Despite the growing availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites and services are used by millions of people worldwide.

New data released by UK-based piracy tracking company MUSO shows that pirate sites remain very relevant. And people have no trouble finding them either.

229 Billion Pirate Site Visits

A few weeks ago it was revealed that video piracy continued to grow in 2023. A new report shows this uptrend is visible across all other content categories, reaching 229 billion platform visits in 2023, a 6.7% increase compared to a year earlier.

Music and software piracy are by far the smallest categories, but these saw the largest relative piracy increases. The number of visits to music and software piracy sites grew 13.4% and 14.1% respectively over the past year.

TV piracy remains the most popular among consumers, however, accounting for almost half of all piracy traffic with 103.9 billion visits in 2023. The publishing category takes second place with 63.6 billion visits, followed by 29.6 billion film piracy visits.

Category	Visits	Market Share	Growth YoY
Data: Muso.com
TV	103.9 billion	45.4%	4.2%
Publishing	63.3 billion	27.6%	7.4%
Film	29.6 billion	12.9%	6.5%
Music	17.1 billion	7.5%	13.4%
Software	15.2 billion	6.6%	14.1%

Manga

In recent years, the publishing category has seen a sharp traffic increase. This rise is mostly driven by manga comics, which have drawn more pirate site visits than film piracy in recent years.

“The global phenomenon of Manga, Japanese comic book and graphic novels, has driven publishing piracy to new heights in recent years, overtaking film piracy and the second most pirated medium in 2020,” MUSO writes .

Manga now dominates the publishing category. While traditional book publishers have been very active on the anti-piracy front recently, more than two-thirds of all ‘publishing’ pirates (69.2%) are drawn to manga sites.

The United States is in the lead as the main source of traffic to manga sites. With 13% of all visits, it leaves all other countries, including Japan, trailing behind.

TV Piracy

Looking at the TV category, we see that the United States remains the top traffic driver overall. With more than 14 billion visits it puts runner-up Russia in distant second place.

The TV category also includes anime content which, unlike our yearly overview , is included in MUSO’s top 10 list of most viewed TV series. The Last of Us remains the winner, however.

In recent years TV piracy has been dominated by streaming sites, which represent direct competition for Netflix and other authorized platforms. These pirate streaming sites now make up 96.3% of all traffic, marginalizing torrent sites and download portals.

Iran, India and Russia

It’s no surprise that the United States is leading in the TV and Publishing categories due to the sheer size of the population and readily available broadband access. However, this dominance doesn’t apply to all categories.

Looking at movie piracy, India is the clear winner by a wide margin ( 30%! ), according to MUSO’s data. Interestingly, visits to this category declined sharply in the second half of 2023 for reasons that are not immediately clear.

In the music category, Iran is the surprising leader with 11.8% of music piracy visits, followed by India and the U.S. as runners-up. This includes traffic to stream-ripping sites, download portals, and streaming sites.

Finally, MUSO attributes most software piracy to Russia, with the U.S. and China closely behind. This includes traffic to app piracy sites. Needless to say, all software piracy takes place through direct download portals.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Last week, new data published by piracy tracking firm MUSO and consulting firm Kearney showed that video piracy is growing globally.

With over 141 billion annual visits worldwide, there’s a massive audience outside of legal channels.

The full report was yet to be made available at the time of our initial report. While that doesn’t change any of the overall conclusions, there are some extra details worth highlighting.

Classifying Countries by Piracy Volume and Growth

The full report includes a rather insightful graph that ranks countries based on the number of visits to pirate sites per citizen, and how the rate has changed between 2018 and 2023. This allows for an intuitive comparison and highlights where piracy presents the biggest threat.

These two data points make it possible to classify countries into four buckets:

– Hotspots: Pirate site visits per capita are high and growing
– Recovering: Pirate site visits per capita are high but declining
– Growth Risk: Pirate site visits per capita are low but growing
– Positive Sign: Pirate site visits per capita are low and declining

In graph form the results look like this, with the piracy hotspots in the top right quadrant, and the growth risks in the top left.

Canada vs. Brazil

Based on the presented data, Canada is classified as one of the piracy hotspots. The country has a relatively high number of pirate site visits per capita (+90) and that number also grew roughly 50% between 2018 and 2023.

Other hotspots include Sweden, Hong Kong and Qatar. Meanwhile, Singapore has by far the largest number of pirate site visits per capita, but with a relatively low growth rate compared to the other hotspots.

On the other end of the graph (bottom left), we find Japan where the piracy frequency is low and declining. The same also applies to Brazil to a lesser degree, which may be in part the result of the broad and frequent piracy crackdowns in the Latin American country.

