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Content piracy making b’casters invest in good tech for security: Tata Communications VP Brian Morris

Published

9 years ago

October 26, 2016

Somebody had aptly said that a new development brings along with it not only benefits, but also various downsides. If technology is opening up new frontiers of content delivery to consumers, the menace of content piracy too is rising globally. So, it’s almost always a race against time to find neutralizers to a menace like piracy for content owners and technology & security companies.

And, Tata Communications is one such company that not only helps its customers deliver content, but also does continuous research in safety methods. That’s just one of the many reasons why the company continually makes major investments in building and improving state-of-the-art global communications network. One such example of investments is the $1.19 billion spent on the company’s global subsea fibre network — the company claims it is one of the world’s largest and most advanced —- that covers 700,000 km or more than 17 times around the world; the only Ethernet ring serving the Middle East; more than 400 points of presence on five continents, apart from ownership and operation of over 1 million sq. ft. of data centre space in 44 locations worldwide.

In an interaction with Indiantelevision.com, Tata Communications VP and GM – Global Media and Entertainment Services Brian Morris holds forth on various aspects of content delivery, tackling content piracy and the need to have a good technology partner for broadcasters.

Excerpts:

As broadcasters deliver content on multi-platform like social media and OTT, how can they ensure that they have the highest levels of content security integrated within the core of their business operations and across various delivery platforms?

Today, content owners, enabled by technology providers, are taking control in a world where the viewing patterns of consumers are dramatically changing due to advances in mobile and flexible content provisioning. The broadcasting counter-revolution is about staying ahead of the game and providing viewers with the platforms and services that give them more control when it comes to dictating their own viewing experiences.

For broadcasters and Over the Top (OTT) and streaming network providers, this means enabling content to be delivered via non-traditional distribution channels, to support on-demand and catch-up services that allow viewers to watch whatever content they want, whenever they want, on any device. It is also enabling the disruption of regionalization and rights management as content owners seek to extend reach and distribute their content on a global basis.

Hence, emergence of OTT and streaming players and growing adoption of various smart devices, in an increasingly growing connected world, has forced pay-TV operators to offer their content on multiple networks and multiple devices. This gradual transformation has led to roll out of parallel systems requiring adoption of multiple service delivery and content security platforms resulting into management complexities.

To manage the multi-service / multi-platform environment, media service providers need to adopt unified security approach to meet security requirement on any device and any type of content (live or on-demand). Below are the key trends in unified content security space:

# Single security client combining CAS (conditional access systems) and DRM (digital rights management) functionalities to support DVB, IPTV STB and OTT based media distribution

# Adaptive security solutions compatible with any devices (including device with HWRoT, Open STBs like Android STB, Legacy STBs without HWRoT and Open CE devices)

# Security solutions to meet requirements for enhanced content (UHD, HD HDR, early release content) – MovieLabs , an R&D JV of six major motion picture studios, has come with new content security ECP guidelines

# Security solutions to support open consumer devices – software based security solutions compatible with customer owned devices.

Is forensic watermarking a step in the right direction when it comes to content security?

It is the prerogative of content owners to do any kind of watermarking. We, at Tata Communications, are fully supportive and capable of carrying any watermarking through our infrastructure. Forensic watermark is a great help when it comes to content security. It offers a range of benefits to broadcasters and content providers and some of them are the following:

# Single solution to fight against content redistribution across the value chain– For the content owner, the source of leak can be found out; while for the licensee, session-based watermarking enables them to identify which OTT account or smart card the pirate stream is originating from.

# Lower total cost of ownership with easy deployment and scalability – all consumers (irrespective of the device they use) receive watermarked content, and not just those users who own watermarked enabled devices.

# Fast time to market on deployed devices and existing workflows – there is no need for specific client side hardware, which makes it easier to deploy to existing devices.

# Renewable, robust security based on a centralized design – central architecture is more secure, in order to make it impossible for pirates to exploit the client device and easy to renew if a breach occurs.

The main limitation of forensic watermarking technology is the occasional occurrence of false positives in which legal copies of a document, image, video or program are tagged as unauthorized. Forensic watermarks have gained acceptance in the software and digital video industries. Other applications in which the technology holds promise include digital music and electronic books (e-books).

With the rise of number of OTT platforms in India, are the players taking security breach or its possibility seriously as Indian security systems generally tend to be lax?

