The figure is attributed in part to the sheer amount of content NBC made available on its site, NBCOlympics, which negated the need for users to look elsewhere for hijacked clips, and the use of so-called content recognition technology, which NBCU general is understood to believe was responsible for preventing 80 per cent of the attempted piracy.
According to Business Week, NBC employed a two-layer technology strategy to protect its broadcast rights. First, it convinced all of the top video sites to quickly add digital fingerprints of its content into their content recognition systems—typically within a few minutes of the live event. This enabled the sites to spot pirated clips whenever someone tried to upload them.
In addition, the broadcaster employed a Web crawling technology from Vobile Inc. to scan for clips that did make it on the Web. It developed processes to automatically generate takedown notices, which were typically sent in less than an hour. NBCU sent out 25,000 takedown notices during the games - the vast majority of which occurred during the first few days of the games.
Vobile CEO, Yangbin Wang, told the paper that that Chinese state-broadcaster, CCTV, had also minimised the use of online pirates in the country – and that whilst piracy had occurred, only 10 per cent of the unauthorised clips were viewed in China itself. He said that CCTV had used Vobile’s technology to track the top 200 video sites in China and that when piracy was spotted, regulators at the National Copyright Administration of China filed take-down notices and a $5000 fine for each instance of non-authorised viewing.
