Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Manual - Ipr-policy.eu

e brought to bear on the problem. Counterfeiters and
digital thieves now operate globally on an organized
basis. They are not the cottage industry of 20 years
ago. The head of the World Customs Organization has
called this tidal wave of global counterfeiting “a second
industrial revolution.” Brand owners and content
companies need an aggressive enforcement apparatus that
is commensurate with the explosive growth of organized
crime dedicated to counterfeiting enterprise.
A recent successful example of this three-part approach
to Internet digital theft occurred during the Beijing
Olympics, for which NBCU had the exclusive broadcast
and Internet rights in the United States. Prior to the
games, various pundits had predicted failure for NBCU
in light of the time difference between Beijing and the
United States and the danger of unauthorized Internet
streaming of the games—a particularly grave risk given
the recent growth of Internet piracy on Chinese
Web sites.
NBCU’s strategy was first to make an unprecedented
amount of Olympic coverage available on legitimate
platforms—a total of 3,600 hours on various NBCU
television networks and on the Web site NBCOlympics.
com. Then, NBCU and the International Olympic
Committee worked with the key distribution
video-sharing Web sites to deploy two types of
technology-based anti-theft capabilities: (1) technologybased
content recognition software to prevent uploads
of unauthorized Olympic content and (2) tools that
enabled NBCU and the IOC to immediately remove
infringing content that managed to get through the
content recognition software. Finally, in response to
concerns over piracy on Chinese sites, the Chinese
government provided key cooperation and formed a
task force to reduce or eliminate Internet infringements
of the Olympics on Chinese video-sharing Web sites
during the games.
visited by more than 52 million unique users who logged
more than 1.24 billion page views and viewed more than
10 million hours of streaming Olympic video. NBCU
estimates that only 1% of online viewing of Olympic
video in the United States took place on infringing sites.
From NBCU standpoint, the success story of the
Olympics confirms the three-part template for success
in combating digital theft: (1) the development of
legitimate alternatives to piracy; (2) content recognition
blocking technology and automated takedowns of
infringing content by the Web sites; and (3) cooperation
from government.
NBCU’s Olympic content protection effort was headed
by a combined legal-technology team, with NBCU
lawyer Steve Kang heading the legal side and NBCU
technologist Joe Cates heading the tech side. “Once the
NBCU Sports and Olympics programmers provided
such an exceptional source of legitimate content,
we could work with the video-sharing sites to insert
video fingerprints of Olympic video into their content
recognition software on a real-time basis to block
infringing uploads. The results were very positive,” said
Cates. Kang’s work with representatives of the IOC and
the Chinese government completed the picture. “The
effective efforts of the Chinese government to prevent
infringing Olympic video from appearing on Chinese
video-sharing sites were key to our success,” said Kang.
“We know that technology tools work to minimize
infringing content on video-sharing Web sites. The issue
and the challenge were to get major Web sites around
the world to implement effective technological solutions.
Our Olympic experience demonstrates that this can be
done with cooperation from Web site operators and the
support of government enforcement efforts.”
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The result confounded the naysayers, as the Beijing
Olympics became the most-viewed television event in
U.S. history, with more than 214 million viewers on
NBCU’s networks. Moreover, NBCOlympics.com was