Online streaming has become a booming business, even though there are plenty of copyright violations. Mainly sporting events are frequently livestreamed on the Internet through pirated means. Cisco, the security giant, claims that they have what it takes to cut live pirated video streams. This will not affect uploaded video content, though, as that can be taken offline with relative ease already.
Bringing An End To Pirated Live Streaming
Sporting events are often livestreamed on the Internet, even though very few companies can legally do so. Pirated content is not hard to come by on the Internet, and live events are often found in abundance across multiple sites. It is all but impossible, however, to stop these livestreams, as there are no “legal means” to do so before the events end.
Broadcasters are not too happy about this situation, and they will be eager to hear what Cisco has to offer. The technology giant has created a new technology they call “Streaming Piracy Prevention”, which would cut off illegal feeds automatically. Although this concept sounds promising, it remains to be seen how viable this concept will be.
Cisco uses a forensic watermark to identify sessions and subscriptions used to leak videos. For example, if an NFL game is being played and broadcasted live, dozens of people using the same credentials all over the world to stream the game would raise a lot of red flags. This new technology would then be able to cut off all of these feeds in real-time without prior warning.
This concept will offer many benefits for companies. There will no longer be a need for legal warnings and crossed fingers against these streamers pirating content in the future. As soon as a link to an illegal feed is known, companies could use Cisco’s technology and have the stream cut off. No intermediaries would be required either, which makes this quite an appealing solution.
Granted, this Streaming Piracy Prevention technology is a very clever concept, but it also poses a significant risk. Using this technology would not necessarily mean that companies should resort to cutting off viewers from their product. After all, one may pirate a stream one day, and turn into a paying customer the next morning. Losing out on that opportunity needs to be taken into account as well.
Moreover, there are some legal questions to take into account. Giving content providers such absolute power will meet regulatory resistance at some point along the line. If there is one thing we have learned from giving copyright holders any power they shouldn’t necessarily have, it is how they may resort to abusing it sooner rather than later. Youtube is a fine example of how content creators get flagged for no reason, yet they lose out on all monetary revenue from their videos due to “copyright issues”.
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