By Steven Hawley, Piracy Monitor
We continue our interview with Mark Mulready, for eight years, the co-president of the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance and current head of Cyber Security services and anti-piracy for Irdeto; the global security technology arm of MultiChoice, Africa’s largest media company. [ Link to Part 1 ]
Piracy operates at a large scale across international borders, and addressing the problem must involve many parties, collaborating across multiple countries. Therefore, anti-piracy is by nature a team sport.
Collaboration through law enforcement
A recent example of the collaborative nature of anti-piracy is “Operation Taken Down,[1] which dismantled what was said to be one of the world’s largest piracy operations, and is still underway as of this writing. The illegal operation had allegedly served more than 22 million users and took in more than 250 million euros in illegal revenue per month and €3 billion annually.
“The takedown operation involved intelligence from across multiple jurisdictions,” said Mr. Mulready. “Participants included Europol [2], the EU Intellectual Property Office, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. Law enforcement came to AAPA for technical and training for these operations.” Industry participants included Premier League, Sky Group, Nagravision, Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL), beIN Sports, United Media, Friend MTS and Irdeto.
Successful results
“The operation was hugely successful and is an example of how the media industry engaged collaboratively with law enforcement. It also raised awareness of the links between piracy, organized crime, and nation-state actors. We have established strong working relationships and methodologies with Europol, Interpol and the US Department of Homeland Security who have all expressed willingness to take on additional similar cases,” he said.
As Co-President, Mr. Mulready was in the room where he chaired AAPA’s first meeting of 2025. Anti-piracy experts from sports leagues, broadcasters and technology companies have formed working groups to focus on problematic intermediaries in the piracy ecosystem. “It’s been a very good collaboration, great information sharing: which techniques are working, which intermediaries are of concern, and identifying strategies to address the problems.” he said.
Beyond streaming
Pirates are seeing the successes by law enforcement, which has also begun to work with social media and search engine platforms to make it harder to access piracy through those avenues.
But pirates are still using major payment platforms and cryptocurrency has emerged as a popular payment option. Therefore, security technology providers have begun to offer services to investigate financial trails – including cryptocurrency – with the goal to disable or prosecute commercial pirates.
Another threat comes from “bulletproof” hosting companies which operate in jurisdictions where enforcement is lax. Therefore, the European Commission is undertaking a study called “live event recommendation” where the EC monitors responses to takedown notices to identify where stronger action is needed.
Looking ahead
Mr Mulready emphasized that: “You still have the existential threat of piracy and pirates will always go after the lowest-hanging fruit. At an industry level, everyone is facing the same threats, so it’s no longer uncommon for competitors to collaborate as much as they can; where they have targets of common interest. Organizations with similar concerns to AAPA include Nordic Content Protection, the Motion Picture Association, the Asia Video Industry Association’s Coalition Against Piracy, and others.
Another initiative is continual consumer education. “Now we have an entire generation of people who grew up with free content and have little respect for the effort it takes to produce it. Breaking that cycle is problematic, and some messages are more effective than others,” he said. “You have to start in early education, to build an appreciation for intrinsic value of creativity.” The messages that resonate the most are personal risks from malware and exposure of personally identifiable information.
In the end analysis
“Piracy is a lucrative enterprise with high margins and low risk, making it attractive to new entrants. Anti-piracy is a game of ‘follow the pixels, follow the money’. This is happening at a time of fragmentation and change in the industry. There have been some great anti-piracy developments from law enforcement, governments and regulators in recent years, but we need more to effectively address this existential threat to our industry.” said Mr. Mulready.
The work continues.
Footnotes:
[1] https://piracymonitor.org/e250m-month-piracy-operation-said-to-be-the-largest-ever-taken-down-by-europol-and-national-authorities/
[2] https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/european-law-enforcement-stops-illegal-iptv-service-providers
Note: Irdeto is a supporting sponsor of Piracy Monitor. However, Piracy Monitor maintains editorial independence and makes no vendor endorsements.