Growth Risks (including the U.S.)

The bottom right of the graph is mostly empty but countries such as New Zealand and Portugal appear to be ‘recovering’. This means that they have relatively high piracy numbers, but those have declined over the past years.

Finally, there are the “growth risks”. These include countries where the piracy volume is relatively low, but growing rapidly.

This quadrant logically includes countries where broadband access has grown significantly over the past years. India, Nigeria, and Ghana are the top contenders here, all with a growth rate of more than 100%.

Interestingly, the United States is also classified as a growth risk. While it has dominated in absolute piracy traffic for years, the number of visits per capita were relatively low. However, the piracy rate is rising in the U.S. too.

All in all, the graph provides an easy-to-understand overview of how visits to video pirate sites are developing in various countries. It will be interesting to see how these trends develop over time.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Despite the widespread availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites are visited hundreds of millions of times.

This presents a serious problem for major content producers, Hollywood studios included, who are working hard to shut down the most egregious piracy sources.

141 Billion Visits in 2023

Fresh data released by piracy tracking outfit MUSO and consulting firm Kearney suggests that piracy remains rampant nonetheless. In a report released today they reveal that there were 141 billion video piracy visits globally in 2023, a 12% increase since 2019.

It’s not clear why the report uses a comparison base this far out. The reported visits for 2023 are up roughly 10% when compared to previously released data for 2022.

The data covers over 730,000 films and TV titles and includes a wide variety of pirate sites. These include sites that offer software and music, but only visits to video content are counted. Traditionally, this is the most popular content category by far.

TV, Films, Anime, and Sport

Zooming in on the numbers we see that film and TV content are in the lead, good for 65% of the visits. Anime is in second place with a quarter of all video piracy visits, followed at a distance by live sports (9%) and live linear broadcasts (1%).

There are some regional differences in what type of content is most popular. In part, this depends on how easy or affordable it is to access legal content. In the Asia–Pacific region, for example, live sports accounts for 5.3% of pirate site visits, a figure that can reach 11.3% in the US.

In previous years we have repeatedly mentioned that the United States is the top country when it comes to the absolute number of pirate site visits. There was no change in 2023, but there is some serious competition now.

India Rises Through the Ranks

India is on its way to surpass the U.S. as the top piracy nation in the world. This isn’t a surprise as India is also the country with the largest population, over 1.4 billion people. However, the increase in Internet penetration is just as important.

Roughly 15 years ago, India only had about five million broadband subscribers. Today, there are more than 700 million. This massive increase in access has left its mark on society and, as predicted , proved to be a growth market for pirates.

The 2023 report places the U.S. and India as joint leaders, both with 11% of the global video piracy visits. However, the piracy rate in India has increased 80% year-on-year, which suggests that it will be the sole leader next year. The top four is completed by Russia (6%) and the UK (3%) at a respectable distance.

Comparing countries without taking the population size into account doesn’t say much, of course. If we look at the average number of visits per capita, a new region comes to the fore.

Europe leads the relative chart with 34 pirate site visits per capita, followed by North America with 26 visits. With 13 visits, the relative numbers are much lower in South America, dropping to ‘just’ 5 visits per capita in the Asia-Pacific region.

Piracy as a Goldmine

These numbers are not exactly uplifting for the video entertainment industry. However, MUSO and Kearney stress that understanding why people pirate, and responding appropriately, can help to convert some pirates into paying consumers.

“The global rise of video content piracy is concerning. However, with a slight adjustment of perspective, it also becomes an opportunity for those media companies that can change their approach to commercialize pirate users and plug the revenue leakage,” Kearney’s Christophe Firth says.

MUSO Founder and CEO, Andy Chatterley, adds that piracy today is more of a problem than ever, so understanding why people pirate is key.

“MUSO’s data is driving real transformation for entertainment companies to truly understand how their content can be better positioned, better marketed and better tailored towards a vast audience that is not currently being satisfied with legal offerings,” Chatterley says.

According to the press release, legal subscription services can earn billions extra if they convert just a fraction of these pirates. This messaging is in part out of self-interest, as MUSO offers piracy insights and solutions as a commercial service.

In closing, it’s worth highlighting that the numbers reported above only apply to regular pirate site visits. This means that a large and growing part of the piracy ecosystem, including dedicated piracy apps and illegal IPTV offerings, are not included.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Over the past 18 years, we’ve seen our fair share of piracy studies and research, but a finding presented this week ‘obviously’ stands out.

