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Tag: Content Protection

  • Waves anti-piracy challenge sparks digital security revolution

    Waves anti-piracy challenge sparks digital security revolution

    MUMBAI: Piracy is the digital equivalent of sneaky pickpocketing—except here, it’s entire films, shows, and creative works vanishing into the dark web. But India has decided to put an end to this digital thievery with the Waves anti-piracy challenge, an ambitious initiative aimed at safeguarding digital content in an era where technology evolves faster than your favourite streaming algorithms. Organised as part of the Create in India Challenges, this competition has drawn a staggering 1,296 registrations, proving that fighting piracy is not just a noble cause—it’s an urgent one.

    The challenge, backed by the ministry of information and broadcasting in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), zeroes in on fingerprinting and watermarking technologies to combat unauthorised distribution, piracy, and content manipulation. And it’s not just a contest; it’s a digital battleground where individuals, research teams, startups, and established organisations are vying to create the ultimate piracy-proof tech.

    A core segment of the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (Waves), this anti-piracy initiative is set to unfold in Mumbai from 1-4 May 2025, where the global media & entertainment (M&E) industry will converge to witness the next wave of content protection. With four key pillars—Broadcasting and infotainment, AVGC XR (Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics, Extended Reality), digital media and innovation, and films—this summit is India’s bold declaration that it’s ready to lead the fight against digital piracy.

    Why does it matter? Because piracy is no longer just about grainy bootleg DVDs or sketchy torrent sites—it’s an evolving beast that threatens content creators and industries alike. The Waves Anti-Piracy Challenge is a clarion call to India’s brightest minds, encouraging them to develop indigenous solutions that will protect digital content integrity.

    The create in India challenges have already attracted over 73,000 registrations, a testament to the country’s booming interest in media security. With a clear focus on fingerprinting and watermarking, this initiative aims to:

    .  Provide a launchpad for homegrown companies to showcase their security solutions.

    .  Foster novel techniques that improve digital content traceability and protection.

     .  Ensure seamless integration of anti-piracy technologies into media workflows.

     .  Support the development of cutting-edge solutions addressing both current and future piracy challenges.

    Piracy has evolved from sneaky DVD sellers at traffic signals to sophisticated cyber operations threatening billion-dollar industries. India’s response? Unleashing an army of innovators through Waves. This initiative ensures that content creators—from Hindi cinema studios to indie game developers—can secure their intellectual property with robust, state-of-the-art technologies.

    As the Waves summit approaches, anticipation builds for the groundbreaking ideas that will emerge. Supported by industry leaders, policymakers, and tech pioneers, this challenge doesn’t just showcase innovation—it paves the way for real-world applications that will safeguard India’s digital future.
     

  • No option but to protect digital IPs today: SonyLIV’s Manish Verma

    No option but to protect digital IPs today: SonyLIV’s Manish Verma

    MUMBAI: The increasing popularity of streaming platforms brings with it the threat of piracy. To tackle this menace, SonyLIV recently chose Intertrust’s cloud-based multi-DRM (digital rights management) service, ExpressPlay DRM, to protect content streaming and downloads, including both online and offline playbacks on all devices.

    “We all want to protect content. If the content is available freely, the value of the content goes down. Piracy is one of the key concerns for all of us and we want to make sure that we minimise the piracy. It is one of the key considerations when we talk about content protection,” SonyLIV technology head Manish Verma said.

    Verma said that they had been discussing the deal for six-eight months.

    “When you are using a DRM, there is a lot of backend processing, packaging, content integration, etc., and we need to make the change across all these. When you get into such a strategic partnership, you need to keep in mind what is available now, what is going to be available in the future, what is the potential of the company and the evolution of the product,” he added.

    Intertrust Technologies India strategy and business DVP Manas Mati said that it isn't just about security. As SonyLIV is available across many countries with live sports channels, it is also to ensure that it can give lower latency along with encryption services. As to what makes it different from competitors, Mati said they have better knowledge of content security standards and guidelines, having worked with a lot of large studios in the US with a larger geographical footprint.

    “We always work in the future. For example, today we are streaming SD, HD content; we have customers who are streaming 4k content. That means if somebody wants to stream 4k content, we can bring the technology soon to them,” Mati added.

    “This (DRM) is not an option anymore. Over a period of time, all the OTT players have started investing in content protection. We have no other option to protect the IP that we are producing and if you don’t do it, you will be at a loss. So it is a necessity to protect premium content and offers seamless buffering across devices,” Verma added. 

  • Vidnet 2019 to trace major issues related to content protection

    Vidnet 2019 to trace major issues related to content protection

    MUMBAI: While the growing over-the-top (OTT) ecosystem in the country is providing a large number of opportunities to platforms and content creators, it is still riddled with a number of challenges. Streaming piracy along with other challenges of content protection continue to daunt the OTT platforms across the world. Not having proper content security in place not only create technological challenges but can lead to the platforms towards huge loss of revenue.

    In this context, Vident 2019 summit is hosting a very timely panel discussion on the challenge of content protection. The session will have discussions over all facets of content protection and tech challenges platforms face including avenues of mitigating stream piracy where technology leads of major OTT platforms are participating.

    However, the problem of piracy is not brand new as media and entertainment had to deal with it in the past also. A secure service now-a-days not only means that it is impenetrable but also about monitoring and identifying threats in real-time and timely action on the issue. Moreover, advanced data analytics can also help platforms. Several reports also indicated that blockchain adoption is expected to increase soon, enabling OTT platforms to introduce effective access policies and restriction.

    “The ability for operators to deliver content to any device is a must in today’s digital environment – and India is no exception. Operators need to evolve their services rapidly in order to remain competitive against traditional and new competitors and need to be able to offer content on different devices with changing business models. At the same time, they need to keep their content secure to counter the growing and varied number of piracy threats and to meet the requirements of their content providers. With this in mind, a new approach to content protection is required, one that combines technology, collaboration and innovation,” NAGRA GM India  Hitesh Lokhandwala said.

    Apart from technical measures, regulation from authority is also highly needed. More government initiatives based on the discussion among the stakeholders and legislator can also bring more security. The session at Vidnet 2019 on 3 October will dive deep into all the pertaining issues related to topic.