The UK-based Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) says that its anti-piracy scanning team removed more than twice as many links to illegal streams in April than it did in February.
FACT noted that direct-to-digital releases have so far had some success, referencing a Wall Street Journal (paywall) report, that one direct-to-digital movie release, Universal’s Trolls World Tour, captured nearly $100M in rentals by the end of April (much to the chagrin of the theatre industry).
When FACT looked at two individual theatrical releases, it found that pirate links went from the 700 range in February to more than 2,500 in March. So FACT is quick to caution direct-to-digital raises risk of link piracy, and is the biggest competition against legitimate release.
Read the original article at FACT
Why it matters
While it’s promising that digital-only releases have been successful, video producers and providers must be even more vigilant against piracy and more pro-active in implementing anti-piracy solutions.  Especially since direct-to-digital puts all the release’s financial risks in one basket, so to speak.
Similar to ACE in the US, FAPAV in Italy, Alianza in Latin America, AVIA in Asia, and others elsewhere, FACT is a UK-based agency which works with UK and global media and entertainment companies to fight piracy and copyright infringement for TV, movies and sports programming.
