Welcome to Piracy Monitor

Digital media piracy, the unlicensed use or theft of copyrighted content, is the greatest enemy to creative professionals, consumers, rights-holders and their distribution partners the world over.  And today, piracy doesn’t occur in a vacuum: it’s often a consequence of flawed or inadequate cybersecurity practices.  While AI has become an enabler of content theft on a massive scale, it also can be a tool in the fight against piracy.

To help rights holders preserve their abilities to make a living and maintain operations, Piracy Monitor provides an authoritative informational resource so they can better understand the risks associated with piracy, the methods used by pirates, technologies that help detect it, and about available countermeasures and practices against it.

All articles and site content are produced by Advanced Media Strategies LLC. Steve Hawley is Managing Director. Piracy Monitor also conducts online events devoted to piracy/anti-piracy and cybersecurity.

Latest News

MPA: The Criminal Infrastructure Hiding in Plain Sight: Unmasking Residential Proxies, Part 1

By: Larissa Knapp, EVP and Chief Content Protection Officer, Motion Picture Association, and Noopur Davis, Executive Vice President, Chief Information Security and Product Privacy...

Germany: Bavarian couple stands trial for selling “Russian receivers” and illegal subscriptions

Between 2014 and 2019, a senior-aged couple allegedly sold hundreds of modified set-top boxes that enabled their users to receive Sky's full pay TV...

Dominican law enforcement dismantle IPTV66, arrest pirates after ACE referral

The operators of a large Latin American illicit IPTV network, IPTV66 were arrested and taken into custody in the Dominican Republic following an operation...

MiniMax: Studios sue China-based “Hollywood in your pocket” video AI platform for copyright infringement

MiniMax, a privately-held Chinese company, operates Hailuo AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence (“AI”) image and video generating service, which is marketed as a “Hollywood...

Ireland and UK: FACT partners with Sky to stop retailers from selling pirate services

A major enforcement operation was carried out against Irish retail outlets that have enabled access to illegal TV streaming services, by FACT (Federation Against...

Former employee at Memphis replication facility sentenced for pre-release DVD piracy

From about February 2021 to about March 2022, Steven Hale worked at the Memphis, Tennessee, facility of a multi-national company that provided creative services...

STRIKE, a US industry-led cybersecurity initiative, targets rising network vandalism

Many cybersecurity incidents are deliberate assaults that disrupt key facilities that include U.S. military bases, 911 services, fire and police departments, healthcare facilities, law...

IBC 2025: Irdeto enhances service protection with key cycling, and user engagement with ContentWise

One way that premium streaming services become vulnerable to theft is through lax enforcement of entitlements.  In plain language, when a consumer requests to...

Research: Online piracy trends worsen despite European Commission recommendation

In May 2023, the European Commission published a Recommendation on combatting online piracy of sports and other live events. This non-legislative act encouraged member...

Czechia: Kodi-based ‘Stream Cinema Community’ shuts down. Had over a million users

“Stream Cinema Community” (SCC), which was said to be the largest Czech piracy platform operating as Kodi plugin, was shut down in April. The Kodi...

Analysis: The hidden cost of live sports piracy and how ACE fights back

By Larissa Knapp, EVP & Chief Content Protection Officer, Motion Picture Association The August 24th dismantling of Streameast, the world’s largest live sports piracy network,...

Authors win piracy case against Anthropic AI: “Largest reported copyright recovery in US history”

Anthropic AI, producer of the Claude generative AI platform, has agreed to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit with authors who alleged - and confirmed...

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Piracy Monitor is an initiative of tvstrategies (Advanced Media Strategies LLC), and is active in four areas: Piracy Awareness, Market Intelligence, Industry Marketing and Consulting.

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