A mega-trend noticed in the broadcasting industry in India is the rise in non-traditional content viewing and distribution. With the growing adoption of smart devices and the millennial audience of the country, with 50 per cent of the population under the age of 25, looking to consume videos on-the-go, the video-on-demand is on an exponential growth. This growth has raised a number of concerns around public safety and privacy issues, both at an organizational and a national level.

OTT players are, therefore, looking to adopt a unified security approach that can meet the security requirement on any platform and any region. An important change noticed amongst the Indian broadcasters is the investment made in technology partners who can keep up with the demand of maximum uptime, reach and security. A strong network player can carry the content applications securely and smoothly.

Do you feel that the level of piracy of Indian content within and outside India is growing?

Piracy has become a major issue for broadcasters globally. One example of this would be the final episode of Game of Thrones’ season five in 2015; it was illegally downloaded 1.5 million times before it had even aired. This shows that there is a complete breakdown of geographical boundaries and India is seeing a boom in online piracy too. The recent addition of Netflix and other big OTT players in the country is an additional reason of worry for the industry.

According to a study conducted by Evisional and America’s Motion Pictures Association (MPA), Indians form the largest group to download Indian copyright content from torrent sites. So, broadcasters are not only looking to harness the power of non-traditional distribution methods to get their content to the consumer, they also face a battle to decrease illegal broadcasting.

If piracy is a growing phenomenon, are Indian broadcasters and content owners really alive to the problem and taking safety measures or these are just ad hoc moves?

The biggest challenge for broadcasters is: how do they make content available to global audiences in real-time and in different file formats ranging from HD TV, to tablets and smartphones to protect their content and minimize piracy? Cases like the Game of Thrones are a wake-up call. While there is no foolproof way to completely block content piracy, but iinnovative broadcasting organizations are increasingly looking to fibre to run their content on. The readily available bandwidth of fibre enables the transport of live video in higher resolutions, with more security and more potential for customization than other methods. Fibre is also ideal for moving large video files.

Content transcoding and delivery technology in the cloud is also making headway. It enables broadcasters to move content files to the cloud and transcode them into broadcast quality formats ready for immediate transmission and secure delivery to selected destinations. This means that it is possible to make authorized content available for simulcast in HD format. with the aim of helping broadcasters and content creators transcode media files into broadcast quality formats ready for immediate delivery and transmission globally. This drastically reduces the delivery time compared with traditional solutions that rely on the physical transport of media, meaning the time to view can be reduced across all regions.

Considering that Tata Communications also operates in APAC region, how seriously piracy is taken by players in that region?

According to a recent report by digital TV research, OTT TV and video revenues for 17 countries in the Asia Pacific region will reach $18,396 million in 2021. Another finding shows that Game of Thrones has been crowned as the most pirated television show for a few years with data collected from the first 12 hours during season six’s premiere episode showing that India stood as the second country in top downloads. Content piracy clearly ignores geographical boundaries and the unauthorized distribution of premium content is here to stay.

However, with the entry of global players like Netflix, RedBull Media House, OTT players are realizing that content offering and content security are two important factors that will help them differentiate from each other. A technology partner that can help with their global distribution requirements over a secure network is becoming a need. Tata Communications’ partnership with Red Bull Media House or distribution of live Formula1 races over Sky television are some of the recent partnerships we have seen as a result of these requirements.

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Why Sam Altman was fired: Microsoft CTO email reveals board failure

Published

4 weeks ago

February 7, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

WASHINGTON: At OpenAI, the fight was not about artificial intelligence going rogue—it was about who got the GPUs.
An internal email from Microsoft chief technology officer Kevin Scott, sent on November 19, 2023, offers the clearest account yet of the events that culminated in the sudden firing of Sam Altman as OpenAI’s chief executive. Far from a single ideological rupture, Scott describes a combustible mix of resource wars, bruised egos and a board ill-equipped to manage the world’s hottest AI company.

According to the email, addressed to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, president Brad Smith and other senior leaders, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever had been “increasingly at odds” with Altman on two fronts.

Read the full email below to find out:

[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]

From: Kevin Scott

Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2023 7:31 AM

To: Frank X. Shaw, Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, Amy Hood, Caitlin McCabe

Frank,

I can help you with the timeline and with our best understanding of what was going on. I think the reality was that a member of the board, llya Sutskever, had been increasingly at odds with his boss, Sam, over a variety of issues.

