Affordable Solutions: Tracing and Blocking illegal Restreaming of Live Content

In the realm of streaming, securing live content distribution over the internet is a top priority for platforms. The value of live events is immense, and streaming services invest significantly in acquiring digital rights to provide these events to their users. However, a persistent challenge arises when pirates illegally restream live content in unauthorized regions, causing a substantial dent in revenue.

The streaming industry has devised various mechanisms to combat content theft and prevent unauthorized restreaming. Among these, Multi-DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a defacto solution that prevents the straightforward copying of content. Nonetheless, resourceful hackers have devised methods to bypass DRM protection and access the original stream paths.

Another robust approach employed by top-tier live streaming platforms is the embedding of unique forensic watermarks within their streams. In the event of pirates restreaming their content, the concealed watermark from the pirated stream can be extracted and analyzed. This process enables the identification of the device used for piracy and facilitates its blocking, effectively thwarting revenue loss.

While forensic watermarking is a powerful solution, its integration can be intricate. At PallyCon, we recognized this challenge within the industry and developed a simplified solution that is not only easy to set up but also scalable for live events, all at an affordable cost.

The Workflow:

1. The live video is streamed in RTMP format to the AWS EC2 engine.
2. On the AWS EC2 engine, the incoming stream undergoes preprocessing using the PallyCon Video filter, which generates two watermarked outputs (A/B).
3. The watermarked streams are transcoded, packaged, and then pushed onto Cloudfront.
4. When initiating live streaming playback, the user’s device receives a unique Playback URL with a Watermark token from PallyCon Session Manager.
5. The unique playback URL is forwarded to Cloudfront to retrieve the content.
6. Cloudfront, acting as a CDN Edge embedder, processes the watermark token and delivers stream segments based on the information contained within the token.
7. In the case of piracy, the watermark can be extracted from the stream and subsequently blocked using different CDN session revocation methods.

This system can seamlessly complement PallyCon Multi-DRM without requiring additional integration tasks.

Advantages of PallyCon Forensic Watermarking:

1. Easy Integration: Our solution is designed for ease of integration, ensuring a smooth implementation process.
2. Affordability: PallyCon offers an affordable solution with no setup or Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) fees.
3. Robust Security: PallyCon Forensic Watermarking is built to withstand attacks and protect your content effectively.
4. Cloud-Based Watermark Extraction: Watermark extraction is seamlessly conducted in the cloud, simplifying the process.
5. Rich Data Inclusion: Forensic Watermarking contains 254 bytes of data, allowing for the inclusion of various information such as IP addresses, device IDs, user IDs, and more

PallyCon’s Forensic Watermarking solution provides a robust yet accessible means of protecting your valuable live content from piracy, ensuring that your revenue remains intact.