Quantifying the Elements of Film Piracy

Paramount Pictures Computer Science, 2010-11

Liaison(s): Christopher Lewert, Mark Hall, Abe Wong ’92
Advisor(s): Christine Alvarado
Students(s): Jessica Blevins (PM-S), Dan Ciliske, Rebecca Green (PM-F), Moira Tagle

Online movie piracy is a major concern for Paramount Pictures. Since there are thousands of sites with illegal content, Paramount’s anti-piracy team requested a means of determining which websites are the most dangerous and which advertisers support those sites. Our first project deliverable is an algorithm for scoring the threat represented by a given website. The second deliverable is a web browser extension that retrieves information about the advertisements which appear on a given piracy site.