Content Industry Looks to ‘Forensic’ Watermarking to Trace Pirates
LONDON -- U.S. VoD distributor TVN could have a digital watermarking system in place in a year, its CTO said Wed. at the IPTV World Forum. The system is ready technically for prime time, Dom Stasi told us. It’s in a trial with Thomson to work out kinks. Watermarking and digital copy protection are the emerging technologies that the IPTV sector hopes will let loose the flow of content to draw customers.
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Digital “forensic” watermarking will guard TVN’s signal and let the network tag pirates, Stasi said. As the main U.S. VoD provider, TVN gathers programming from over 100 sources and distributes it by satellite to consumers. Since it’s available worldwide, satellite distribution is uniquely susceptible to interception, Stasi said. And the analog hole makes it “inevitable that content is going to be stolen,” he said.
Industry insiders commit about 70% of initial movie and DVD content theft, Stasi said. Only 5% occurs before a movie’s pay per view or VoD release, since that’s so far down the distribution chain. But as the interlude between a film reaching theaters and its availability for VoD shortens, TVN expects to endure more piracy, he said.
TVN watermarking will overlay content protection that studios embed in films, and will appear in the production, distribution and exhibition streams, Stasi said. It will be “robust” -- able to survive copying, unlike, say, watermarks on U.S. currency. It will lead to the copying sources, aiding prosecution, he said.
Digital watermarking creates engineering challenges, Stasi told us. DTV isn’t like broadcast; it goes through several stages and requires transmission of much metadata, most aggregated and received at the end of the chain. Watermarks change content’s digital characteristics, but so far, the studios haven’t complained, he said. Users shouldn’t be bothered by watermarking, because they can’t see it, Stasi said.