Rise of Streaming Video Piracy Generates Ideas for Solutions, Request for DOJ Action

Better consumer education and prodding law enforcers via language in appropriations bills urging strong enforcement were suggestions Wednesday at a discussion on streaming video piracy. A coalition of studios, broadcasters, MVPDs and online providers went to DOJ with referrals about streaming piracy operations, and the agency is looking at "a variety of candidates" for criminal action, said MPAA Senior Vice President-Government and Regulatory Affairs Neil Fried. DOJ didn't comment. Fried said law enforcement funding to tackle such IP-related issues needs to be adequate, and report language in appropriations bills making such enforcement a priority also would help.

Parties in the streaming piracy sphere often operate in the open but in foreign countries, and a bigger focus on attribution and on cross-border collaboration could help tackle the problem, said Kurtis Minder, CEO of cyberthreat intelligence firm GroupSense.

Litigation against such streaming piracy operations has been on the rise (see 1801190004). Center for the Protection of IP Assistant Director Kevin Madigan said the TickBox streaming media player was a relatively easy litigation target for content companies (see 1712290026) because of particularly blatant marketing language making the legitimacy of its service highly questionable. But going after the add-on software market is key to fighting streaming video piracy, and developers of those apps often are overseas or tough to identify, Madigan said. Even if an app developer is shut down, other developers quickly fill that gap, creating a "whack-a-mole" problem, he said.

Digital piracy methodology has evolved as the technology has, and tackling it involves a general purpose technology that can have a negative impact on legitimate industries, said Dan Castro, director-Center for Data Innovation at Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which organized the panel. Castro said takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- a common tool for tackling online piracy -- aren't effective in dealing with apps on streaming video boxes.

The booming legitimate online market of streaming services undercuts what had been a common defense of digital piracy in the past -- that the content wasn't available any other way, Fried said. The rise of legit streaming services accounts for some decline in peer-to-peer file-sharing piracy traffic online, but so does streaming piracy as streaming itself increasingly replaces downloading as the normal mode for consuming content, Madigan said. He said consumers may not consider streaming as piracy because there's no lasting file, unlike downloading-based piracy.

Consumers often have difficulty differentiating between legitimate and pirate streaming services, so more and better consumer education is needed, Madigan said. He said the U.K. has been particularly aggressive in educational campaigns aimed at consumers and at retailers. Fried said that aside from the pirate system operators themselves, there hasn't been much defense of such streaming piracy businesses.

Early into research on streaming piracy issues, GroupSense found a dark web marketplace of "weaponized malware" to be delivered via Kodi streams, Minder said. The makers of the streaming video boxes, meanwhile, have largely taken a "not-my-problem" stance that helps foster that underground bazaar, he said.

"I'm perturbed," said Hollywood producer Wendy Finerman after a demonstration of one streaming service bringing up pirated versions of The Devil Wears Prada and Forrest Gump, which she produced. She said such pirate video options potentially jeopardize the future particularly of content that's economically risky to make.