Does your website contain pirated links – 100s of them? If yes, then your website might be removed from the search results, FOREVER.
Many countries are adopting a rightsholder-centric approach and have resorted to blocking pirate sites, sometimes permanently. This is done to clamp down on the availability of pirated movies and TV shows in search engine results.
Piracy Will Make Movies Unviable
Misuse of copyright law is nothing new; the piracy ecosystem thrives on this. Unless, aggressive enforcement of copyright by all stakeholders including major search engines are put in place, it is near impossible for the content industry to sustain itself.
Google has Zero-Tolerance to Piracy
In the first quarter of 2021, Google in its fight against piracy has processed 5-billion takedown requests from copyright holders across the globe.
Google, the dominant search engine platform, uses a large number of tools and programs to fight online piracy. But there’s still room for more preventive measures that need to be taken.
Google’s anti-piracy principles primarily focus on creating more and better legitimate alternatives by guarding against abuse and providing transparency.
In accordance with India’s new IT Rules 2021, Google publishes a monthly transparency report mentioning details of users’ complaints and the actions taken thereafter.
These reports have one thing in common, i.e., over 90% of requests are only about infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR).
Content owners can submit copyright infringement claims via Google’s webforms. Once the search engine giant receives valid takedown requests, it goes through verification for infringements and then removal. On average, over 500 sites are delisted each week from Google’s server.
Additionally, Google has an ‘automated detection process’ in place that quickly delists content that violates its Community Guidelines and Content Policies.
The Latest Russian Memorandum has Shaken the Piracy World with its Aggressive Measures.
Russia’s rightsholder-driven Anti-Piracy Memorandum just got tougher than ever. The Memorandum 2.0 mentions a new policy that will permanently remove sites from search results containing more than 100 links to pirated films and TV series.
This change will be a huge obstacle to the whole piracy ecosystem. More and more countries will take sufficient measures to hit the pirates where it hurts the most. A laudable measure that might deliver piracy a death blow!
India’s Measures to Tackle Digital Piracy:
The Government of India (GOI) has been actively taking part in protecting content owners’ intellectual property rights.
A few Govt. measures to prevent online piracy in India over the years include the Copyright Act of 1957, Copyright (Amendment) Act (2012), National Intellectual Property Rights Policy (2016), Cell of IPR Promotion & Management, Cinematograph Amendment Bill (2019), and John Doe Order.
Copyright Act of 1957 gives the owners their rights on their intellectual properties – literary, artistic, musical, & dramatic work.
Copyright (Amendment) Act mentions the inclusion of section 65A & 65B to protect content & take punishable action against copyright violations.
National Intellectual Property Rights Policy educates the audience by spreading knowledge on IPR awareness, creation, commercialization, & enforcement of the rules.
Cell of IPR Promotion & Management ensures that the IPR related issues are being addressed as per the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy.
With the Cinematograph Amendment Bill in place, anyone who is found guilty is sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment & a fine of up to ₹10 lakhs.
John Doe Order allows rightsholders to issue notice & file a prima facie case against infringers.
While the Govt. and companies like Google are working at preventing piracy, anti-piracy firms like AiPlex have been doing an excellent job in combatting this threat and beating pirates at their own game! To know more about how to protect your content with a techno-legal approach that has stood the test of time, please drop us a line.
There are more than 40 OTT platforms in India that offer original and exclusive content. At least 5 new OTT platforms are launched every month. Why then do customers in India still seek out and watch pirated content?
You Don’t Find What You Need
Take the case of Naveen, a middle-level executive. He subscribes to Amazon Prime and Sony Liv but then many of his favorite films and TV shows are not available on either of these platforms.
These OTT platforms compete with each other by offering “exclusive content” and “original programming” and that is exactly where the problem lies. It is not financially viable or practical to subscribe to all OTT platforms.
With this multitude of new entrants in the OTT space, content aggregation has become fragmented. It is impossible for any individual platform to provide enough choice to end consumers. In the absence of a legal one-stop shop for popular movies, TV shows, web series, sporting events, etc., people resort to pirated content.
Pirates Offer This Choice
However, pirates who run illegal streaming services aggregate content from multiple video streaming services into a single interface. Open-source video players and the same technology that OTT platforms use make this possible.
What Should OTT Platforms Do?
