The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has released two reports about infringements against intellectual property in the European Union.
Illegal IPTV in the European Union estimates that “€941.7 million of unlawful revenue was generated by copyright infringing IPTV providers in the EU in 2018 and that these services were used by 13.7 million people in the EU (3.6 % of the EU-28 population).” This works out to about €5.73 per user per month.
The IPTV report also details the multi-layered piracy ecosystems associated with three business models: illegal subscriptions, business-to-business wholesale/resale, and streaming portals. This research was commissioned in 2018, to a team of researchers at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) of Bournemouth University.
The second report, Online Copyright Infringement in the European Union; Music, Films and TV (2017-2018), Trends and Drivers is about copyright infringing content consumption across the EU, for TV, movies and music. Significantly, piracy was down about 15% compared with 2017 on average, with TV down 8% and film down 19%. Music was down the most: by 32%.
Read the EUIPO press release, which summarizes the reports.
Access the report: Illegal IPTV Streaming in the European Union
Access the report: Copyright Infringement in the European Union.
In other EUIPO news, the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol signed an agreement with EUIPO to further increase their cooperation in fighting infringements of intellectual property rights, both online and offline.
Why it matters
While the ‘IPTV’ report details a very significant portion of video piracy, this report focuses on just the illegal streaming aspect of it, separating it from illegal downloads, torrenting, cyberlockers and other forms of video theft and rights infringement. As the ‘Online Copyright Infringement’ report indicates, the entire picture is worse.
A 15% reduction of digital media piracy over the course of a single year means that 85% of it is still ongoing.
