As a result of travel restrictions, theatre cancellations, and a statewide lockdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, film festivals have been required to reexamine their methods of operation and the ways in which they recruit new participants. Streaming platforms are now being used at film festivals to screen pre-release films as well as films that have been curated by festival organisers. The filmmakers will deliver taped messages and participate in live video dialogues that will be streamed by the event's organisers in order to improve the quality of the filmmakers' virtual experience.
As a direct consequence of this, cybercriminals are significantly more likely to steal content off the internet, most notably unreleased films. The B2C SVOD services domain has lately flourished, and the same principles of identity management and credential sharing can be applied to virtual film festivals with the same level of success. Screen grabbing is made significantly simpler by the absence of any kind of physical control or enforcement during movie premieres, as well as by the movement of premium content from public to private locations. [Citation needed]
The usage of DRM protected content has been one method that organisers and distributors have implemented in order to prevent pirates from accessing premium streaming content; however, recordings of live streams can also be utilised in this manner. The use of forensic watermarking, which is a form of video protection technology, is an efficient method for preventing the theft of digital content and establishing ownership, copyright, and authenticity. Metadata, such as a user ID, an IP address, and time stamps, for example, can be encoded into the video stream through the use of watermarking techniques. This metadata can be used as forensic evidence to track down the source of the infringement and find out who is responsible for it.
It's possible that studios and filmmakers will need a level of precision that can't be provided by video watermarking. One example of this would be the ability to identify individual user accounts or streaming sessions. The application of session-specific watermarking is the method that can be utilised to achieve this goal. Only two different versions of the content are needed in order to generate one-of-a-kind manifests for each session, which may then be frequently cached on a content delivery network (CDN). Because the pertinent session data is saved within the content itself for server-side processing, this method does not require the usage of any third-party libraries in order to be carried out successfully.
If you want to organise virtual film festivals or award screenings, you'll need a platform that not only can host these events safely but also offers additional features like geo-blocking and secure distribution. If you don't have such a platform, you won't be able to organise these events. Since these virtual platforms have successfully attracted new viewers and increased viewership, it is possible that they will continue to be utilised for festivals even if real ones are brought back into existence.
