Web video, P2P drive increase in global film and TV piracy

Web video, P2P drive increase in global film and TV piracy
Joseph O'Halloran
| 07 August 2018

Research from conditional access and content security specialist Irdeto has found that consumers who prefer piracy over legal video sites are ensuring that peer-to-peer piracy continues to be the major method of accessing illegal copies of movies and TV shows.

Irdeto 7Aug2018This research looked at P2P and web video trends in 19 high piracy countries: US, Russia, France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, UK, and Ukraine. Data on visits to P2P and web video sites provided by a web analytics partner covered activity at 962 piracy sites from January through September 2017.

Irdeto found that that the growth in web video piracy is only adding to the global movie and TV piracy problem, rather than replacing P2P piracy and that the overall popularity of pirate web video sites is growing alongside P2P, driven by visits from so-called ‘casual’ pirates who go to both legitimate sites and illegal piracy sites.

Statistically ,the research found that half of monthly visits to pirate sites by casual pirates in 2017 were to web video sites. However, in 2017, four-fifths of monthly visits to pirate sites by ‘committed’ pirates, those who do not visit legitimate streaming sites, were to P2P sites.

The research also found that visits to P2P sites accounted for 70% of global activity for both web video and P2P platforms. This behaviour led to an average of 800 million global monthly downloads from P2P sites in 2017. In addition, P2P activity in the most prominent high-piracy countries, which include Russia, India, Brazil, the Netherlands and the US, is either constant or increasing. The research also revealed that web video sites source a significant proportion (28%) of their high-quality video content from P2P sites.

“While many expect P2P piracy to be taken over by streaming and direct downloads, it’s clear that this has not happened yet. P2P piracy is still a big threat to the industry, in which the overall piracy problem is growing,” said Peter Cossack, vice president, cybersecurity services, Irdeto. “While the increase in bandwidth and social media has facilitated growth in content redistribution piracy, particularly around live sporting events, it is clear that other forms of piracy are not going away any time soon. This must be considered by content owners and rights holders in their security strategies.”

The full research is available at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
latest whitepapers
MOST RECENT IN SECURITY
Web video, P2P drive increase in global film and TV piracy
DIRECTV taps Friend MTS for piracy protection in LATAM
Streaming Video Alliance publishes forensic watermarking doc
High Court awards Premier League order to block illegal streams
World Boxing Super Series battles piracy with