Piracy is a constant threat for the Pay-TV operators’ revenue. Hackers are increasingly skilled and always deploy new piracy technologies posing critical challenges for the industry. Viaccess provides a suite of services targeting the illegal redistribution of control word and the illegal redistribution of live TV content over peer to peer network.
Anti-control world sharing services
The use of card and control word sharing schemes has particularly g
ained ground
in all markets. These schemes allow illegal distributors to resell subscriptions to a television bouquet at a very low cost.
In order to do so, pirates redistribute the content descrambling keys known as Control Words (CW)
which are renewed every 10 seconds. The Control Words are redistributed either by internet or by satellite. In the first case, illegal subscribers need a set-top box (STB) with an IP connection which connects to a website to get the Control Words. In the second case, illegal subscribers need to purchase specific equipment that receives the Control Words and inject them in the STB.
Viaccess provides the trusted STB for several years in order to counter this threat. However to help operators to fight against control word sharing during their migration from legacy STB to trusted STB that can take several years, Viaccess provides two innovative anti-piracy services : one against control word sharing over internet and a second one against control word sharing over satellites.
For the first service, Viaccess screens the card sharing activity on the internet, identifies the shared
cards, defines the sanctioning policy with the operator and deploys the sanctioning policy.
The second service targets CW redistribution over satellite : it consists in analysing and filtering illegal
streams containing control words redistributed on satellite networks.
Redistribution of live TV content over peer to peer
P2P live streaming networks are becoming a growing trend with an increasing bandwidth usage and improved service quality. This trend is fast becoming an increasing threat for Content Service Providers and Content Owners inducing potential revenue loss and customers acquisition decrease. As an example, we observed during the last 2011 UEFA semi-final football game (Real Madrid vs. F.C. Barcelona “el clasico”) more than 30 streaming channels using a popular live P2P software, some of them with an audience over 30,000 end-users.
Viaccess is able to offer relevant services, including audience measurement, to the various stakeholders in the content value chain for them to evaluate the threats and take appropriate decisions. In the
long run, being able to unsettle the users of illegal P2P live streaming networks, by degrading whenever possible their user experience, will further help protect the Content Service Providers revenue and preserve the interest of Content and Rights Owners.
The audience measurement service includes the following phases :
• Defining a list of targeted events with the Content Service Providers.
• Identifying the P2P networks target from a global database, either by pro-active watch using web-crawlers’ tools or directly by human contacts or social engineering through distribution channels.
• Configuring and launching the audience measurement service tool.
• Analyzing the collected information.
