October 21, 2020, Vancouver, Canada: Online content piracy has surged during the pandemic, as more people at home are using VPNs and DNS proxies to circumvent territorial restrictions in order to illegally access content. To help the industry combat this serious and growing problem, GeoGuard today announced it has joined the Content Delivery and Security Association (CDSA), a community within the Media and Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA).
The MESA is a global association that advances new technologies enabling the digital transformation of media and entertainment (M&E). The CDSA, a community within the MESA, advocates for innovative and responsible delivery and storage of entertainment, software, and information content, and is advised by an Executive Committee encompassing BBC Studios, Disney, Paramount, Amazon Studios, NBCUniversal and more industry experts.
“Online content piracy is one of the biggest problems facing studios, sports leagues and OTT platforms today,” said Guy Finley, President of MESA. “The entire content ecosystem is built on a territorially-based business model and circumventing these geographical restrictions through the use of location spoofing apps like VPNs, puts revenues at risk. We are excited to have GeoGuard join the CDSA and contribute their significant experience and expertise in content protection to the community.”
During the pandemic, online video streaming has increased dramatically and along with it, the piracy of premium content. VPN providers are exploiting the situation, aggressively marketing their products to promote wide-spread content piracy. With studios, sports leagues, content rightsholders and OTTs under significant economic pressures, this loss of revenue from content piracy is threatening their very existence.
“With both video streaming services and usage on the rise, the protection of content from piracy is of paramount importance for the entire industry,” says Artem Lalaiants, Product and Service Delivery Manager at GeoGuard. “Piracy takes many forms, but geo-piracy and geolocation fraud caused by VPNs is one area that can be successfully tackled. It’s essential that studios, rightsholders, sports leagues and OTT broadcasters do everything they can to stop piracy, not only to preserve the value of their content now, but to remain viable businesses in the future.”
GeoGuard’s award-winning geolocation fraud detection solutions are used by some of the top streaming video companies, broadcasters and sports leagues worldwide. These solutions are fully integrated into the platforms of several of the world’s largest CDN providers including Akamai and Amazon AWS to protect against geo-piracy and geolocation fraud caused by the use of VPNs and DNS proxies to circumvent geographical restrictions on content.
The use of VPNs and DNS proxies to spoof a user’s location in order to access geographically restricted content is on the rise. In fact, 37% of all internet users are using VPNs, mainly to access restricted content, according to a survey by the Global Web Index.
About GeoGuard
At GeoGuard, we focus solely on geolocation-based security and protection of digital content. As the only independently rated market leader for protection against VPNs and DNS Proxies and a Hollywood Studio Approved solution, we help the digital media ecosystem and other industries guard against geo-piracy and location-based fraud. GeoGuard provides a suite of geo-filtering and fraud detection solutions, combined with human intelligence, to detect when internet users are spoofing their location.
GeoGuard’s solutions are based on the award-winning geolocation compliance and geo-protection technologies that its parent company GeoComply developed for the highly-regulated and complex digital gaming industry. Our software is installed in over 300 million devices worldwide, putting GeoGuard in a uniquely powerful position to identify and counter both current and newly emerging geolocation fraud threats.
With GeoGuard, fraud has no place to hide.
About the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance
MESA’s 150-plus members and content advisors collaborate to advance change management, new workflow solutions and production/supply chain efficiencies, by focusing on three core technologies; data, IT and security.
MESA was founded in 2008 and has since expanded its activities to serve M&E executives in Los Angeles, New York and London. Its content advisors direct an annual event schedule of more than 25 meetings, conferences and summits. MESA’s editorial staff creates and curates content for 10 weekly newsletters, reaching a global audience of more than 40,000 M&E executives daily, and the M&E Journal, which is published bi-annually. MESA’s industry initiatives have included the introduction of an industry-standard digital ID, an industry-wide security assessment program, an industry career resource center, as well as women’s diversity workshops and awards.