Piracy research firm MUSO looked into the link between movie piracy volume and box office revenues.

With piracy data on hundreds of films, the UK firm sits on a research goldmine. The company decided to put this to work by calculating the correlation between movie piracy and box office attendance.

Piracy vs. Box Office Demand

MUSO predicted that the demand for films through legal and illegal channels might be similar. Put differently, the demand for films at the box office follows the interest in these titles on pirate sites, especially when they have just been released.

Indeed, the data didn’t disappoint; that is exactly what the research found.

The research compares the daily piracy numbers of 98 film releases with their official revenues at the box office. This data sample includes popular films such as “The Lion King” (2019), “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (2021) and “Spider-man: No Way Home” (2021).

Consumption of both legal and pirate versions was measured starting on the day of their respective releases until the film was no longer in theater or when a VOD version came out.

Strong Correlation

The results reveal that both authorized and unauthorized demand follow a similar pattern. Demand for films is greatest when they have just been released, and interest typically drops off after that, with occasional peaks during weekends.

With a Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient of 0.85, the connection between pirate and box office demand is quite strong. According to MUSO, one can be used as a proxy for the other.

“[T]here is a very strong, statistically significant, positive correlation between Box Office revenue and unlicensed consumption. Therefore unlicensed consumption data can be used as a proxy for Box Office data and vice versa,” MUSO writes.

This overall conclusion makes sense. New releases tend to be most popular, both at the box office and on pirate sites. It isn’t exactly an earth-shattering finding but does this research actually show that piracy is a good proxy for legal consumption and vice versa?

Questions Remain

It’s important to note that correlation is not causation; here it shows is that both types of consumption follow a similar pattern. The correlation may simply show that there’s a higher demand for something just after it’s released. That same logic might apply to book sales too.

Secondly, it’s worth highlighting that this particular correlation test is a rank comparison, which means that the magnitude of the changes may be quite different between piracy volume and box-office revenue. That doesn’t make it an ideal proxy measurement.

Finally, it’s worth stressing that the researchers compared the (ranked) total piracy volume vs. the total box office revenue for all films combined. This means that popular films will have a much higher effect on the correlation.

Summarizing the data for all films means a lot of information gets lost. Even if there’s no correlation at all for some smaller titles, that could get lost in the pile of data.

It would be interesting to see a follow-up analysis to see if there are different patterns for some films, to gain additional insights. There could be specific conditions where piracy volume is less, or even negatively correlated with box office revenues. That could be interesting to learn from.

All in all, however, the overall conclusions make sense. People’s interest in new releases typically peaks early and drops off after that. Similarly, films that are popular at the box office tend to do well on pirate sites, and the other way around.

MUSO will likely cite the finding to help rightsholders use piracy data to their advantage . MUSO can show movie companies that if a title does well on pirate sites in a specific region, they better make sure that it’s available legally as well.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Piracy tracking firm MUSO aims to help rightsholders convert pirates into paying customers. This is a noble goal and the UK-based company doesn’t shy away from taking a stand.

Earlier this week, we highlighted how MUSO linked the increased fragmentation of legal streaming services as one of the reasons why piracy is flourishing .

Traditional DMCA Takedowns

At its core, however, MUSO is still an anti-piracy outfit. This means that the company sends out takedown notices on a regular basis, helping its clients to remove links to copyright-infringing material from the web.

Looking at Google’s transparency report, we see that MUSO flagged more than 100 million links over the years. These takedowns are sent on behalf of clients large and small, including several record labels and the Association of Independent Music.

While going over the list of clients , one name stood out like a sore thumb. Apparently, Muso is also working with a company named MediaMuv Inc. While this name may not ring a bell with the average person on the street, it sits at the center of one of the most controversial copyright swindling schemes in history.

Criminal Copyright Scam

Last December, the US Department of Justice launched a criminal proceeding against two men suspected of running a massive YouTube Content ID scam. By falsely claiming to own the rights to more than 50,000 songs, the pair generated more than $20 million in revenue .

In April one of the defendants confessed to his part in the ‘MediaMuv’ copyright swindle by pleading guilty . Webster Batista Fernandez admitted it was a simple scheme: find Latin American music that wasn’t yet monetized on YouTube and claim the content as their own.

To collect these payments, Fernandez and his partner Jose Teran launched the company MediaMuv, which became a trusted YoUTube Content ID member.

“In early 2017, Teran and I created an entity called MediaMuv L.L.C., for the purpose of falsely claiming large swaths of music recordings we had no legal rights to whatsoever,” Fernandez wrote in his plea agreement.

