Content security: Keeping one step ahead of the pirates

’A war in which new fronts are opening up all the time’ might not be an original metaphor for the challenges facing content protection, but in reality, it’s hard to identify one that is more apt.

Recent years have seen the number of potential threats confronting content creators – both from organised ‘for profit’ piracy and more casual, between-consumer sharing – growing in precisely the same period that the advertising market supporting many of them has become significantly more fragmented and uncertain.

The scale of the problem can be gleaned from a report by Digital TV Research indicating that the cost of online streaming piracy will reach $52bn by 2022. Five territories – the US, Russian Federation, Brazil, India and UK – were found to be the most avid consumers of illegal piracy websites, with nearly 50% of visits for TV-oriented content and 20% for the latest movie releases.

If the scale of the problem has never been larger, at least content creators’ awareness of how high the stakes have become has also increased markedly in recent years.

 Amit Kasturia, senior product manager at Akamai, observes: “We do see that customers are…