Despite its trials saving thousands during the pandemic, funding is being stopped for the groundbreaking UK Recovery programme

It changed the treatment of Covid-19 patients across the globe, saved thousands of lives by pinpointing cheap, effective drugs during the pandemic, and earned Britain widespread praise from international groups of scientists.

But now government support for the UK Recovery programme is to end. In a few weeks’ time, central financing for the programme will halt. The scheme will only be able to continue thanks to funding from a group of US-based philanthropists.

Continue reading...

At the start of the last decade, The Pirate Bay teamed up with Sweden’s Lund University to conduct the largest online piracy survey in history.

The research elicited responses from 75,000 ‘pirates’ from all parts of the world. Despite this geographical diversity, a rather traditional gender pattern appeared. Of all respondents, only 5% were female.

These findings were rather extreme but they fit the old stereotypical image of ‘the online pirate’ as a young, somewhat nerdy male. While that might have been relatively accurate 25 years ago, piracy audiences are much more diverse today.

Recent studies have shown more diverse age distribution and increasingly gender is seen as a less relevant variable too. One of the largest longitudinal studies on piracy conducted by the European Union , doesn’t even mention gender as a factor anymore.

Research: Who Pirates and Why?

This doesn’t mean that there are no differences, of course, but these rarely add any explanatory value or new insights. That said, new findings published by researchers from Northumbria University Newcastle, which include gender, are worth highlighting.

The survey data, looking at piracy trends in Thailand and Indonesia, was released by Marketing professor Dr. Xuemei Bian and Ms. Humaira Farid. The results were presented to WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement recently and the associated presentation was published online.

Through an online survey and in-person interviews, the research aims to map consumer attitudes and behaviors in Indonesia and Thailand, particularly in connection with online copyright infringement.

One of the overall conclusions is that piracy remains a common activity in both Asian countries. Pirates are present in all age groups but and music, movies en TV-shows tend to be in highest demand and younger people. Those under 40, are more likely to pirate than their older counterparts.

These findings are not out of the ordinary and the same trends are visible in other countries too. Interestingly, however, some notable differences between the two countries appear when gender is added to the mix.

More Women than Men Pirate in Indonesia

The tables below show that women are more likely to pirate than men in Indonesia. This is true for all content categories, except for software, where men are slightly in the lead. In Thailand, however, men are more likely to pirate across all categories.

The researchers do not attempt to explain these differences. However, they show once again that ‘dated’ gender stereotypes don’t always match with reality. And when they have little explanatory value, one can question whether gender is even relevant in a piracy context.

Looking at other differences between Thai and Indonesian consumers there are some other notable findings. For example, in Indonesia, 64% of the respondents say they’re aware of the availability of pirated movies and TV-shows on YouTube, compared to ‘just’ 32% in Thailand.

Indonesian consumers are also more familiar with music piracy sites and pirate much more frequently than Thai consumers, as the table below shows.

Price vs. Convenience

Finally, the researchers also looked at various attitudes toward piracy. This shows that Thai pirates would be most likely to stop if legal services were more convenient, while Indonesian pirates see cheaper legal services as the largest discouraging factor.

All in all, the researchers conclude that these attitudes and the regional differences are important to take into account for policymakers.

“[P]olicies and anti-piracy strategies aimed at eliminating consumer piracy should take into account product category and consumer characteristics, as well as national level differences,” the researchers conclude.

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

Team at Imperial College London say techniques could be used to flag warning signs during surgery

It is a high-stakes scenario for any surgeon: a 65-year-old male patient with a high BMI and a heart condition is undergoing emergency surgery for a perforated appendix.

An internal bleed has been detected, an anaesthetics monitor is malfunctioning and various bleepers are sounding – before an urgent call comes in about an ectopic pregnancy on another ward.

Continue reading...

Study of 23-year-olds found the exams were even more important for those from disadvantaged backgrounds

GCSE grades have an excellent track record in predicting the future lives and careers of young adults, according to researchers, who found the exams were even more crucial for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Academics from Leeds and York universities found that the predictive power of GCSE results outstripped those of gender or later qualifications, including university degrees, in charting the development of young people from the age of 16 into their early 20s.

Continue reading...

In recent years, website blocking has become one of the most widely-used anti-piracy enforcement mechanisms in the world.

ISPs in several dozen countries prevent subscribers from accessing a variety of ‘pirate’ sites. New blocks are added every month and rightsholders are actively lobbying to expand the measure to the United States .