In addition to implementing a slew of security measures like DRM, watermarking, fingerprinting, etc., they should enlist the services of companies that offer customized anti piracy solutions for OTT platforms.
India’s First Online Anti Piracy Company Could be That Choice
We at AiPlex are not only pioneers in providing anti piracy solutions to Bollywood theatrical releases and the top OTT platforms in India but have also stood the test of time by protecting OTT content way back from 2010. All the big names in the OTT space bank on us.
We understand the piracy ecosystem like no other and are able to disrupt piracy at a visceral level.
People find unlicensed content invariably through search engines and social media platforms. Through an SEO-optimized process of detecting, reporting, and removing infringing listings instantly, we create a clean SERP environment.
Our tie-up with payment gateways, our legal expertise, connection with ISPs, coordination with enforcement agencies ensures that you make the most of your content portfolio and its monetization potential.
Right from the beginning of professional movie production, piracy has been there in different forms; be it bicycling (unauthorized extended shows in theatres) in the silent movie era, pirated CDs, camcorder recordings, or the current trend of restreaming of linear content.
But Does Digital Piracy Impact Sales?
This has been an eternal question that begs an answer. It depends on whom you ask and which side of the debate they stand on.
The Answer Could Be an Emphatic Yes-It Is Not That Simple Though!
There are statistical studies that say that piracy has no impact on sales.
On the other hand, there is a report that estimates that the Indian media and entertainment industry loses some 820,000 jobs and revenue equivalent to $4 billion each year to piracy and counterfeiting.
Factors That Might Help Us To Put The Debate to Rest
There are 2 interrelated factors that show up in almost all studies and reports on the impact of piracy on sales and they are the “displacement rate of piracy” and “audiences’ willingness to pay”
Displacement Rate: A study of the recent top box-office hits reveals that for every 10 movies watched illegally 4 fewer movies are watched legally, which means there is a displacement rate of 40%. These displacement rates translate to 5% less sales or revenue. Tidbit: Piracy competes more with theatre tickets than it does with downloads.
Audiences’ Unwillingness to Pay: A study also revealed that 4 out of 5 consumers were unwilling to pay the market rate for film and TV shows. If they could watch something for free, they would.
These 2 data points imply that piracy impacts sales either by displacing potential consumption or directing audiences to unlicensed free content for those unwilling to pay market prices.
The Third Dimension
The cultural aspect of piracy: The society at large doesn’t see viewing pirated content as something immoral or illegal. Societies increasingly condone piracy on different ideological grounds. An average consumer accessing pirated content with a simple Google search without any qualms or reservations about watching pirated content does really impact sales and revenues.
Piracy is no longer confined to tech-savvy users and the dark web. It is a digital product like any other and is impacting sales by billions of dollars.
What Should the Content Owners Do?
Piracy if not effectively dealt with could sound like a death knell for the media and entertainment industry.
Content owners should partner with a company that is at the forefront of fighting digital piracy in all its forms and has been successful at it; AiPlex is one such.
Just drop us a line and we will formulate a plan that is customized just for you.
Google is your new business card. When someone looks you up or when someone is trying to find information about your products, services, business hours, address, etc., they just Google you. If the information they are seeking is not available online through your official channels, you could end up losing the business because of false and inaccurate information, and possibly negative results ranking at the top of search results.
You should have a positive and accurate official digital presence in the search results.
Some Interesting Facts: 75% of a company’s value is its reputation. 100% of a person’s standing in society is his/her reputation.
Your Social Media Presence Really Matters!
In 2020, over 3.6 billion people are using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion in 2025. (Source: Social network users worldwide ). This simply means someone out there is going to talk about your brand. A strong online presence in social media ensures comments are responded to, questions are answered, customer complaints are addressed, feedbacks and suggestions are taken care of, and brand loyalty is built.
If you do not manage your online reputation, someone else will. Scammers will create fake pages of your brand and indulge in counterfeit sales of your brand. Not only should you have a brand presence, but you should also eradicate misuse and abuse of your brand in the online space.
Your Online Reviews Could Make or Break the Business
90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business.
88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
86% of customers hesitate to buy from a business that has negative online reviews.
You must have a social listening team and a professional review management process.
Your Brand Presence inMarketplaces and Mobile Apps
Counterfeit products, brand abuse, brand misrepresentation, fake mobile apps cause serious damage to how your brand is perceived and could be fatal for your brand. Online reputation management together with brand protection by a professional team could make all the difference.
