Game of Streams A Comprehensive Study of Streaming Cyberlockers Benjamin Braun Rizwan Ahmad Department of Computer Science and Department of Computer Science and Engineering Engineering University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego
[email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT this website by authorities showed a complex, intricate re- Streaming cyberlockers, third-party video streaming plat- lationship between the streaming portal, indexing sites, and forms which primarily consist of pirated content, have seen even advertising networks. However, since this raid, there incredible growth in recent years, but seem to avoid much have been very few studies into streaming cyberlockers, and scrutiny and thus have stayed outside the scope of most consequently very little new information about their opera- cyberlocker-centric studies. This project attempts to close tions. this gap in the literature by identifying central characteris- As such, given the growing popularity of these websites tics of streaming cyberlockers such as their traffic and rev- and the absence of studies that look into them, we sought to enue generation models, the physical location of the web- characterize and identify a few key parts of their infrastruc- sites, relationships between websites, and whether there are ture. Specifically, we wanted to understand the following: any feasible forms of external intervention capable of ex- • How they attract and maintain viewers and uploaders. ploiting faults in their operational model. We found that sites did tend to locate themselves in similar locations, and • What their main source of revenue is. that their revenue is generated primarily through advertis- ing, while an affiliate model drives traffic to the website by • Whether there are any prominent similarities or rela- attracting content uploaders, who in turn attract viewers.