Video streaming has become the most dominant form of content consumption today, more so after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, which has accelerated the move to online delivery of all kinds of content. As a result, content piracy has also increased in volume and scope. Anti-piracy and content protection solutions have thus become must-haves for studios, OTT providers, and content owners to trace the source of infringement and restrict access to premium content.
While content owners can rely on DRM protected content to prevent unauthorized access to it, forensic watermarking solutions are still necessary to identify the exact source of pirated streams without harming the viewing experience. Several studios provide streaming video content to different media houses, broadcasting channels, or streaming services for distribution. It, therefore, becomes important to track the distribution channels in order to trace sources of video leakage.
Server-side distribution watermarking can be used to identify both the source and target of distribution, thereby ensuring that content leakage can be traced irrespective of the device type. Once pirated content has been detected, the video watermarking information can be extracted and analyzed. The watermark detector goes through each frame of the video asset to identify the original watermark. The same key used at the time of watermark embedding is used by the detector. If the watermark payload is detected, the session information can be used to find the source of leakage.
Identification of safe channels through forensic video watermarking technology thus enables studios to take necessary action against the faulty distributors while rewarding the ones that have robust security. This can support VoD as a cloud service as well as secure live content with encoder integration. Invisible watermarks that are unique to each individual subscriber can also be embedded into video streams. Thus, in case of illegal distribution of the asset, content owners can trace the specific account that was the source of leakage and suspend it.
In addition, the video can be traced back to the last authorized recipient in order to identify the infringing user/channel. Thus, DRM and forensic watermarking must be used by all content studios to ensure end-to-end security for premium content and deter cybercriminals, prevent misuse of their copyrighted content, and protect revenue streams.