A good online reputation helps you increase sales, connect with your customers, build credibility, build better branding, and attract better talent to your business.
Connect with us to know how we can help with your company’s ORM needs.
Meh, So, what if I just downloaded one song off of the internet for free. That hurts nobody, no one needs to know. The diva makes millions of bucks anyway. A loss of few bucks just means peanuts to her!
Why should I spend my hard-earned cash on movie tickets? When I can access them from the comfort of my home with just a few clicks?
Online piracy is perceived as a victimless crime; something that absolutely hurts no one. This is quite obvious, a shallow argument. Online piracy is a crime. Pirating content is illegal because it results in a lost sale for the copyright owner be it movies, series, games, shows, videos, music, or books. It’s illegal because it deprives the content creator of his rightful dues for all the efforts that he/she and the team have put in.
FACTS & FIGURES:
Illegal streaming services account for more than 80% of global online piracy.
Online pirated videos receive 230 billion views in a year
Piracy websites received 130.5 billion visits in the year 2020
India ranks 4th amongst the top 10 countries with 5.6 billion visits for online piracy sites.
According to the estimates, the Indian film industry loses about Rs. 22,000 crores and 60,000 jobs in a year due to online piracy.
Book publishers incur a loss of Rs 400 crores every year.
20-25% of books sold in India are pirated.
How does online piracy occur?
Leakage of original content: In the case of music, series, or movies, an insider from the team who has access to original content would resort to leaking original content and sell it for a lesser price in the market.
Recording movies in theatres: Some people resort to recording the entire movie and sell them illegally. Although the sound quality and video quality are quite bad in a normal recording, it still gets sold in the market as it is watchable.
Stream recording: People also record live streams of certain movies through screen recording devices and sell them. With the help of software online, pirates use DVD and Blu-ray discs to record original content.
Why does online piracy occur?
One of the biggest reasons for online piracy is the inherent reluctance to pay and watch. People want everything for free, and websites like bit torrent, media max and traditional PFP applications only make it easier.
Some people resort to illegal downloading; simply because they cannot afford it due to financial troubles.
Other people pirate content to make a profit by reselling.
With the help of pirated content, hackers infect devices by spreading viruses and trojans.
A lot of people fail to understand that online piracy is theft which makes it illegal.
The outcome of online piracy
Companies involved in pirating illegal software are susceptible to infringements and copyright violations. The Indian constitution has a copyright act of 1957, under section 13, which protects all literary works, musical works, artistic works, dramatic works, sound recordings and cinematograph films. As per the cinematograph act of 2019, the government of India punishes individuals who resort to illegally recording movies without the written consent of producers. The penalty is a jail term of up to 3 years and a fine of Rs. 10 lakhs.
Apart from legal trouble, they also make themselves vulnerable to viruses and malware when they expose their networks and individual devices. The infected systems create an opportunity for hackers to install ransomware or malware. Downloading from torrent comes with its own risk because the ones who download are selling as well. A public IP address makes it easy to track.
How to stop online piracy
The only way to protect yourself from online piracy is to stop downloading content for free.
Avoid purchasing software from sellers who insist on making backup copies.
Ensure that the software products are authentic and consist of manuals, license, warranties and service policies.
Check for seals and holograms on CDs or DVDs you purchase.
Contact the experts
Aiplex prides itself in being India’s first antipiracy company with more than 12+ years of domain expertise. It has helped take down infringed content across various platforms, verify over a million URLs, detect fake websites and eradicate unlicensed content for over 200+ content owners.
The piracy audience is often superfans who have a very direct, engaging, and obsessive relationship with the content he/she watches. They go to great lengths to search, find, illegally stream or download content. These are valuable high-intent customers that consume content but do not pay for content as of yet.
AiPlex Business Research-Audience Insights
Over the past 12+ years, we have been monitoring and tracking trillions of visits, views, and downloads of pirated content. AiPlex Business Research team continues to build an exhaustive database and an unparalleled understanding of fan behavior. This data offers rich and predictive insights into content demand and consumption. It gives you actual data on demand for your content; you can formulate content strategies and customer acquisition around this data.
Digital Marketing for Content Owners
The content protection team has found a great ally in the digital marketing team of AiPlex Digital. The SEO experts, social media superstars, online advertisement gurus have all joined hands in researching keywords, competitor analysis, behavioral targeting, search engine traffic, Google analytics, etc.
