Verimatrix Pitches Prevention-First Approach to Live Sports Piracy

Verimatrix is positioning its Streamkeeper technology as a way to tackle the piracy of live sports streaming through prevention, according to a report from Sports Video Group.

The company's strategy focuses on making the production of illegal streams inconvenient or risky, rather than relying solely on shutting streams down after they appear. Sports Video Group notes a central difficulty: by the time an illegal stream is tracked and taken offline, the live event it was carrying has often already ended.

Juan Martinez Puig, VP of product management for anti-piracy at Verimatrix, told Sports Video Group that the problem extends beyond technology to public attitudes. He said the public tends to view pirated content, whether live streams or video-on-demand, as fairly innocent, and that many people do not regard piracy as a serious crime. Because it is not violent, he said, people often feel they will not be caught, or that a service taken down will quickly be replaced by another.