A report, Video piracy, from research and advisory firm Enders Analysis, notes that industrial scale theft of video services, especially live sport, is in the ascendance, and that combating piracy is a formidable challenge, providing a direct threat to profitability for broadcasters and streamers.

According to Enders, Big Tech is both friend and foe in solving the piracy problem, with conflicting incentives harming consumer safety by providing easy discovery of illegal pirated services, and reduced friction through low-cost hardware such as the Amazon Firestick.

Over twenty years since launch, Enders suggests that the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline, with a complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model being needed. A lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority, says Enders.

Enders admits that while piracy by its very nature can never be comprehensively contained, if it were deemed a higher, and consistent, priority by technology providers, it could be substantially minimised.

“The role of big tech, led by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta, is currently a combination of ambivalence and inertia, failing to engage decisively with content owners to shore up security architecture, while simultaneously steering consumers to illegal services in the other parts of their businesses,” claims Enders. “Without comprehensive engagement, especially in the context of strengthening DRM systems, content owners will continue to have to bear the increasing cost of fighting pirates, in many cases through ‘war rooms’ for live events, using a combination of techniques to take down live pirate services as they happen,” the firm adds.

Enders notes a report from the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) an estimated 4.5 per cent of the population of the EU+UK were accessing illicit IPTV services, with  implied unlawful revenue generation of €1.05 billion per year. “While the AAPA provides a useful baseline, and acknowledging the obvious limitations of polling respondents on their illegal behaviour, piracy is more akin to an iceberg—the scale of malevolent activity hidden from clear view and much more significant than first appears. Our research confirms this increase in scale to be the case. Commercial operators’ private and commercially sensitive investigations data, along with network analysis, show piracy at double digit percentages of overall viewing activity depending on the event,” says Enders.

In terms of combating the problem, Enders suggests that conversion of the European Commission Live Piracy recommendations into law, currently advocated by the Live Content Coalition, appears necessary to strengthen enforcement and broadly level the responsiveness between online platforms and dedicated service providers in the context of live events. It would also bring EU enforcement closer to UK standards, at least in terms of timely takedown notices.

According to Enders, addressing piracy remains at the bottom of the ‘to-do’ list for many of the world’s largest tech companies, with Amazon’s Firestick a case in point. “The next generation of the device, currently in development, should have an approved and verified developer programme for the deployment of apps. The Firestick is not a broadly capable computing device, and yet Amazon’s policy decisions to make it available as one have resulted in an uncontrolled and flourishing piracy environment,” says Enders.

It recommends that for major content owners the most effective way forward is probably the easiest: withdrawal of all video service apps from the next version of the Firestick. “Supporting the device without any changes from Amazon only continues to aid piracy, with Firestick a high-quality weapon to enable it. Removing premium, legitimate, video service support will limit Amazon’s ability to market and promote the device, reducing consumer demand and ideally the threat it presents.”

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Business, CA/DRM, Consumer Behaviour, Content, IPTV, Markets, OTT, OTT, Pay TV, Piracy, Policy, Premium, Regulation, Research, Rights, VOD

Tags: Amazon Firestick, drm, Enders Analysis, Video piracy