Thanks for sharing that, Brian.
Many of you know of my background is in Film and Video Production. Over the years I have been involved with the distribution of live of private events for Fortune 500 companies, worked seven years in production for a NBA franchise and hundreds of gigs on mobile trucks for concerts and sporting events. Up until now I have stayed on the sidelines of this debate but now I will share my personal observation, but choose not address the economics as a equipment reseller. This post is in no way is an endorsement of a site or to attack on another.
I have personally have required encryption on events based on the feed information posted in public and private forums....
During the analog days we usually would encrypt live event feeds if the content was of sensitive nature, the content owner required for contractual reasons or the content owner could experience economic loss with unauthorized viewing or distribution. Analog feeds were easily detected because there were only 24 C-band channels 32 full bandwidth KU-band channels per satellite and and tens of thousands of viewers could simply change channels on their receiver and "find" our private feed.
After the transition of the feeds from analog to digital there were few feed hunters with the ability to locate occasional use transmissions, limited sharing of the finds and very few compatible receivers. We understood that that there was a remote chance that a few folks might view our feeds, but there was a reasonable chance that with the variables of frequency, polarity and symbol rates the feed would remain undetected.
When Blind Scan receivers began showing up on the market we reviewed our policies and would not encrypt if the duration of the event was brief, on a unpopular satellite or if feed information was not posted. If we had a several day event or a pre-event test signal for site verification we would usually assign a staff person to monitor public and private forums where feed information was posted and would encrypt the feed if the information was posted. Usually we would try to avoid encryption as it would increase the number of site support calls, but if the feed was reported on a public forum we would contact the sites and enable the encryption. As previously pointed out, BISS is free, available and quickly implemented on most encoders and commercial decoders (receivers).
Blind Scanning for private use is not measurable and distributors assume that it will occur in limited instances. Sharing feed information in any forum is monitored by uplinkers. Sharing feed information in any public or private forum will promote awareness of the feed and possibly result in the encryption to secure the content. Content distributors are aware that people are receiving their feeds, but usually will not encrypt as long as the feed information does not go viral.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana
Remember the World War II slogan, " Loose Lips Might Sink Ships".