One of those issues is that there is a perfectly natural tension inside of the company between Research and Applied over resource allocations. The success of Applied has meant that headcount and GPUs got allocated to things like the API and ChatGPT. Research, which is responsible for training new models, could always use more GPUs because what they’re doing is literally insatiable, and it’s easy for them to look at the success of Applied and believe that in a zero sum game they are responsible for them waiting for GPUs to become available to do their work. I could tell you stories like this from every place l’ve ever worked, and it boils down to, even if you have two important, super successful things you’re trying to work on simultaneously, folks rarely think about the global optima. They believe that their thing is more important, and that to the extent that things are zero sum, that the other thing is a cause of their woes. It’s why Sam has pushed us so hard on capacity: he’s the one thing about the global optima and trying to make things non-zero sum. The researchers at OAl do not appreciate that they would not have anywhere remotely as many GPUs as they do have if there were no Applied at all, and that Applied has a momentum all its own that must be fed. So the only reasonable thing to do is what Sam has been doing: figure out how to get more compute.

The second of the issues, and one that’s deeply personal to llya, is that Jakub moreso than Ilya has been making the research breakthroughs that are driving things forward, to the point that Sam promoted Jakub, and put him charge of the major model research directions. After he did that, Jakub’s work accelerated, and he’s made some truly stunning progress that has accelerated in the past few weeks. I think that Ilya has had a very, very hard time with this, with this person that used to work for him suddenly becoming the leader, and perhaps more importantly, for solving the problem that Ilya has been trying to solve the past few years with little or no progress. Sam made the right choice as CEO here by promoting Jakub.

Now, in a normal company, if you don’t like these two things, you’d appeal to your boss, and if he/she tells you that they’ve made their decision and that it’s final, your recourse is accept the decision or quit. Here, and this is the piece that everyone should have been thinking harder about, the employee was also a founder and board member, and the board constitution was such that they were highly susceptible to a pitch by Ilya that portrays the decisions that Sam was making as bad. I think the things that made them susceptible, is that two of the board members were effective altruism folks who all things equal would like to have an infinite bag of money to build AGI-like things, just to study and ponder, but not to do anything with. None of them were experienced enough with running things, or understood the dynamic at OAI well enough to understand that firing Sam not only would not solve any of the concerns they had, but would make them worse. And none of them had experience, and didn’t seek experience out, in how to handle something like a CEO transition, certainly not for the hottest company in the world.

The actual timeline of events through Friday afternoon as I understand them:

Thursday late night, the board let’s Mira know what they’re going to do. By board, it’s Ilya, Tash, Helen, and Adam.

Mira calls me and Satya about 10-15 minutes before the board talks to Sam. This is the first either of us had heard of any of this. Mira sounded like she had been run over by a truck as she tells me.

OAl Board notifies Sam at noon on Friday that he’s out, and that Greg is off the board, and immediately does a blog post.

OAl all hands at 2P to rattled staff.

Greg resigns. He was blindsided and hadn’t been in the board deliberations, and hadn’t agreed to stay.

Jakub and a whole horde of researchers reach out to Sam and Greg trying to understand what happened, expressing loyalty to them, and saying they will resign.

Friday night Jakub and a handful of others resign.

eNews

Loop AI raises $14m series A to boost restaurant delivery operations

Published

1 month ago

February 4, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

CALIFORNIA: Loop AI has just served itself a sizeable helping of fresh capital. The enterprise AI company focused on the restaurant and retail back office has raised $14 million in a Series A round, led by fintech investor Nyca Partners, signalling growing confidence in the future of food delivery as a profit engine rather than a margin killer.

Alongside the funding, Osama Bedier, former executive at Google and GoDaddy and now an investment partner at Nyca, will take a seat on Loop AI’s board. His arrival adds heavyweight experience as the company enters its next phase of growth.

Loop AI operates where artificial intelligence meets operational grit. Its platform helps restaurants manage the often messy realities of delivery, from margins and workflows to customer behaviour, using what it calls agentic workflows to automate and optimise back-of-house decisions.