Monetizing Piracy-Value-Addition from our Anti Piracy Solutions
We have a very counter-intuitive product for you. As an anti-piracy company, while we protect your content successfully against all sorts of piracy, our business research product will give actionable insights to your marketing and distribution teams. In essence, there is a large unmonetized audience for your content. In order for you to monetize this demand for content, AiPlex will share data that can be used to predict which territories and regions have an unsatiated demand for your content way ahead of the release date. Digital advertising campaigns can be targeted at these audience segments.
We Have Heard Good Things
We have already rolled out our product to a select group of our long-term customers. The feedback has been great and there is a great deal of excitement. Our data is being used by these customers to plan releases, pricing, and distribution strategies, implement both offline and digital marketing strategies; internationally, as well as, regionally with remarkable success.
To find about more about how AiPlex Business Research & Audience Insights can help you with your marketing and distribution strategy,please drop us a line.
What we are witnessing now is not only a spurt in piracy but an unheard-of sophistication and complexity with which content is pirated, distributed, and monetized. Online piracy is a full-fledged parallel industry; its bigger, bolder, innovative, and definitively more lucrative than it ever was.
Today’s pirate is no more that loner, nerdy teenager from some godforsaken place sharing movies and popular shows on torrents just for the thrills. It is an organized criminal network running highly profitable businesses by using sophisticated technology.
They are causing serious damage: By 2023, video piracy is expected to cost $67 billion in economic losses globally. They’re poaching audiences, bleeding legitimate businesses, and putting at risk individuals too.
Conventionally, anti piracy companies have fought piracy with methods like DMCA notifications, ISP blocking, copyright enforcement, court orders, etc. Yes, these methods are efficient but then new challenges require new approaches.
What is intelligence-driven approach to piracy?
Intelligence-driven approach to anti piracy is this new approach. It uses insights from technology‑driven data and data gathered by AiPlex cybersecurity specialists.
They answer very elementary but crucial questions.
How is your content being pirated at the moment?
How is your content likely to be pirated in the future?
What is that you should do to plug these vulnerabilities?
Intelligence-driven approach in action
One of the most popular OTT platforms in India, a big powerhouse, approached us to help them with piracy. Our team used machine learning, behavioral data, and an in-house blacklist of rogue IPTV services to identify 38 illegal IPTV services that were piggybacking on the popularity of our client and stealing our client’s content. We used our own patented methods and identified the source of the leaks and shared it with the client for legal and other remedial actions. We used our conventional methods (including collaborating with payment gateways) to disrupt their services. Most of them (32 of them to be precise) had to shut shop and other had to move away. 78% reduction in piracy was the happy outcome. This was a major validation of how intelligence-driven approach together with our conventional methods could give us that edge in fighting digital piracy.
Intelligence-driven anti piracy can help you dominate search results
Every day, users perform billions of searches through search engines, websites, and social media. This is how your customers find you, but unfortunately the same search engines and platforms also index and show pirated content from torrents, cyber lockers, and streaming sites.
Keeping search results clean is more important than ever, especially for a content company.
AiPlex uses search analysis and keyword research to identify copyright infringements in each search. We then enforce copyright and delist infringing search results. Obviously, driving traffic to licensed and paid-for content. If you need a proven content protection solution that is futuristic and stood the test of time for over a decade now, drop us a line, we will customize an anti piracy solution best suited for your needs.
It has been 18 years since we started AiPlex Software Pvt. Ltd. As I look back on our journey as a company, it gives me a great sense of pride and satisfaction about what we have accomplished. There have been tremendous successes and also occasional setbacks; however, we have always focussed on doing our best and surged forward.
2019 has been a very successful year for the company on many fronts especially we moving into our own 12,000 sq. ft. N-Cube Centre premises. This newsletter is all about that and the exciting journey ahead.
As you all know, COVID-19, or coronavirus as it is more popularly known, has impacted businesses and humanity worldwide, we are no different, but we are well-equipped to face such challenges.
We are very excited about what 2020 has in store for all of us. This will be a year of growth and unimaginable new opportunities for everyone at AiPlex (Anti Piracy, Digital Marketing, and Online Advertising).
