Binge Watching Secured: Jscrambler Protects Your Favorite Streaming Content from Digital Pirates

When you're watching your favorite show on Netflix, chances are you're worrying more about plot twists and character development than what's happening behind the scenes to make sure that content is being delivered at its highest quality and not being hijacked for distribution on another platform by someone who didn't pay for it.

But these are the exact issues that face companies like Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, and other content-streaming providers, which have a unique challenge to both create and support valuable and high-quality content that people want to watch and that they can monetize, while also protecting it from illegal reproduction or piracy once it's in the public domain.

These companies want to ensure that loyal clients who pay for their subscriptions are the only ones who can access their premium content, and that their streams are not interrupted by performance issues or other barriers to delivering the best possible user experience. 

Digital media streamers also aim to capitalize on the opportunities that come with having exclusive access to live sporting events — such as the Olympic Games, a boxing match, or Formula One races — and provide viewers with high-quality, low-latency streams without glitches, ensuring they don't miss any of the action.

Protecting Streamers' Value Proposition 

Jscrambler offers a unique proposition to the media-streaming services industry by providing client-side protection to help address the challenges they face in protecting their digital intellectual property (IP). Even if threat actors crack a content's digital rights management (DRM) technology or try to scrape content for illegal redistribution, they still can't hijack content when it's running on a client-side application or browser protected by Jscrambler. 

This assurance protects media companies from loss of revenue that occurs when attackers steal valuable IP and content, reverse-engineer streaming platforms, bypass watermarking, or re-distribute proprietary content.

Indeed, for digital media content providers across the board, these threats to digital media, whether it be a recurring stream or a one-time-only live broadcast, at their core represent "an economic problem," says Rui Ribeiro, Jscrambler co-founder and CEO.

The global video streaming market was valued at US$674.25 billion in 2024, and is projected to grow 18.5% to US$2,660.88 billion by 2032. Music streaming, meanwhile, is forecasted to grow 21% from US$36.7 billion in 2023 to US$125.70 billion by 2032. 

In the US alone, 83% of all households subscribe to at least one streaming service, with Netflix (over 260 million subscribers), Amazon Prime Video (over 168.3 million subscribers), and Disney+ (over 157 million subscribers) representing the largest share of the subscriber market.

The Fundamentals of Digital Media Protection

Keeping streamers happy depends on two fundamental factors, Ribeiro says: “protecting their content from theft or unauthorized distribution, and maintaining high quality of their output by reducing the latency of streamed content.” 

These factors are especially important to real-time streams of sporting and other live events, where advertisers and other sponsors provide financial support for streamed events. Their support is based on assurances that their content will be shown on proprietary, not hijacked, streams that eliminate their sponsored content. Even a short delay or glitch in a stream can destroy the value of a live event and thus the quality of the service, he says.

"The challenge is: how can you protect this type of content in a way that's easy for the user but doesn't have any latency," Ribeiro says. "We help them because we can provide them with applications that have a lot of integrity, verifications, and monitoring."

Jscrambler's client-side protection provides security for content creators and streamers by protecting the IP, streaming player, and the ad revenue running inside it with runtime code protection that provides self-defensive capabilities. This enables applications to detect and react in real-time to any tampering, debugging, or poisoning attempts by entities attempting to modify the content or stream.

It also prevents piracy by making it harder to crack into a streaming provider's video player and protecting any fingerprinting or watermarking technologies within it, thus blocking any unauthorized access to streaming apps.

"[Jscrambler's solution] is good for both the end user and for the company providing the service because it's tough to provide fake applications that could be compromising the end users," Ribeiro says. "These come from a strong application protection with integrity verification."

Meeting the Streamers' Fundamental Needs

Another competitive edge that Jscrambler's client-side protection offers comes from a technology it pioneered: advanced polymorphic JavaScript obfuscation. In fact, this technology was one of the main reasons Powtoon, a video and visual communication platform provider, chose Jscrambler to protect its software, which enables users to create cutting-edge video presentations.

Powtoon needed to protect its competitive advantage when its technology became subject to copycats, with competitive clones stealing the company's graphical assets. The company wanted to protect these assets with client-side protection that would prevent theft of their proprietary technology. 

Powtoon's implementation of Jscrambler is a real-world example of Ribeiro's description of the two key needs of content-streaming providers: trusted protection and high performance.

Powtoon found Jscrambler's polymorphic JavaScript obfuscation, which uniquely protects JavaScript code, not only comprehensive, but also customizable to their platform's needs. The company also utilized the Jscrambler Client-Side Protection Platform to ensure that attackers can't reverse-engineer their code or circumvent licensing restrictions, thereby preventing the hijacking of valuable IP.

“Most importantly, the use of Jscrambler's client-side protection didn't slow down their technology, maintaining the delicate balance between protecting Powtoon's IP while preserving the quality of performance”, said Sven Hoffmann, CTO and co-founder at Powtoon.

"If I had to summarize the benefits of the Jscrambler product in one sentence, I would say it’s state-of-the-art code protection and negligible performance impact," he said.

Providing these two key assurances for digital media and streaming providers enables them to focus on what they do best — delivering premium video and audio content that their subscribers eagerly consume — while having confidence in Jscrambler to protect their digital assets from hijacking or unauthorized redistribution.