Piracy of digital video content has increased substantially in the last decade or so, ever since the internet became commonplace. This has also led to content security solutions, such as video watermarking, becoming mandatory for creative studios.

However, sometimes pirates circumvent these security solutions and cause severe damage to revenue streams of content providers. Some of the most commonly used methods are in-theater recordings, copying from Blu-rays and DVDs, and streaming recordings of SVOD DRM protected content.

The aim of pirates is to generate revenue from illegal distribution of content. They use many methods to obtain revenue:

Remuneration for uploading pirated content

People who upload copied content on pirate websites are often offered compensation schemes to increase such behavior. While web traffic generates revenue, the bulk of income comes from online hosting of digital content by cyberlockers.

Advertising

Like most other online content websites, pirate websites also include advertising on their pages and charge for it. Often, they also deceive ad networks to display genuine ads from branded campaigns. This helps them earn revenues from ad impressions as well as based on the number of views of pirated content (if advertising is present within the audiovisual file itself). Techniques such as “Pixel Stuffing” are also used in which a 1×1 pixel ad is displayed in an unnoticeable way on the website that the users won’t see but it would still count as legitimate viewing.

Sale of user data

Pirates can also gather data on user profiles and sell them to third parties, like advertisement networks which study user behavior to display targeted ads.

Selling of illicit hardware

Some pirate websites also sell pre-configured illicit streaming devices through online pirate retailers which can display pirated feeds without extra configuration. Such devices are popular among younger audiences.

Premium membership/subscription

Pirates can also charge users a monthly fee in exchange for high-speed download of hosted contents which they have obtained illegally. Such pirate websites work with the same logic as legitimate OTT players, like Netflix, just that their content is neither DRM protected nor does it have video watermarking.

Reselling

This is the most advanced form of revenue generation in which pirates create an app store with great user experience and resell it to a broadband provider as a value add to their service. These services are branded with a proper logo and resold as a genuine package.

However, these practices can be deterred or identified through forensic watermarking solutions. Once content leakage has been identified, these illegal practices can be brought under the radar of law enforcement agencies and necessary action can be taken against them. Content providers can also suspend vulnerable distribution channels or infringing user accounts.