We appreciate your continued commitment to the company. This is that phase, in a company’s trajectory, where each employee has to raise the bar of her / his deliverables and come out with out-of-the-box solutions and initiatives. The only way to do that is to exceed the client’s expectations through innovation and outstanding services. The client should bank on us as their trusted advisor and help us grow our business through repeat business opportunities.
One of the major exciting events in 2019 is our company-owned new office N-Cube Centre, an updated online presence (www.aiplex.com; www.aiplexantipiracy.com; www.aiplexdigital.com; www.aiplexads.com), reinforcing our existing client relationships, streamlining operational processes and our engagement with new prospective clients.
We have built excellent teams in the digital marketing and online advertising department and strengthened our sales team. This will start to yield results in the coming months.
We are continuously improving our culture and work environment, thus creating opportunities for professional and personal growth for our existing employees. At the same time, we are attracting the best talent in the marketplace to fill in new opportunities arising at AiPlex in different verticals.
We hope you enjoyed reading this message from the MD’s Desk, and we look forward to your proactive and constructive efforts in our journey together.
Best wishes to you and your families for a glorious second part of 2020 and beyond.
Digital pirates are keeping up with the times! They use the same technology that OTT and streaming platforms use to distribute unlicensed content. They have built their own ecosystem with cutting-edge technology. Now, all that a pirate needs are a streaming box and a high-speed reliable internet connection.
The days of torrents, cumbersome search for content, painful downloads, and low-quality content have gone. The content is just out there easily accessible, and high quality too.
The only way content owners and anti piracy firms can fight this evolving form of digital piracy is by using computing and machine learning prowess. Effective anti piracy and content protection is near impossible with traditional anti piracy measures. This is where using machine learning to fight digital piracy becomes inevitable.
Fighting digital piracy is all about staying a step ahead of pirates. Using machine learning and data analytics in combination with natural language processing (NLP), keyword searches, etc., (to identify sites hosting pirated and unlicensed content) is a great way to fight digital piracy. Let us understand how!!
What is Machine Learning? How can it be used for fighting Digital Piracy?
Machine Learning is a subset of Artificial Intelligence. Machine learning is the ability of systems to automatically process big data and produce reliable and repeatable outcomes. It is based on the concept that machines can learn from data, identify patterns, and perform specific tasks with minimal human intervention. In this case, identifying URLs hosting pirated content. Machine learning can either be supervised or unsupervised.
With respect to fighting digital piracy, supervised machine learning is a better choice as it involves training the machine using data that categorizes URLs as legitimate or illegitimate. It can also be trained to identify piracy hotspots and hosting sites with the highest incidence of piracy and the most likelihood of hosting infringed content.
By crawling the web, the monitoring and detection team effectively compiles an exhaustive database of URLs. Applying various machine learning algorithms, customized to each content type, the URLs are categorized either as legitimate, or illegitimate URLs hosting pirated content. This process typically eliminates approximately 94% of the URLs, and it is usually the remaining 6% URLs that host pirated content.
Since this is a reiterative process, the system progressively becomes efficient and accurate with each reiteration. The anti piracy efforts get laser focussed on eliminating this narrow subset (6% URLs that host pirated content) thus greatly enhancing the effectiveness of anti piracy efforts in terms of speed, time, and eradication rate.
Checks and Balances & How it Improves Machine Learning Efficiency
Even as the machine learning tool identifies an URL as an illegitimate URL hosting infringed content, anti-piracy analysts manually cross-check the identified websites before authenticating whether the URL has been correctly identified.
This process, in turn, helps further finetune the machine learning systems. These human decisions are used to train the system/machine, which when confronted with similar situations in the future will be better able to deal with the query. A machine learning technique called reinforcement learning in which the machine learns from continuous and relentless trial-and-error is used.
Machine Learning Could Deliver a Decisive Blow on Digital Piracy
Machine-learning technologies that are applied to investigate high-value and high-profile cyber attacks can be used to detect pirate websites, find their owners, and remove illegal content.
Classifying traffic by using IP flow data from an IPFIX/NetFlow feed is an option that seems to have a lot of promise.
Machine learning can exploit weaknesses in the piracy ecosystem where most providers are using a client/server software pair from specific providers, and these can be targeted.
Use IP flow data to detect pirated linear streaming traffic on broadband networks.
Do you think that Machine-Learning Based Piracy Detection system could give digital piracy a final decisive blow, or do you believe that the pirates have a lot more “up their sleeve”?
