Countering the Content Piracy Threat

July 16, 2008

Source: Thomson

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The issue of content security has been a hot topic in the audio-visual market for several years. In more recent times, it has become an increasingly urgent concern. The digital revolution has led to proliferation in digital content creation while the emergence of the Internet and broadband has made it much easier to share illicit copies of content with anyone across the globe. This has increased the window of exploitation for pirates.

Today, a copy of a film which is recorded illicitly in a cinema can typically find its way onto peer-to-peer networks within a couple of hours. An increasing diversity of content sources, from movie rentals to video-on-demand and web downloads, has also led to a greater incidence of unauthorised copying and redistribution.

In addition, the migration from tape to digital workflows has made it much easier for individuals involved in production or distribution to copy content illegally onto external network drives.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) the worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers, distributors, theatres, video stores and pay-per-view operators lost US$18.2 billion in 2005 as a result of piracy. A pirated version of one of the ‘hit’ movies of 2007, Ratatouille, for example, was trading hands online before the film’s release.

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