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; and while AI can be a tool in the fight against piracy, AI can also enable content theft and stealth attacks on a massive scale.

Since 2019, Piracy Monitor has been an informative resource, helping persons and media stakeholders better understand the risks that reside at the intersection of copyright theft, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and personal agency; including use-cases, causes, examples, available countermeasures, solutions and research

Latest News

UK Parliament de-recommends copyright protection exception for AI, policy work ongoing

The UK House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee has called for withdrawal of a 2024 recommendation that the UK make exceptions to copyright...

Nigeria: CEO of NetNaija service remanded to custody after arraignment, pending bail hearing

Emmanuel Analike, CEO of NetNaija Media Enterprises, was arraigned on March 5th over charges of alleged copyright infringement by the NetNaija service that occurred...

FBI Alert: Evading Residential Proxy Networks – Protecting your devices from becoming a tool for criminals

A residential proxy is an intermediary server between individuals and websites they visit to make their connections appear to originate elsewhere. Legitimate IP addresses...

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster say OpenAI uses their content as clickbait

In an interesting twist of positioning, Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) and Merriam-Webster (M-W) say that ChatGPT responses to user requests amount to clickbait that is...

South Africa: MultiChoice touts two raids on pirates, sentences in 3 other cases

In February, members of South Africa's Provincial Commercial Investigation Unit teamed with MultiChoice and its technology arm Irdeto to arrest an individual suspected of...

2026 industry survey: Operators split on value of anti-piracy, consumers dismissive of threats

Industry journal decodeTV surveyed more than 60 senior video business insiders from 17 countries, spanning content service providers, telcos, technology providers and others, to...

Texas pirate must pay $18.75M statutory damages to Studio plaintiffs, transfer domains to ACE

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has entered an $18.75 million default judgment against William Freemon, a longtime digital piracy...

‘SocksEscort’ proxy service exploited home routers and IoT devices worldwide, downed by Europol and...

Operation Lightning was executed on March 12 by Europol, in collaboration with multiple law enforcement agencies. The coordinated effort targeted the malicious proxy service...

Vietnam: Pirate Xoi Lac TV offered sporting events, online gambling; 30 individuals involved

Having been in operation since 2016, illegal Xoi Lac TV has been taken down by law enforcement in Vietnam after a year-long investigation. The...

US Trade Rep releases 2025 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy

The 2025 Notorious Markets List details 37 online markets, plus 32 physical markets in 19 countries; which are reported to engage in or facilitate...

Multi-national operation dismantles Leakbase, a hub specializing in trade of databases used by malware...

An international operation coordinated between March 3 and 4 by Europol dismantled a major online forum for stolen data. LeakBase had established itself as...

Tycoon 2FA phishing-as-a-service platform downed by Europol and a network of partners

A major phishing-as-a-service platform used to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) and enable large-scale account compromise has been disrupted following a coordinated international operation supported...

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Unless noted otherwise, all articles and site content are produced by and © Advanced Media Strategies LLC. Steve Hawley is Managing Director. 

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. Piracy Monitor also conducts online events devoted to piracy/anti-piracy and cybersecurity.

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