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Global watchdog needed to prevent piracy
RapidTVNews
Co-operation at a worldwide level between parties involved in fighting piracy will prevent legitimate services from responding to increased piracy by increasing service prices to offset potential losses.
According to Noureddine Hamdane, EVP Strategy and Communication of Viaccess, video services must remain attractively priced while offering an unrivalled user experience. Pay-TV operators should instead invest in cutting-edge content security solutions to tackle piracy and make content theft technically difficult and commercially unattractive.
Hamdane believes that the current cost of piracy to pay-TV is currently at an all-time high today and to illustrate the huge economic impact, it quotes data from the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) that estimates its cost in the Asia Pacific region in 2009 was $2 billion. Moreover, adds Hamdane in the past three years, there has been an acceleration of smart cards and control words (CW) sharing as new forms of piracy have evolved. He estimates that at present there are more than tens of thousands of commercial CW sites each serving more than tens of thousands of pirate boxes.
In a blog posting, Hamdane proposes that operators should preventatively deploy STBs with a protection mechanism between the smart card and the STB to prevent CW from being intercepted in the clear and shared with a pirate STB specifically manufactured for this illegal use. They should also monitor CW sharing services operating via satellite or Internet and then take action to switch off the CW sharing signal in collaboration with satellite operators or take down Web sites offering commercial CW sharing services.
Success will lie in the industry’s collaboration with global anti-piracy initiatives Hamdane suggested: “A global watchdog approach will be the obvious solution for attacking these piracy issues head on….initiatives should include education of consumers and government officials involved in the fight against piracy; awareness of local authorities, customs seizures, joint efforts between anti piracy associations and sharing of best practices; co-operation at a worldwide level between parties involved in fighting piracy.”
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Information and opinions expressed herein may not reflect those of the poster.
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