is highly dependent on the quality of the pirated content . It takes a matter of minutes to extract the watermark from standard definition or high definition content without distortions . If there are several distortions on the file , the mark can still be extracted , but it takes a bit longer . Bottom line , distributors of premium video should no longer assume that widescale enforcement of forensic watermarking requirements by license holders is still well off in the future . Service providers have been on notice for some time that watermarking would be intrinsic to obtaining rights to distribute ultra HD ( UHD ) programming once there was a sufficient volume of content in the pipeline to merit the use of the technology . Given the surge in 4K and HDR-enhanced UHD Premium content targeted to a growing population of UHD set owners , it ’ s clear that moment is at hand .
For more information , visit : www . verimatrix . com / watermarking
Case Study
Twentieth Century Fox has successfully used a watermarking-based strategy as a piracy deterrent ever since it began releasing early-window Super Premium VoD ( SPVoD ) releases in South Korea in early 2014 .
Working with its local distribution partners , Fox ’ s strategy for deterring piracy of these early-window releases has had three key elements : ( 1 ) Embedding of an invisible but robust session-based watermark in each customer viewing session ; ( 2 ) Running a pre-roll card warning customers that as a result of such watermarking , any piracy they engage in can be traced back to them ; ( 3 ) Referrals of customers who engage in such piracy anyway to law enforcement authorities for investigation and criminal punishment .
The results of this strategy are best viewed by comparing these early-window releases with ‘ traditional ’ releases that are not watermarked . Normally , every traditional release is pirated almost immediately . But Fox ’ s watermarking strategy has enabled it to delay highquality piracy of its SPVoD releases by an average of a week , and in some cases for multiple weeks .
Each high-quality piracy-free day is a day when the only way to obtain a high-quality version of the title is to acquire it legitimately , and maximising the number of high-quality piracy-free days is the goal of every preventive antipiracy strategy . Courtesy : Twentieth Century Fox
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