Anti-piracy developer Friend MTS and network provider Akamai Technologies announced an expanded partnership to offer content owners, broadcasters and operators an integrated server-side A/B variant watermarking solution based on the Friend MTS ASiD OTT Edge-switched technology and Akamai’s Access Revocation solution / technology.
The combined solution provides immediate remediation of live and VOD content streams if piracy is detected. A member of Akamai’s Media Technology Partner (MTP) program, Friend MTS is adding its 4th Generation forensic watermarking solution to the ASiD Embedded and ASiD OTT Client-composited implementations already in place.
Read the full news release (Friend MTS)
Why it matters
Anti-piracy countermeasures depend on piracy being detected in the first place, which is what watermarking is all about. Having it integrated at the network edge ensures that streaming sessions can be identified and traced.
If it’s a consumer, what’s done next is subject to judgement about the situation. In some cases, the video provider would terminate the streaming session. In others, force the user to log in again, under the assumption that only a legal user would have the credentials. In other cases, the video provider might redirect the user to a promotional offer.
But ‘industrial’ pirates that access content with the intent to redistribute it for profit are a different story. Video providers often use a combination of responses, ranging from sending take-down notifications to the offender, to notifying law enforcement. The response might not be immediate, to give the video provider adequate time to collect sufficient evidence to confirm the suspected incident to be eligible for prosecution as illegal.