Bedier believes the timing could not be better. With restaurants under pressure to deliver better customer experiences while running leaner operations, AI is fast becoming a necessity rather than a nice-to-have. He praised founders Anand Tumuluru and Sundar for building technology he sees as essential to the future of dining.

The backdrop is a delivery market that is ballooning fast. In 2025, the US delivery sector is estimated at $140 billion, accounting for about 10 per cent of the market. By 2035, that figure is expected to swell to $1 trillion, with delivery claiming nearly a third of all restaurant sales. What was once an add-on is quickly becoming the main course.

For Loop AI, delivery is not just another channel, it is the new drive-through. As eating habits tilt ever further towards takeout and doorstep dining, the company’s mission is to help restaurants grow without watching profits evaporate along the way.

Customers appear to be buying into the pitch. California-based casual dining brand Lazy Dog credits Loop AI with helping power rapid growth in its delivery business, while fast-casual chain Starbird says the platform has turned third-party delivery from a necessary evil into a viable growth lever.

Since 2024, Loop AI has grown sixfold and now supports thousands of restaurants. The new funding will be used to expand its product offering and hire across its offices in New York, San Francisco, Tampa and Bangalore.

In an industry where delivery has long been blamed for thin margins and operational headaches, Loop AI is betting that smarter systems can finally make the maths work. For restaurant operators juggling kitchens, couriers and customers, that could be a recipe worth following.

eNews

Food for thought Feeding India serves 23 crore meals and counting

Published

1 month ago

January 29, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Hunger may be stubborn, but Feeding India is proving it is not unbeatable. The not-for-profit has served more than 23 crore meals over the past seven years, turning nourishment into a nationwide movement that now spans over 150 cities, according to its Annual Report for FY 2024–25.

Titled A Year of Nourishing Dreams, the report captures a year in which the organisation sharpened its focus from simply filling plates to shaping futures. At the heart of its work is the fight against child malnutrition, with Feeding India now supporting over 1.4 lakh children every day through its partner network.

Its daily feeding programme has grown into a vast ecosystem, covering 1,097 partner schools and 726 Anganwadi centres. These include 275 formal schools, 720 informal learning centres, 58 schools for children with disabilities, and 32 orphan homes. Menus are tailored to local tastes, from rajma chawal in the North to idli sambhar in the South, ensuring meals are nutritious, culturally familiar and widely accepted. Food is provided through a mix of on-site kitchens and centralised cooking facilities.

Recognising that malnutrition often begins long before children enter classrooms, Feeding India has stepped deeper into early childhood care. Across districts such as Gurugram, Kushinagar and Varanasi, the organisation has worked with 726 Anganwadi centres, impacting around 27,000 children aged 0–6 years. More than 30 Anganwadis have been upgraded using Building as Learning Aid concepts, creating brighter, safer and more child-friendly spaces. In Varanasi, a pilot programme now provides full breakfast and lunch meals, a significant shift from the usual supplementary snacks.

The year also tested the organisation’s ability to respond in crisis. During 2024–25, Feeding India distributed nearly 2,000 ration kits following floods in Assam and landslides in Kerala, and served over 1.9 lakh hot meals after the Uttarakhand cloudburst. Relief operations extended to Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the wake of Cyclone Fengal.

Community participation remains central to the model. Events such as the Zomato Feeding India Concert, featuring Dua Lipa, brought together 28,000 people in 2024, while initiatives like Poshan Potli nutrition kits supported tuberculosis patients during recovery in Varanasi.

Funding patterns underline the power of platforms. Zomato users contributed nearly 80 per cent of total funds, amounting to Rs 74 crore, while Blinkit customers added 15 per cent, or Rs 14 crore. The remaining around 5 per cent came from institutional donors, employees and direct website contributions. Donors can track their impact directly via the Zomato or Blinkit apps, seeing how many meals they have funded and where those meals were served.

The report also highlights tangible outcomes. At the Malvi Educational and Charitable Trust in Gujarat, students recorded an average BMI improvement of 9.50 per cent after daily nutritious meals were introduced.

“Every meal represents hope, dignity and opportunity for a child who might otherwise go hungry,” a Feeding India spokesperson said, adding that the focus remains on nourishing potential through nutrition, infrastructure and care.

As the numbers grow, the message is simple but powerful, feeding a child today is an investment in tomorrow, and Feeding India is determined to keep that promise alive, one meal at a time.