Chapter 45 The Problem of Piracy
In fact, [Penguin Group] is still watching.
What to see?
Look at the impact of piracy on [Deep Sky City].
True.
[Deep Sky City] is currently developing in full swing, but this is based on the absence of piracy.
If there were no piracy, several domestic video giants would be confident to increase their revenue to a higher level.
But piracy has seriously eroded their interests.
Although video websites have also used many methods to prevent piracy, from the current point of view, the effect is still very poor.
According to the usual process, after the material of a movie is completed, it will be transferred from the crew to the technicians and finally sent to the colorists for color correction. If special effects are required, they will be sent to the special effects company, and finally the secret key company will be invited to do it. The person doing the secret key release.
If someone wants to steal the video, they can theoretically start from any of the above links, especially the risk of passing it between the two links is higher.
In fact, in order to protect assets, the producer will sign confidentiality agreements with the partner companies in each of the above links to clarify the responsible persons and the amount of compensation. In order to facilitate subsequent tracing, the film producers often make some hidden small marks on different versions, such as small dots or small five-pointed stars in the corners.
However, in this seemingly very strict industrial system, there are still many loopholes. For example, many movie theater managers steal the secret keys to unlock the copies, and then sell the pirated files to pirates, or release movie discs from overseas simultaneously. Medium copy.
Later came the Internet age.
Piracy technology has made great progress again, and [video aggregation websites] have appeared.
[Video aggregation website] is to collect videos from different video websites into one website.
Video aggregation often uses methods such as deep linking and hotlinking to gather video works from major mainstream video websites into one website or app, and provide on-demand services while meeting user playback needs. Most aggregation platforms will also change the content of the original video works, such as removing watermarks, removing advertisements, etc. Some also add their own content, such as inserting third-party advertisements on their own platforms.
Although major video websites have been taking various methods to stop or reduce this kind of piracy.
For example, many streaming media websites use a digital content copyright protection technology called DRM (digital rights ma).
Even if users can download movies from clients on these streaming media platforms, because DRM will have encrypted the files into a special format, users cannot open them with other players, so they cannot be used for piracy.
Off topic, so you will find that once your account expires, you cannot click on the movie you downloaded from [Penguin Video] to your computer. This is also the reason.
Therefore, many people turned around and went to [video aggregation websites] such as Movie Paradise.
The most commonly used DRM technology on video websites and the most difficult to crack is widevine.
Widevine uses the L3 protection level. General hacker attacks can only crack the widevine L3 stream and get only grainy low-quality video and low-fidelity audio. The encryption levels of the L2 and L1 streams where high-definition video and audio are located are much higher. .
Currently, many large streaming media platforms and content providers use widevine.
But the way is higher and the devil is higher.
Hackers from the International Piracy Alliance have developed a tool that can crack widevine DRM technology. The cracking speed is also very fast. It usually only takes a few minutes to crack a 1080p movie. The cracked version is usually larger than the original file. About 30% smaller.
These tools can automatically download content from streaming media platforms through algorithms, crack it, and then package and upload it to relevant websites. The entire process does not require manual participation.
This makes it difficult to prevent piracy.
Many people think that foreign countries pay attention to copyright and there is no piracy in foreign countries, or there is very little piracy.
Consumers are willing to pay for quality content.
In reality?
In 2021, video piracy in one country cost pay TV and OTT providers US$9.1 billion in revenue. It is estimated that this number will increase to US$12.5 billion by 2024, with a growth rate of 38%.
According to existing data, 27% of broadband users in a certain country are currently engaged in some form of piracy or account sharing.
This breaks another filter.
Maybe you thought there would be no piracy and high payment rates, but you just don’t have this opportunity.
However, rampant piracy will severely dampen the enthusiasm of creators, and may lead to fewer and fewer good movies in the future. If things go on like this, bad money will drive out good money, which is a lose-lose outcome.
But selfish people will not pay attention to this.
Even if you know that piracy will eventually hit genuine creations, you will still do what you need to do under the temptation of profit.
If there is no piracy, it is not the conscience of the pirates who discover it, but the pirates who think that your book has no value for piracy.
There was such a saying in the Internet literature circle before.
I'm most afraid of you.
What I’m most afraid of is that I don’t even have yours.
That makes sense.
Even piracy has no value, which greatly undermines the confidence of online article authors.
Back to topic.
The anime video of [Deep Sky Castle] is so popular right now.
There is a strong demand for it in the market.
Where there is a need, there is an interest.
If there are profits, pirates will have incentives.
So pirates swarmed in and tried to pirate the two hundred anime videos of "Deep Sky Castle".
They had already expected that the anti-piracy technology of the video website created by [Chaoqun Group] would definitely not be simple.
But they didn't expect it to be so simple.
Even if you use the cracking tools developed by hackers from a certain country, you cannot crack it.
In the end, I had to resort to a stupid method - record the screen!
This is indeed a stupid method, but it is also a very unsolvable method, which is slightly inefficient.
Soon, some pirated video links of the popular anime "Deep Sky Castle" appeared on the market.
[Deep Sky City] A video that costs dozens of yuan to watch, but the pirated link is only 3 yuan!
Only selling for 3 yuan!
Only selling for 3 yuan!
Then those [video aggregation websites] also successively put these pirated anime videos on the shelves.
This impact on [Deep Sky City] is direct and serious.
The traffic and payment rate of [Deep Sky City] immediately showed a sharp decline.
This naturally attracted the attention of [Deep Sky City], and after some investigation, the piracy problem was discovered.
There are free pirated versions to watch, so most viewers will definitely watch them for free.
But [Deep Sky City] doesn’t accept it, and the online creators behind [Deep Sky City] don’t accept it.
It's just that you don't accept it, but it's not easy to deal with the piracy problem?
The servers of many pirated websites are set up in a certain country. It is not easy to remove them. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the other party can easily come back.
This deeply troubled the managers of [Deep Sky City].
(Sorry, there’s only one update tonight. It’s been a mess here lately, and I really don’t have the energy to code out more today.)