When theatres were shut down during the pandemic, the studios could only hold their major releases for so long, with plenty of blockbusters hitting premium VOD (PVOD) streaming services instead.

And, even when theatres did reopen, the hybrid, simultaneous theatrical-streaming model resulted in the same problem: piracy. With pirates of new release content no longer required to use a handheld video recording to steal content in theatres, instead having access to high-quality (even 4K) streams at home, the piracy problem has resulted in lost revenue and a whack-a-mole enforcement headache for content owners.

The new eBook “Piracy Has No Boundaries” from anti-piracy specialist NAGRA confronts this problem, offering ideas on how content owners and distributors can make it as difficult as possible for piracy services to continue getting away with theft.

“The impact is starting to become so large, more action is needed behind the scenes,” said Ken Gerstein, VP of sales for NAGRA anti-piracy. “With a PVOD release, there’s no way to prevent legitimate users from sharing, but a first step can be better tracking, and enabling more [anti-piracy] tools, so you have more information to make calls on the strategy side.”

The report details the extent of the problem today: an estimated eight percent of households in the U.S. currently subscribe to illicit IPTV services, paying a combined $1 billion for access to the latest premium VOD content, revenue content owners never see. And more than 80 percent of piracy today is attributable to streaming.

For Black Widow alone, as much as $70 million was lost thanks to it being available online during its first 10 days in theatres, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). During the week of July 19, piracy news and tracking service TorrentFreak reported that Black Widow was the No. 1 pirated film, and was available as a 4K stream and download on piracy sites.

Among the issues the report found was that illicit services can look genuine and enticing to consumers, resulting in churn away from legitimate streaming services for well-branded pirate offerings at a cheap price. They have no idea what they’re watching was “screen-grabbed” or “pumped” from OTT devices, pirated within hours of online publication. Forensic watermarking is the first line of defence for direct-to-streaming content for controlled distribution, according to the report.

The report estimates approximately 1.5 billion households worldwide subscribe to at least one paid content service, and that another 2.5 billion potential household subscribers are coming out of emerging markets. The eBook lays part of the blame of subscriber churn among current services on easily accessible pirated content, and without a comprehensive anti-piracy programme in place, both current and potential future subscribers will access stolen content if it’s easier to do so.

“ … Smart and connected consumers — and particularly in emerging markets where access to content is restricted due to lower levels of SVOD service rollout — have ready access to premium content, and pirate brands are already capturing OTT revenue,” the report reads. “This has the net result of shaping a market that de-values premium content, creating a belief among consumers that online content should be cheap and freely available. Overcoming that line of thinking is not something anti-piracy technology can do on its own. It takes a shift in thinking at the business level.”

The full gamut of anti-piracy services is needed to put a dent in the problem, according to the report, including service disruptions (taking down critical servers), filing criminal or civil complaints, undertaking IP blocking in markets where possible, removing entry points that provide consumers with access to illicit sites, watermarking, monitoring and tracing the source of illicit content, and intelligence gathering.

To download the full NAGRA eBook, click here.