Content owners amp up anti-piracy strategy with Irdeto

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As content owners and distributors continue to address consumer demand for premium content, Interoperable Master Format (IMF) is becoming an increasingly popular exchange format for 4K and HDR assets. While this format has helped OTT providers and pay-TV operators reduce costs and complexity associated with distributing premium content, pirates have also evolved their piracy strategies to steal valuable assets. To address piracy challenges, Irdeto has introduced an industry-first feature set into its scalable distributor watermarking solution. Irdeto TraceMark™ forensic watermarking now provides content owners with support for JPEG 2000 (J2K) in IMF exchange formats to help prevent theft of premium 4K and HDR content.

With Irdeto TraceMark now supporting J2K in IMF, content owners are able to keep one master version of the content and send out individually watermarked versions of the content on-the-fly with no delay to distributors. As a result, content owners no longer need to transcode individual copies, reducing the use of storage space and preparation time before distributing content. The solution also offers the ability to distribute high-quality content at scale in individually watermarked form, provides post-encode benefits that eliminate the need for custom watermarking plugins and operates independently of encoders, requiring zero integration so it can be deployed immediately. TraceMark is also the first to fully integrate distributor watermarking with Aspera’s FASP® transfer technology.

“One thing is for certain, if pirates want to get their hands on premium content, they will alter their tactics in order to find a weak point in a content owner’s anti-piracy strategy,” said Pete Cossack, vice president of Cybersecurity Services at Irdeto. “To combat pirates, we recognise the importance of continually innovating in order to enhance anti-piracy strategies. With our industry-first J2K in IMF watermarking solution, we are adding yet another layer of defense to help content owners and distributors protect premium 4K and HDR content. Supporting IMF exchange formats is the type of innovative functionality needed to help content owners stay one step ahead of pirates.”

Offered as a key solution in the Irdeto Piracy Control suite, Irdeto TraceMark forensic watermarking provides the industry’s widest support for file formats and codecs, including XDCAM, HD50, ProRes, AVC, HEVC and now J2K in IMF. The solution provides content owners with deeper insight into the actual origin of pirated content, allowing content owners to make informed decisions based on correct data rather than what was purported based on file name or other characteristics. Irdeto’s team of multi-discipline specialists and its proven methodology has a successful track record in rapidly identifying content theft, disrupting piracy and leveraging its established networks to track down pirates and their supply chains.