The interview, which was published a few days ago on the Broadband TV News portal, warns of a dramatic increase in piracy, which has turned into a form of organised business, to which operators must respond by changing their strategy. Maria Malinkowitsch of Verimatrix, one of the world's leading cyber security companies, warns that traditional control methods are failing as "81% of requests to download illegally uploaded content are now ignored".
According to the executive, companies are still wrongly focusing on addressing the consequences instead of the causes. She therefore stresses the need for a fundamental turnaround, whereby "the industry must move from mere reaction to containment and prevention", which she sees as the only possible long-term path. Malinkowitsch identifies as a key threat the abuse of distribution networks and unprotected applications that enable the mass theft of real-time streams.
How digital pirates rob
Traditional forms such as torrents have given way to more sophisticated forms of piracy. The main form today is what we might call 'piracy as a service' - complex illegal streaming platforms that operate like professional Netflix-type platforms with their own interface, recommendation system and thousands of channels, including premium sports. The second key form is 'CDN theft'- hackers steal login credentials from legal apps and use them to download original content directly from the servers where it is legally stored.
A long-standing problem is the distribution of TV content through, for example, web browsers, smart TVs, smartphones or tablets, which are more easily accessible than in the past traditional set-top boxes with encryption via decryption cards. Those who remember may recall the arrival of the Romanian satellite service Digi TV and its super-cheap offer. Piracy even reached such a level that keys could be obtained automatically using specially adapted software.
a "business" like any other
On the dark web, which is referred to as the dark layer of the Internet, one can buy a ready-made package to run such a service. It is a complete illegal platform that already includes a recommendation system, a user management system, an administration interface, payments via credit cards and cryptocurrencies, and thousands of channels including premium sports. The whole issue was very well described by Synamedia less than three years ago.
How to use such services? Artificial intelligence helps significantly. Monitoring is done by AI-driven systems that scan the web, illegal IPTV platforms and social networks (especially Telegram channels where "operators" find oversellers). Watermarking plays a key role in detection - invisible tags are embedded in videos that remain after transcoding or other manipulations. When content appears on a pirate platform, this watermark can be identified and the exact source of the content and who is the originator of the theft can be traced.
An example of a successful fight from the Czech Republic
The Stream Cinema Community add-on has long been one of the most serious piracy tools on the Czech market, through which Kodi users accessed content from all key players such as Netflix, Disney , HBO Max or Prime Video. The technical complexity of the fight against this add-on lay in its legal architecture: the service itself did not host any content, functioning only as a search engine and a player of links to files stored in cloud repositories.
Despite the fact that the add-on (and its alternative, Stream Cinema) had long been known about and considered problematic, it was de facto only the Association of Commercial Television (AKTV), which represents the Nova, Prima and Óčko groups on the domestic market, that managed to move it years later. It stopped appearing on this online platform altogether, the SCC "service" ended completely, and its alternative lost the AKTV-protected content.
Source: mediaguru.cz