“The more things change, the more they stay the same: Just as they were 20 years ago, cyberlockers with large-scale repositories of stolen content are as rampant as ever,” said Lui Simpson, the Executive Vice President of Global Policy for the Association of American Publishers; one of the panelists in the Piracy Symposium held by the US Patent and Trademark Office on January 23.
“Yes, we’ve always called the largest infringers ‘pirates,’ because their purpose is large-scale dissemination. But consumers uploading content are themselves infringers, because these individual users are facilitating piracy by being suppliers to the large-scale Medusa-like piracy ecosystem.” said Ms. Simpson.
While in some jurisdictions, consumers of unlicensed content are considered to be pirates and may be prosecuted and penalized as such, in others, the designation of ‘pirate’ is largely left to unlicensed distributors.
As a representative of the publishing industry, her comments also underscored that the piracy problem is not unique to the video industry. “In fact, the number two category of stolen content worldwide, behind video programming, is unlicensed manga;” according to Andy Chatterley, CEO of MUSO, which offers a platform that detects infringing instances of unlicensed content. Consequently, manga pirates are being pursued around the world. One example is the collaboration spearheaded by anti-piracy organizations in Japan and Korea, with Brazil’s Operation 404 anti-piracy initiatives.
Piracy Drivers
“New pirates are emerging all across the world,” said Marissa Bostick, Sr. Vice President and Head of Global Litigation for the Motion Picture Association (MPA). “In APAC countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and India, we’re seeing a growth of the piracy industry. Reasons include a lack of enforcement actions in various countries, or a lack of legal remedies. In addition, tech-savvy young consumers are entering the market in times of economic difficulty.” Furthermore, law enforcement officials may lack the expertise to enforce anti-piracy effectively.
Piracy is easy
People can become pirates easily and at low cost. The word “piracy” may be associated with people accessing content, but the real culprits are upstream: “Would-be pirates can go to providers of ‘Piracy-as-a-Service’ which offer pre-configured platforms pre-loaded with links to stolen programming and assets stored on servers; which makes it even easier since you don’t need any technical expertise to establish a piracy presence,” observed Ms. Bostick.
Pirates make money in a variety of ways, including stolen legitimate advertising, fake but legitimate-looking advertising, direct revenue for access to Web or download portals, and by partnering with app developers that embed ransomware in commissioned apps.
Deterrents vary
Because the US has not legislated site blocking against pirate sites by Internet service providers in the United States, the main deterrent to piracy in the US is legal; unlike more than sixty countries around the world which do. Disruption through blocking is an effective deterrent since consumers and casual infringers who are blocked from access will in fact turn to content from legal sources.
Another of the key deterrents is to work with local law enforcement. “As we move into jurisdictions where piracy is emerging, we use our expertise to share information about trends, about the ecosystems that enable piracy to grow, about investigations and enforcement, and about anti-piracy techniques,” said Ms. Bostick. We also need to stay abreast of new piracy techniques and take action against it.
International collaboration are key: one example is from the FMovies piracy case from 2024, where the MPA worked closely with the US government and with the Hanoi Police in Vietnam. The MPA helped them understand the seriousness of the case, and to help them apply existing law to the situation. FMovies was an enormous operation, with more than 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024, and became one of the largest anti-piracy takedowns of that year.
Other trends
“Observers may see antipiracy as a ‘whack-a-mole’ operation, where taking one out of service might solve the problem. But in reality, piracy is an evolving industry,” said panelist Marissa Bostick.
The MPA is seeing a trend toward paid piracy sites, such as Magis TV in Latin America, where users pay for access to illegal IPTV services, cyberlockers, illicit streaming devices, and other ways to gain direct revenue
Piracy is also coming out of the shadows. Also in Latin America, the MPA has observed billboards with ads for illegal sites, with paid endorsements by local influencers. In another case, a pirate actually applied to trademark the name for their illegal service. Consumers can be completely duped by this, into believing that these are legitimate sites.
Piracy solutions
After moderator Holly Lance, an advisor with the USPTO’s Office of Policy and International Affairs launched the session and set the stage, the panelists had similar perspectives about solutions. One recurring theme was to reduce access to illegal sources and unlicensed content. Government legislators have enacted the blocking of pirate sites in more than sixty countries. The United States is not one of them, although there is finally a bi-partisan, bicameral initiative with regulators, to enact site blocking there.
In fact, some jurisdictions, such as the UK, are extending the effects of blocking orders so they can be applied against copy-cat sites because a court has already decided about the original infringement case. In Germany, a “Notice and Stay Down” policy assigns responsiblity to distributors, to keep watch for infringing sources that reappear.
While those of us in the industry are well aware of the risks and damaging effects associated with piracy, consumers are generally unaware of them, which include the theft of personal information and the damages inflicted by ransomware. So Consumer awareness campaigns were another area that the panelists cited as a piracy deterrent.
Another is to make concerted efforts to encourage e-commerce platform providers to verify that the merchants using their platforms are in fact legitimate.
Why it matters
Rights-holders are reluctant to invest in regions where anti-piracy efforts are lacking, said Ms. Simpson. “It feels like a Sisyphean task to move the anti-piracy rock up the hill, but that should not be an argument against taking action. As long as pirates mirror their content and access remains easy, piracy will continue,” she said.
“Piracy has metastacized,” said Piracy Monitor’s Steve Hawley, who also participated in the USPTO event as a panelist. The situation is easier to understand when it’s segmented into categories: the theft of services, content and service-enabling software, compromise of distribution infrastructure, theft of advertising; and exploits against consumers. There’s also violation against rights-holder constraints, such as distribution territories, release windows and guarantees of distribution exclusivity.
In the end, the modus operandi of pirates remains to profit by engaging in distribution as broadly as possible.