© 2023 PDN Cyber Security Consultant. All rights reserved.
In our last article, we saw that structural changes in the world of digital piracy are important enough to justify its industrialization. One of the ways in which such a development of a – very lucrative – activity is possible was highlighted by the representative of the Hollywood studios, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in its report.
For the first time, the report mentions, alongside known actors such as torrent sites, streaming portals and IPTV services, a completely new category, which the organization calls Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS).
This growing category refers to tools and services that allow potential infringers to easily set up a piracy campaign, providing a package of ready-to-use services. These pre-packaged services provide tools and ready-to-go packages, including iptv platforms, video service providers, content management systems – in short, everything that a pirate who wants to get into the business needs to get a service up and running quickly. According to the MPA, these services illustrate “the scale, sophistication and profitability of modern commercial online copyright infringement.”
In its report, the MPA mentions among others XFileSharing scripts, Njalla domain provider, IPTV Smarters management suite or Fembed.com video integration service.
A number of domain names are also listed as being very tolerant of copyright infringers, such as .is .to .io or .tv, which are well known by pirates. The MPA reminds that it is possible “directly or through its contractual relationship with its registration offices” to “remove or deactivate domain names used by websites engaged in massive copyright infringement”. Even if, for now, a court decision is necessary to deactivate a site, according to the MPA, it should be made easier to do so in cases of massive and obvious copyright infringement.
The MPA also points out the sometimes “problematic” role played by advertisers, advertising agencies or hosting companies such as AdsKeeper, Propeller Ads, 1XBET, BlueAngelHost, or Ddos-Guard.
Even international companies such as Mail.ru, VK.com, and Baidu are also flagged as problematic, blamed for not filtering content well enough and not reacting swiftly in response to reports of copyright infringement. “Baidu should apply rigorous filtering technology to identify illegal content, so that it can take more effective action to suspend or terminate repeated infringements,” the MPA notes. Similarly the messaging service Telegram is accused of not having sufficiently effective takedown tools.
How, in such a context, can we protect content from these malicious actors without compromising user experience?
Several aspects must be addressed simultaneously.
However, you should not forget that all these methods are burdensome, costly and they marginally impair the user experience, and are not completely efficient.
It is therefore essential to associate them with a thorough search and a quick removal; despite all these precautions, it is indeed very likely that your content will end up on pirate sites anyway.
If you need to protect your content, don’t hesitate to contact one of our account managers. Over a decade of experience in the field of piracy makes PDN the ideal partner to ensure that your intellectual property generates the profits you deserve.
Join us again in November, in our next article, we will look at the role of Cloudflare and its influence on piracy. Have a good read and see you soon!
© 2023 PDN Cyber Security Consultant. All rights reserved.