Fernandez now faces a multi-year prison sentence and MediaMuv was effectively shut down overnight. At least, that’s what we thought until the MUSO takedown notices caught our eye.

MUSO Still Works for MediaMuv?

Publicly available takedown notices show that MUSO continues to send takedown notices on behalf of MediaMuv, with the most recent one sent just a few days ago .

According to Google’s transparency report, the first ‘MediaMuv’ takedown notices were sent last September, months before the criminal action was announced. In addition to Google, these notices also targeted other services, such as 4Shared .

Both Google and 4Shared took these notices seriously. Several URLs and files were promptly removed, even though the takedown notices were not sent by the legitimate rightsholder.

Apparently, MediaMuv was trying to limit piracy, which could have hurt their illicit Content-ID profits. And indeed, these notices do indeed target Latin American music, which is in line with the activities described in the criminal indictment.

We should stress that MUSO has nothing to do with the Content-ID claims on YouTube. However, sending notices on behalf of a company that’s in the middle of a criminal scheme isn’t a good look.

Based on the information that’s available, it is not clear why the takedown efforts continued after the company got into legal trouble. We reached out to MUSO which informed us that MediaMuv came in through a third-party distributor.

MUSO is currently looking into the matter and will take follow-up action if needed.

“Our initial investigations show that this came through a music distributor channel. We are currently looking into the issue further and will immediately take any appropriate action,” a spokesperson tells us.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

As the first major legal subscription streaming service on the Internet, Netflix paved the way for a streaming revolution.

The company began competing with piracy from the get-go, branding itself as a superior alternative. In the early years, the strategy paid off.

Millions of subscribers switched from casually consuming pirated content on unlicensed platforms in favor of a convenient and reasonably-priced legal alternative. Piracy never went away, but downloading Netflix content illegally seemed silly.

Streaming Wars

In the years that followed the legal streaming landscape became more crowded. Inspired by Netflix’s success, new streaming portals such as Amazon, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+, and Peacock started competing for a share of the lucrative streaming market.

The media often refers to this competition as the “streaming wars,” but the real threat may not come from legal streaming services but illegal pirate sites.

The suggestion that “subscription fatigue” may motivate people to start pirating again isn’t new. We have highlighted this issue in the past and it has been confirmed by research , but it’s now reaching a point where it’s hard for Hollywood to ignore.

Piracy tracking firm MUSO recognizes the problem too. In addition to doing anti-piracy work for major copyright holders, the UK company also helps major players such as Amazon, Lionsgate, and Sony, to understand the latest piracy trends.

Piracy is Appealing Once Again

In an op-ed , MUSO CEO Andy Chatterley highlights that increased fragmentation in the streaming ecosystem, paired with higher prices, is starting to make piracy more appealing again. And without an option to pay for everything, people are seeking out alternatives.

“[F]aced with an increasingly fractured streaming landscape, the consumer does the math and realizes that having access to all the shows they want to watch is not a justifiable expense when their grocery bill has doubled and they’re cycling or carpooling to work to save money on fuel,” Chatterley says.

“And in the absence of a one-stop shop like Spotify is to music lovers, and now that piracy sites have evolved to become sophisticated, easy-to-use experiences, people who have never resorted to piracy before are finding it more appealing than ever. Everything you could ever want to watch, all in one place, only a few clicks away and all for free. What’s not to like?”

Netflix Piracy Thrives

Chatterley notes that copyright holders should be aware of this potential shift in user behavior, which is backed up by data. Earlier this year Netflix reported that its subscriber numbers had dropped for the first time in history and piracy continues to grow.

According to MUSO’s data, Netflix content was good for an 11.4% U.S. piracy market share in June. Globally, this number is even higher, with Netflix content making up 16% of the worldwide piracy demand.

“Now, imagine if they could convert those pirate consumers into paying customers,” Chatterley comments.

MUSO’s messaging is in part out of self-interest as the company offers piracy insights as a commercial service. This is serious business for Muso. Just last week the company announced that it had secured a $3.9M investment from Puma Private Equity.

A One-Stop Streaming Solution?

That said, the fact that a company working with several Hollywood players is prepared to highlight the dangers of too many subscriptions is quite something. Especially when that company started as a fairly traditional anti-piracy outfit roughly a decade ago.

Instead of pointing a finger at pirates, Chatterley focuses more on the shortcomings of the TV and movie industry. Piracy can be lowered by offering a one-stop solution for a fair price but somehow that seems to be a pipe dream.

“By offering a service that is both comprehensive and good value for money, you render piracy a much less attractive option,” he writes.

