So you need to implement a content fraud detection and takedown solution. But how do you decide which solution, and which vendor, are the right ones for you?
You need to thoroughly investigate which content monitoring and enforcement services are most suitable for your content protection needs. Of course, there are a large number of factors to examine and you might have dozens of questions, but here is the dozen that you should definitely ask to help determine whether your prospective vendors’ monitoring and takedown services are the right ones for you. Keep reading for a quick overview or download the full ebook here.
Q1. Does your vendor have a monitoring solution proven to disrupt revenue-damaging fraud?
It’s important to check your vendor has existing examples of successful operations with other customers that have similar platforms and challenges. Ongoing monitoring of the industry’s most high-value content equips content security technology experts with expertise and experience to illustrate the scope of content fraud issues for your business.
Q2. Does your vendor have truly global coverage?
Modern distribution allows pirates to spread stolen content in high quality far and wide, beyond any geographical restrictions imposed by content licensing agreements. A content fraud detection and takedown service needs to be geared appropriately to have the global reach. Appropriate highly scalable technology, business processes and staff need to be in place to enable global detection operations and response 24x7x365.
Q3. Is your vendor’s solution effective against pirates’ changing tactics?
Make sure that your vendor has the depth of knowledge and technology that accurately captures, maps and analyses the constant evolution of tools and methods employed by pirates, not only to capture content, but to circumvent the technology that protects against this. How rich is your vendor’s knowledge of the piracy landscape? Which tools do they have in their toolkit, and how much experience do they have of real-world content fraud?
Q4. How accurate is your vendor’s monitoring and enforcement solution when operating at large scale?
While it’s important to make sure valuable content is protected from fraud and illegal redistribution, legitimate content owners and service providers hiring an anti-piracy company need to ensure they won’t be incurring erroneous takedowns, especially when dealing with large volumes of content. Understanding the processes and technologies an anti-piracy company uses is key. These need to be vetted through the lens of scale.
Q5. Does your vendor cover all impactful sources of content fraud or just open web?
While illegal restreaming on open web is often mentioned, revenue is lost to other types of piracy too. The catalogue of possible threats includes content fraud across social media, mobile apps, streaming devices, paywalled pirate IPTV services, various add-ons, plugins etc., in addition to open and ad-driven pirate streaming sites. Understanding the types of threat that have the greatest impact on your business is key.
Q6: Is your vendor an established partner with the major social media platforms?
Social media misuse has been a big problem for legitimate content providers due to the popularity of these platforms and the simplicity of sharing video content. It’s worth checking that your vendor operates a compliance programme with social media platforms to ensure that takedowns are swift. It’s also worth checking if your vendor has developed relationships and established enforcement processes with popular regional social media platforms.
Q7. Can your vendor protect content of very short duration?
Content of shorter duration is highly attractive. From comedy to sports highlights, this content is highly engaging and easy to share on social media. Some licensing agreements stipulate very strict rules and even such short duration content can only be shared by authorised sources. However, not all content monitoring solutions are capable of monitoring for content of short duration hence the importance of this question.
Q8. Does your vendor collect and maintain evidence to support possible litigation?
A content protection vendor is often required to supply admissible evidence when they face non-compliance. A traceable trail of issued and ignored legal notices, as well as other evidence, is crucial for content owners and service providers to build their case in court, and to win against fraudsters who damage their bottom line. So it’s important to check your vendor’s data retention policy and how it aligns with protocols set out by law enforcement.
Q9. Can your vendor secure the largest and most popular live events?
The complexity of setting up coverage and distribution of a very popular global live event is staggering. Platforms have to be able to handle huge spikes in demand, and quality of experience is paramount. Any security technology deployed to protect this content needs to be rapidly scalable. In order for a monitoring service to be effective in protecting live content at scale, it needs to be highly automated.
Q10. Does your vendor disrupt illegal operations in real time?
As the value of live content quickly diminishes, the success of any fraud counteraction is measured in minutes if not seconds for such time sensitive content. Enforcement needs to be a part of highly automated monitoring that includes video capture and verification. Other bespoke enforcement processes need to be in place. It’s also worth checking if your vendor offers blocking services.
Q11. Does your vendor’s solution work seamlessly with other technologies to deliver end-to-end protection?
Businesses that allocate big budgets to content creation and distribution take a multifaceted approach to content protection which can become quite a complex undertaking. It is important therefore that each technology component works seamlessly with the rest of the stack. With independent security technology and service providers you can pick and choose the security components you actually need, rather than taking a whole bundle you might not.
Q12. How does your vendor’s solution provide measurable and immediate impact on the overall piracy landscape?
Comprehensive piracy detection followed up by extensive enforcement in cooperation with other industry players can bring substantial changes to the piracy landscape – almost immediately in the case of live sports. Pirates move fast to get live content that they want to profit from and when enforcement actions make one source more difficult to access they will turn to the lowest-hanging fruit, away from the well-protected sources.
And... Are you making an ‘apples to apples’ comparison?
As we discussed in our series of questions on content watermarking, piracy detection and takedown are components of a comprehensive content security system, and some vendors offer multiple components alongside them. So it’s important to understand if you are comparing like for like when considering pricing. You should make sure that measurement is aligned across vendors too.
Summing up
Highly scalable, automated monitoring for fraudulent content, and swift, effective enforcement tools to address the results, sit at the heart of your content security strategy. This helps you protect your valuable content, and to actively generate revenue from diverted audiences. But this level of service requires a field-proven, expert partner with a longstanding background in content security, who has the knowledge, expertise and technology to understand how piracy works, how to disrupt it and turn content security into a revenue generating centre. Make sure to ask your prospective provider(s) the questions in this guide, and if they can answer positively to all of them, together you’ll be able to make a measurable impact on the piracy landscape and, more importantly, your business.
