Irdeto’s new “pay-for-use” business model makes watermarking accessible to content owners and post-production studios of all sizes
Irdeto TraceMark™ for Distribution, a watermarking solution for content owners, post-production studios, and content aggregators has been integrated with IBM’s Aspera on Cloud, the video industry’s leading file transfer solution. The combined solution offers the film industry a fast to market, easy to implement, and affordable solution towards the fight against piracy.
Irdeto and IBM’s pre-integrated solution sets a new standard in the movie industry by solving a long-standing industry challenge of having two separate workflows to transfer and watermark files. The full integration of TraceMark and Aspera on Cloud eliminates the need for costly integrations of the two workflows and is replaced with fast deployments that scale to any number of distributed files and downloads. And a simple user-interface for package sending takes the complexity out of watermarking. With the click of one button, customers can now elect to watermark video files on the fly, while the content is being distributed to an end-user.
In addition, Irdeto introduces a new, “pay-for-use” model that enables customers to pay for the number of files they watermark, rather than having a “one-size fits all” annual fee. Customers can elect to subscribe for watermarking and/or detection services separately. Pre-integration and the new business model make watermarking accessible to content owners and post-production houses of all sizes.
Irdeto’s TraceMark
Irdeto’s TraceMark for Distribution – along with the acclaimed Online Piracy Detection solution – enables content owners, broadcasters and OTT providers to efficiently protect content at all stages of the value chain, while also addressing the different security threats faced by distribution partners in various regions. Its simple post-encode workflow supports a wide range of mezzanine and broadcast quality distribution file formats, including UHD and HDR, and has zero-impact on file quality or download speeds.
Advancements in technology and increasing broadband access has made it easier than ever for pirates to steal and share high-quality content over the internet. According to Irdeto’s recent analysis, there are more than 600 million visits to the top 500 linking sites each month. Parks Associates estimates the revenue lost to video pirate operations could exceed $61 billion in 2020 and $67 billion worldwide by 2023.
These are some of the examples that explain why content owners and sports rights holders are adding more stringent content protection clauses as part of contractual requirements and are taking a stronger stance when it comes to security for premium content.
IBM Aspera
IBM Aspera, a market leader in its field, offers a hosted service that enables organizations to securely and reliably move large files across on-premises and multi-cloud environments at unrivaled speeds. In fact, IBM Aspera’s transfer technology is available in over 200 integrations that exist across the Aspera platform.
The platform is widely used by all major studios and many content distributors, and the integration with Irdeto’s watermarking solution will now allow all players in the ecosystem to secure their content.
“Content distributors invest an incredible amount of resources into ensuring great programming reaches end-users quickly and smoothly, and piracy is an ever-present threat. But today, Irdeto and IBM Aspera have made an industry-leading move by providing a ‘one-stop-shop’ to fight content redistribution and piracy”, said Sachin Agarwal, Worldwide Offering Management Lead for IBM Aspera.
“If you look at the challenges that we see in the market today, there is this multibillion-dollar race on the content side, and as a company, we’ve invested a lot over the last decade to help disrupt the streaming piracy network. TraceMark is just one more anti-piracy solution in Irdeto’s vast cybersecurity arsenal. We understand the challenges faced by the video entertainment ecosystem and work tirelessly to innovate solutions to address this. This industry-first solution demonstrates our commitment to fighting piracy and protecting the industry”, said Shane McCarthy, COO Video Entertainment at Irdeto.