“But with content providers investing billions in their platforms and determined to keep their shows exclusive to them, this seems fanciful. And so the drop off in subscribers seems set to continue, with piracy sites continuing to welcome them with open arms,” Chatterley concludes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

There is little doubt that, for many people, on-demand streaming services have become the standard for watching TV-shows.

The convenience of watching TV series at the viewer’s pace is common nowadays. It was quite different 15 years ago when the on-demand experience was pretty much exclusive to pirates.

TV Piracy Boom

Times have clearly changed but some old habits can be hard to kick. Over the past year, online piracy has increased globally and most of this growth has come from TV pirates, who are responsible for nearly half of all pirate site traffic.

The numbers are staggering. According to data released by the piracy tracking firm MUSO , there were an estimated 33.6 billion visits to piracy websites for TV content in the first four months of this year.

Most of this traffic came from the US and Russia. This is no surprise, as these are two of the most populous countries in the world. What is surprising, however, is that the UK swiftly climbed the ranks and is now in third place.

UK Pirates Climb the Ranks

Just one year ago the UK was in sixth place so it’s clear that the interest in TV show piracy has grown over the past 12 months.

“It is interesting to note that demand from the UK has grown year on year, with the UK now ranked 3rd in the list of consumption by country, compared to 6th during the same period in 2021,” MUSO writes.

MUSO’s data also shows that cost is not always the main driver for UK pirates. Even when a TV show is available through legal channels ‘ for free ‘, people may still pirate it instead.

This is also the case for the latest season of Peaky Blinders. Despite it being freely available through the BBC, many people still chose to pirate it instead. Perhaps out of habit.

“Peaky Blinders S6 2022, was free to air in the UK, yet the UK is still ranked as the 9th country in the global demand list for this title [March 2022]. This confirms a trend we have previously seen that suggests audiences become used to the viewer experience of a platform, whether it is legal or not,” MUSO notes.

Subscription Fatigue

Based on the raw data it’s hard to find an explanation for the global rise in TV piracy. One potential factor is the fact that legal TV content is scattered out over several subscription services.

While most people are happy to pay for one or two services, some might prefer to use pirate sites instead of paying for yet another subscription. This subscription fatigue can drive up the piracy numbers.

Looking at the list of most pirated TV shows during the first quarter of 2022, season two of the HBO show “Euphoria” tops the list, followed by the first seasons of “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Peacemaker”.

Not surprisingly, these most pirated shows are all from paid subscription services.

The above shows that piracy is a complex phenomenon that’s not purely motivated by cost. Habits also play a significant role. This means that it is crucial for content creators to take away any incentive people may have to use pirate sites and services.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Despite the growing availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites and services are used by millions of people worldwide.

New data released by the UK-based piracy tracking company MUSO shows that pirate sites remain very relevant. And people have no trouble finding them either.

In fact, traffic to these sites is booming. During the first quarter of 2022, pirate site visits increased by more than 29% compared to a year earlier, which is good for a dazzling 52.5 billion visits.

Nearly half of this traffic (48%) goes to TV-related content. The publishing category takes second spot with 27%, followed by the film (12%), music (7%), and software (6%) categories.

The traffic increase is noticeable across all types of piracy but the publishing category stands out. Compared to the first quarter of 2021, the number of visits in this category has grown explosively. Software piracy is lagging behind, but the category still continues to grow.

The strong growth in the publishing category is largely driven by manga, comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Some of the pirate sites dedicated to this ‘niche’, such as Manganato.com, attract well over 100 million ‘visits’ per month. That’s more than iconic pirate sites such as The Pirate Bay and Fmovies.to.

America First

The United States is the country that sends most visitors to pirate sites. With well over 5.7 billion ‘visits’ in the first three months of the year, the U.S. is good for more than 10% of all piracy traffic. With a 39% increase compared to last year, pirate audience growth exceeds the global average.

Russia and India follow at a respectable distance with just over 3 billion visits to pirate sites, followed by China and France, with 1.8 and 1.7 billion visits, respectively.

There is no single explanation for the apparent piracy boom. However, MUSO sees the upward trend as an alarming signal and expects that the ‘streaming wars’ and growing subscription fatigue may play a role.

“The continued and marked increase in piracy visits is alarming reading for the entertainment industries,” MUSO notes.

“MUSO would anticipate this trend to continue especially in the current climate of subscription wars for SVoD platforms combined with the economic squeeze and fast growing global inflation.”

With more and more subscription services and fragmentation in the entertainment industry, pirate site traffic isn’t likely to evaporate any time soon. Time will tell whether we will see yet another increase in traffic next year.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.