Video Piracy: Is it up or down?

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July 1, 2019

By Steven Hawley, Piracy Monitor

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Last week, Ampere Analysis received a lot of news coverage for a report that video piracy is down, backing its claim with a scatter diagram of piracy data points and a downward-pointing trend line.

But is piracy really waning?  Let’s look at a few more data points.

The publisher of three video Web sites in Spain was acquitted of piracy because a court decided that a site containing links to pirate video did not constitute an act of piracy itself.   Yet, linking is exactly the approach taken by many illicit streaming devices and pirate Web sites.  So some may see this decision as a form of permission for further video piracy.

Not to mention the mid-June US Chamber of Commerce report citing huge rates of TV and movie piracy.   And the Asia Video Industry Association recently reported staggering piracy numbers.  In Hong Kong, for example, 24% of consumers use illicit streaming devices; 10% of whom have cancelled their legal video services.

Why it matters:  It’s encouraging to see well documented wins in the battle against video piracy, but one anti-piracy win will be offset by piracy losses somewhere else.

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