With mass populations confined to their homes as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, streaming has hit new highs but so has piracy, yet service providers are also quickening the adoption of piracy tracking and monitoring solutions to secure their content and shore up their coffers says a study from ABI Research.
Indeed the analyst’s DRM and Anti-Piracy Market Trends technology analysis report predicts that these new dynamics will spur the anti-piracy solutions market to generate US$172 million by 2021.Putting its research into context, ABI said that illegal streaming activity hurts the bottom line of content producers, video streaming service providers, and pay-TV operators alike, calculating more than 17% of worldwide video streaming users streaming content illegally. This says ABI is provoking service and content providers to invest in products and services to protect their wares, leading a content security market that will generate US$1.9 billion in 2020 alone. Anti-piracy specific solutions alone are set to reach US$172 million in 2021 and grow to US$229 million in 2024, representing 10% of the revenue generated by the total content security market.
“Despite these efforts to maintain and gain subscribers, service providers are increasingly challenged by content piracy,” noted Khin Sandi Lynn, industry analyst at ABI Research. “In fact, there is a bounty of ways to illegally view video content, which is causing service providers to not only lose millions of subscribers each year, but also lose billions in potential revenue.”
Looking at individual areas more prone to piracy, ABI calculated that live streaming and live sports were at high piracy risk in Europe to the tune of a €$941 million loss for providers in the last year. In North America, 7.5 million households are reportedly accessing pirated content, costing providers over US$4 billion per year. Premium content streaming through piracy websites or torrent sites are high in emerging markets in Asia-Pacific; resulting increasing number of consumers terminating legal pay-TV services.
Lockdowns and stay-at-home orders imposed due to Covid-19 outbreak pushed the level of video content piracy higher. The research found said an increase in tracked illegal video downloads was mainly driven by the Covid-19 lockdowns worldwide.
“Password and credential sharing, file sharing over the internet, and purchasing illegal streaming boxes are just a few ways consumers are currently pillaging video content,” Lynn added.
Going forward, to combat piracy the DRM and Anti-Piracy Market Trends technology analysis report advised firms to deploy watermarking and fingerprinting technologies alongside emerging anti-piracy services. It said that service providers need to deploy these new technologies and, at the same time, do a proper assessment in partnership with content security solution/anti-piracy vendors on deployment costs, scalability, and time-to-market.
“Video service providers need all hands-on deck to make sure content is secured end-to-end. The integration of CAS, DRM, and anti-piracy partnerships for piracy tracking, pirate activity monitoring and response are all required to turn the tide on video piracy,” Lynn concluded.
