Jean-Philippe Plantevin, VP Anti-Piracy at Nagra, argues that the fight against piracy, whether it is the product of content sharing or commercial piracy, is an ongoing effort at virtually every level of the content distribution chain.
What are the main aspects in the integration of NexGuard Streaming with Akamai to protect OTT and VOD content live?
The integrated solution leverages Akamai’s edge platform to bring an added level of anti-piracy enforcement and content protection to rights holders and content owners. The solution combines increased traceability of these premium assets through watermarking with the real time revocation of the video streams used to feed pirate services. This unique combination of Nagra NexGuard Streaming forensic watermarking technology with Akamai’s access revocation is a significant milestone in the fight against commercial piracy as it enables us to increase the volume of takedowns of pirated streams and gives Akamai customers more options to tackle the rebroadcasting of stolen streams. It also demonstrates the important role CDNs play in this fight - as one of the world’s leading CDNs, Akamai has a high volume of content that’s distributed through their network and on a global scale – as such this partnership was a natural evolution to our anti-piracy activities and critical in today’s unprecedented times as content owners shift their distribution strategies opting for early release of their content via streaming.
What kind of protection does NexGuard ClipMark offer for the film and television industries?
NexGuard ClipMark is an industry-first solution in the fight against pre-release leaks, enabling traceability of short form assets that previous watermarking technologies could not protect. These assets, usually short in duration, include dailies, trailers and scenes extracted from proxy deliveries of full features or TV series which are just as valuable as the mezzanine and master files. With NexGuard ClipMark, content owners and post-production houses have an extra tool to actively fight any pre-release leaks on those valuable short-form assets. Having the ability to do this is a significant milestone for the movie and TV industry as it enables content owners and post-production houses to supplement existing NexGuard watermarking technologies for pre-release workflows and extend those capabilities to all types of high-value pre-release assets.
At this moment, when collaborative work and new online production modes are increasing, what added value does NexGuard add to Avid Media Composer in the content owners' workflow?
The short answer is: a lot. Any leak occurring on pre-released or pre-aired content has a high negative impact on revenues and marketing activities, and those can happen whenever high value assets are shared with editing departments, reviewers or creative agencies. Avid Media Composer is the first non-linear editing software to be integrated with the NexGuard Plug-In for Editing Software. This new solution ensures an added layer of security and traceability in editing and collaboration workflows while limiting the number of steps in the watermarking process. Content owners and post-production now have an extra safeguard in place to protect high value assets as they edit, review and approve the rough cuts or final cuts of their full feature films or TV series.
To what extent do these technological alliances contribute to the fight against piracy?
The fight against piracy, whether it’s in content sharing or commercial piracy, is an ongoing effort at virtually every level of the content distribution chain. Whether it’s preventing leaks on high-value pre-release content or stopping pirate streams in real-time, collaboration and integration with key actors in this chain is critical. Each integration is one more tool in the “anti-piracy toolbox” that content owners can leverage to protect their high value assets and revenues. Used as part of an active streaming protection approach, that also includes advanced security solutions, secure playback, secure streaming, analytics, and in a world where streaming is becoming the norm, these alliances bring an added level of security to content owners and service providers helping them safeguard their revenues and protect themselves from regular and targeted attacks. At the end of the day, service providers, content owners and technology companies must work together to stop piracy, looking at a three-pronged approach of infrastructure, legislation and technology.
What new business opportunities could be opened up for Nagra and her partners in Latin America?
We are very active with our customers in Latam helping them address the new pay-TV landscape whether it’s through hybrid linear and OTT models, aggregation of OTT services, new strategies for VOD and solutions to increase ARPU and to reduce customer churn, and fighting new forms of piracy. In this new context, it’s paramount to think about integrated security that goes beyond content protection to protecting the entire service. Nagra watermarking solutions play a key role in this environment giving operators and content owners a key tool to protect their investments and mitigate losses by tracking and quickly shutting down pirate distribution.Furthermore as content production grows in LatAm, Nagra hopes that its pre-release watermarking solutions will be used more and more by the local production companies.