Brazil. Phase 4 of the operation against piracy and intellectual property infringements on streaming and pay-TV signals began in June. This time was included was the repression of pirate activity in the metaverse.
This operation, known as 404, is carried out by the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Police in cooperation with NAGRA, Ancine, ABTA and international anti-piracy coalitions such as Alianza (a group that brings together programmers, pay-TV operators and technology providers).
Despite being quite new, the environment combines augmented reality, virtual reality and the internet and grows exponentially, already moving billions of dollars. Hence the surprise that content pirates have already found ways to carry out criminal actions to monetize illicit content in this virtual universe.
According to Tim Pearson, Vice President of Marketing for Global Solutions at NAGRA, piracy in the metaverse occurs when illegal digital products or services are sold, such as music, movies, TV shows, and even clothing and accessories for avatars or game characters that can also be pirated. "In the virtual world there is a property right, the NFT (non-fungible token), based on blockchain technology that gives uniqueness to the original article. Therefore, it is possible to identify where a violation of property rights occurred, such as an unauthorized copy of a product or service, even outside the physical space," he explains.
Operation 404 in its fourth phase identified 461 plagiarized apps and 266 hacked websites. The blocking of 53 websites hosted in the UK and six in the US indicated criminal activity on a global scale. Since its inception, 1022 websites and 720 pirated apps have been removed, blocked or disabled.
For Pearson, the environment conducive to criminal practice is not an end in itself. "Hackers give a formal look to the business, use attractive offers to deceive the consumer, and cheap content carries the risk of malware being installed on devices to collect personal information and financial data from the user. We are attentive to how this typical hacking approach will develop in the metaverse, acting proactively, exploring new tools that can identify, track, monitor and protect our customers' assets against illicit uses, whether in the metaverse or in the traditional Internet environment, "he says.
Supporting Alianza in all successive waves of Operation 404, NAGRA has played a very comprehensive role, including technical analysis of information, assistance in gathering evidence – often to provide evidence to content owners in billion-dollar lawsuits – training police officers, the development of solutions to detect pirated sites, applications, links and executable files to the list of the most popular unapproved equipment for pirated pay TV services.
Despite the good results of Operation 404, the company does not deny how quickly pirates create clones and new versions of downed services. This perception caused the focus, previously focused on the means of distribution, to turn to the suppliers of the platform where the pirated distributors are located.
"Our anti-piracy intelligence gathering tools have achieved the necessary results. We continue to monitor pirate actions and shape our tools to protect metaverse and NFTs, as well as content piracy in general."
In addition to state-of-the-art technology, stricter local legislation and the interest of content owners in the Latin American market can help curb the criminal practice of pirates and this new challenge of protecting intellectual property rights in the metaverse.
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