Piracy Spikes with Millions of Offers, Threatening Pay-TV

[frogboy]

There are more than 2.7 million advertisements on e-commerce websites, including Amazon, eBay and Alibaba for illicit streaming devices—indicating that content theft by pirates has become a full-fledged business and a formidable competitor to established pay TV operators.

According to Irdeto, it’s a true cross-channel effort, with advertisements found on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and other prominent social media platforms. Pirates are becoming more business savvy and expanding their product marketing of illicit streaming devices. Citing data from SimilarWeb, the Irdeto report shows that the growth in global traffic resulted in more than 16.5 million visits per month to the top 100 pirate IPTV supplier websites. The US and UK led all countries with more than 3.7 million and one million site visits per month, respectively.

The report also shows that a typical pirate supplier offers an average of 174 channels, with some pirate suppliers offering more than 1,000 channels. This content comes in at an average subscription cost of $194.40 per year or a staggeringly low $16.20 per month—much lower than the average US cable cost of $103.10 per month. In some cases, despite the illegal nature of the offering, these low costs and the compelling content provided sway consumers to choose a pirate device over legal cable, satellite or OTT services.

Typically, consumer choice comes down to content, value and convenience when selecting a service. Pirates exploit those three needs by offering services and devices that rival their legal counterparts. Without the costs of legally acquiring the rights and content, pirates are able to take valuable market share in the process.

“To keep these growing pirate businesses at bay, content owners and operators need to understand the factors that go into consumer choice, including a full picture of piracy and strategies pirates use to grow into legitimate businesses,” said Rory O’Connor, vice president of services, Irdeto. “Content owners and operators need to make sure they are implementing a comprehensive, 360-degree anti-piracy strategy. This includes detection, monitoring, source identification/watermarking, intelligence-gathering, investigations and enforcement. With the right information and a trusted security partner, content owners and operators can prevent piracy while also adapting offerings to more closely match consumer demand.”

Full Article. Piracy Spikes with Millions of Offers, Threatening Pay-TV

 

[JHomes]

Makes sense, I think for most people it's availability. If you can get what you want right away for a decent price. That's why I'm pushing for netflix and other sites to post content for a TV show, immediately after it airs. Then it's immediately available to you, at the same speed or faster than, pirates.

 

[Fritz]

“To keep these growing pirate businesses at bay, content owners and operators need to understand the factors that go into consumer choice, including a full picture of piracy and strategies pirates use to grow into legitimate businesses,” said Rory O’Connor

Typical manager babble. To keep piracy at bay, you need to make offers that are worth it for consumers. You need to let off silly geographic restrictions from the stone age, where you could milk customers five ways from Sunday. Sure, was fun while it worked, but that was then. Get over it. Do all that pirate services can't; deliver Making-Ofs with your movies, add commentary tracks, offer great quality. People will come and pay for it.

Or keep at it and folks will keep downloading their stuff. There's no meaningful way to stop them. It's all in the industry's own hands really.

 

[DJ Panda]

Typical manager babble. To keep piracy at bay, you need to make offers that are worth it for consumers. You need to let off silly geographic restrictions from the stone age, where you could milk customers five ways from Sunday. Sure, was fun while it worked, but that was then. Get over it. Do all that pirate services can't; deliver Making-Ofs with your movies, add commentary tracks, offer great quality. People will come and pay for it.

Or keep at it and folks will keep downloading their stuff. There's no meaningful way to stop them. It's all in the industry's own hands really.

I understand what you're saying. Honestly, people worry more about this stuff being too much. Some people in the world don't have the luxury we have. Not only when you pirate your talking money out of the company's pocket but some of the employersas well. There is no valid excuse to pirate and if they get infected don't cry to me its the pirates fault

 

[Fritz]

Oh I'm not worried, the entertainment industry is. They can lock up or shoot whoever they want for all I care. All I have is paid for, and I like the idea of people getting paid for what they do.

The thing is that circumstances change and so do industries. Back when people finally could afford their own fridges, thousands of people delivering blocks of ice got the short end of the stick. Happens. Gotta adapt.

I also don't entirely agree with the damage piracy really does. I for one don't like theatres. So I don't go there. I still like to watch new movies, but they're just not available online at that point in time. So I can't buy them, even if I wanted to. Back in the day I would have downloaded them elsewhere, but nowadays I couldn't care less. Makes exactly 0% difference to the publisher's imcome.

Some buddies of mine are so into this, they run downloads 24/7 just for the heck of it. They probably won't ever watch more than 0.1% of their archive and they surely wouldn't have bought tens of thousands of movies if downloads weren't a thing. It's more of a messie problem basically.

Yes, the industry will use those huge numbers, but it's moot really. When you're into going to theatres, you'll go. The smell of popcorn, the atmosphere, no download can offer that. And it's not like stealing an apple, which you consume and then it's not available to others any longer.

I really think it's more of a shift in interests in the end. There's so much more nowadays you can do and that hurts traditional entertainment. If they'd adjust their offers, they could combat that. Yet, they lose themselves into fighting piracy. It's just not the root of their problems.

 

[nclr11111]

We have a "funny" thing in my country.
Here we have to pay a special tax for all equipment on which you can digitally record and/or digitally store anything. A copytax so to speak.
This money are then distributed to the copyright holders.
BUT! You are only allowed to make a copy for private use of material you own/have bought and for that you have to pay once for the material and then again for every piece of equipment you can use for recording or storing data (Music players, cellphones, HDD´s, SSD´s etc).
Maybe there are similar taxes in other countries, idk, but imo it´s nothing less than absurd and belonging to the stoneage! S*** like this fuels the piracy among many others....

 

[Fritz]

Yep, we got such a sweet levy in Germany as well. A bunch of other countries have introduced something of the like.

And yeah, you pay it even if you never print or store third parties' content. The whole concept is completely arbitrary and flawed.