Content Exchange and Piracy

This publication has been discontinued on November 23, 2011.

Introduction

Content exchange online is evolving profoundly. P2P solutions are constantly being perfected. New platforms, such as news groups, stock & share platforms and video sharing sites, are developing at a rapid pace and private solutions, such as closed communities and the use of instant messaging, are now becoming more available.

The piracy ecosystem is complex: it combines specialists in the acquisition and distribution of content; legal technologies which are distorted for illegal exchange; and an extensive community dynamic.

All the indicators seem to imply that the level of illegal exchange continues to grow, in spite of being more complex to measure. However, growth is observed in the different levers for countering piracy: clarification of legal status, evolving “competitive” pay offerings, and especially fingerprinting solutions that make Digital Rights Management more credible. Some illegal sites are consequently opting to develop legal solutions.

IDATE' s report presents the added-value chain of content exchange on the Internet, technical innovations and key players based on a number of case studies. It offers components for measuring piracy and sets out the main tools for countering illegal exchange. It concludes by describing the challenges facing the content and telecommunications industries in the fight against piracy.

• What are the new content exchange platforms?
• What are the practices of piracy on the Internet?
• What are the most popular platforms for non-authorised content exchange?
• What are the tools used to counter illegal exchange?
• What impact does piracy have on the legal market?
• What are the challenges for the content and telecommunications industries?

• Internet content suppliers
  • Assess the impact of piracy on the legal distribution of content
• Understand the operation and use of different illegal content publishing platforms
• Internet players
  • Understand the practices for exchanging content on the Internet
  • Identify the technical innovations in terms of exchanging and distributing content on the Internet
• Telecoms operators
  • Analyse the technical and commercial solutions in response to illegal content exchange
  • Understand the strategies of Internet players in the realm of content distribution
• Investors and analysts
  • Assess the overall influence of piracy on the Internet
  • Evaluate the impact on the content and telecommunications industries

1. The Internet and the era of circumvention

2. Content piracy: the value chain

3. Acquiring and processing content

• 3.1. Acquiring content
  • 3.1.1. Physical media
    • Case study: the Warez community
  • 3.1.2. "Live" sources
    • Case study: Total Recorder
• 3.2. Modifying content
  • 3.2.1. Re-encoding content
  • 3.2.2. Subtitling audiovisual programmes

4. Illegal content exchange and distribution platforms

• 4.1. Decentralised content storage: public P2P exchanges
  • 4.1.1. Main P2P networks
    • Case study: BitTorrent
  • 4.1.2. Innovation on P2P networks
    • Protecting P2 exchanges
    • Streaming P2P for redirecting TV channel feeds
• 4.2. Decentralised content storage: private P2P exchanges
  • 4.2.1. Closed exchange networks
    • Establishing a private virtual network between users
    • Case study: Hamachi
    • Establishing a permanent closed network
    • Case study: Tribal Web
  • 4.2.2. Exchanges via instant messaging
    • Case study: Pando
• 4.3. Hosted content exchange
  • 4.3.1. Newsgroups (Usenet)
  • 4.3.2. Video sharing platforms
  • 4.3.3. Stock&Share sites
    • Case study: RapidShare
• 4.4. Illegal content web referencing
  • 4.4.1. Blogs and links sites
  • 4.4.2. Forums
  • 4.4.3. Groups
  • 4.4.4. Search engines for Stock&Share sites
  • 4.4.5. Referencing of Torrent links
  • 4.4.6. Directories for streaming programmes online

5. Measuring components

• P2P exchanges continue to grow.....
• .....to the benefit of BitTorrent in particular
• Stock&Share sites are growing at a rapid rate
• Newsgroups are still largely restricted to experienced users.....
• .....but users of newsgroups are using them increasingly for exchanging content
• The number of private exchanges is also massive.....
• .....and physical media continue to play an important role

6. Countering illegal content exchange

• 6.1. Clarifying the legal issues
  • 6.1.1. International treaties
    • WIPO treaties (World Intellectual Property Organization)
    • The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
    • The European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD)
  • 6.1.2. The French DADVSI Law (Copyright and related rights in the information society)
• 6.2. Technical responses
  • 6.2.1. Marking and identifying content
    • Watermarking
    • Fingerprinting
  • 6.2.2. Protection of physical media
    • CDs
    • DVDs
    • The analogue hole
• 6.3. Where is DRM now?
  • Gradual abandonment of DRM in the music world
  • DRM, hostilities in video gaming
  • Audiovisual world: technical tools for advertising
• 6.4. Conclusion
  • Shifts in the value chain: towards a user centric model
  • A variety of offers on an assortment of devices
  • Innovative business models must prove viable
  • Transfer of added-value to services

• Table 1: Main P2P networks and associated client-server software
• Table 2: Overview of services for redirecting feeds from TV channels
• Table 3: Features overview
• Table 4: Hamachi' s tariffs
• Table 5: Features overview
• Table 6: Usenetserver tariffs (depending on commitment)
• Table 7: RapidShare Features overview
• Table 8: RapidShare technical features, for both business models (data as at 11/07/2007)
• Table 9: RapidShare download-links locations
• Table 10: RapidShare Search process
• Table 11: Share of Internet homes using at least one P2P application in the previous three months
• Table 12: The top 100 binaries Usenet groups according to daily unique access - 20 November 2007

• Figure 1: Piracy value chain
• Figure 2: Typology of the main platforms used for hosting and exchanging illegal content
• Figure 3: Sending attachments using the standard version
• Figure 4: Rise in download requests on MiniNova
• Figure 5: Changes in the number of visits to mininova.org sites
• Figure 6: Changes in the number of visits to the rapidshare.com and megaupload.com sites over a 12-month period (percent of daily pageviews)
• Figure 7: Changes in the number of visits to the rslinks.org site over a 12-month period (percent of dailypageviews)
• Figure 8: Daily traffic on Usenet servers (Gigabytes).
• Figure 9: Changes in the number of posts per quarter for the top 2 500 "alt.binaries" newsgroups
• Figure 10: Medialive' s solution
• Figure 11: INA Signature solution: operating mode
• Figure 12: Move Networks solution for distributing content in catch up TV mode

Related Reports