While site blocking is by no means a panacea, copyright holders are convinced that it has a notable effect and have research to back this up.

Piracy Blocking Research

One of the earliest pieces of peer-reviewed academic research, based on UK data, showed that the local Pirate Bay blockade had little effect on legal consumption. Instead, pirates turned to alternative pirate sites, proxies, or VPNs to bypass the virtual restrictions.

A follow-up study added more color and brought good news for rightsholders. The research found that once a large number of sites were blocked in the UK, overall pirate site traffic decreased . At the same time, the researchers observed an increase in traffic to legal services such as Netflix.

The latter findings are frequently cited in policy discussions around site blocking. While the results are solid, they are limited too. They only apply to the UK situation, for example, and the long-term effects of site-blocking efforts on piracy and legal consumption are missing.

New Findings: India

A new non-peer-reviewed working paper published by Chapman University and Carnegie Mellon University researchers aims to fill the first gap. Using similar methodology to that seen in the earlier UK study, the researchers studied the effects of blocking in India and Brazil.

In India, the researchers studied two separate blocking waves. The first took place in December 2019, when 380 piracy websites were blocked. The second wave was implemented in September 2020, when Indian ISPs blocked 173 additional piracy sites.

The researchers checked browsing data to see if the blocks were effective and whether pirates switched to unblocked sites. Visits to legal video entertainment services, including Netflix and Hotstar, were monitored as well.

The results of these studies largely replicate the UK findings. The first Indian blocking wave triggered an 8.1% increase in visits to legal sites, and the second wave led to a 3.1% increase. There was no statistically significant increase in visits to unblocked pirate sites.

Overall, the Indian findings suggest that site blocking can increase legal consumption without driving traffic to other, unblocked pirate sites.

New Findings: Brazil

Next, the researchers turned their attention to Brazil, where 174 piracy sites were blocked in July 2021. Using a similar research design, they found that these pirate site blocks resulted in a 5.2% increase in visits to paid streaming websites.

Unlike in India, there was a significant increase in traffic to unblocked pirate sites in Brazil. This is similar to the ‘dispersion’ effect that was previously found in response to UK blockades.

[I]n Brazil we found that blocking 174 piracy sites caused a statistically significant increase in visits to unblocked piracy sites, in essence dispersing some piracy,” the researchers write.

‘Pirate Site Blocking Works’

These findings suggest that the positive effects of pirate site blocking are not limited to the UK. This will be music to the ears of rightsholders who wish to expand pirate site blocking globally, with the US as the ‘holy grail’.

“[The research] provides evidence that website blocking in Brazil and India in 2019, 2020, and 2021 has a similar effect as it did in the UK in 2013 and 2014, despite the fact that during that intervening time the landscape of piracy and legal consumption has changed significantly.

“In short, our results suggest that piracy website blocking remains an effective strategy for increasing legal consumption of copyrighted content,” the researchers add.

While the latest study isn’t peer-reviewed separately, it indeed confirms the earlier findings. That said, piracy research is dynamic and never complete, so many questions remain unanswered.

More (Lasting) Conclusions?

One question that remains concerns the lasting effect on behavior. The studies above only measure consumption patterns in the span of a few months, and it’s possible that some pirates eventually relapse.

Brett Danaher of Chapman University, the lead author of the paper, recognizes this shortcoming. Ideally, he would like to do more longitudinal research but obtaining that type of data is not easy.

“The biggest challenge there is finding a panel company that tracks a consistent set of users for longer periods of time,” Danaher tells TorrentFreak.

“With the companies we’ve been working with, the size of the panel shrinks exponentially as we ask for longer panels. It’s a real challenge.”

The researcher mentions that there is a study that found that the effects of blocking measures are short-lived, but that only applies to a single site, Kino.to . This ‘relapse’ finding was later supported by an Italian study , that included over two dozen sites.

Danaher further explained that the latest study wasn’t peer-reviewed because it’s a replication study. The research uses the same methodology as the previously published UK study, which was peer-reviewed and published in MIS Quarterly .

“Our thought was that there was useful information in this study and the methodology itself has already undergone peer review, but the peer review process for this paper would have taken a lot of time with little probability of landing in a premier journal.”

MPA Funding

Finally, it should be noted that this new India/Brazil study, like previous ones, is carried out as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics (IDEA). The initiative is partly funded by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) which is the driving force behind many global site blocking efforts.

The MPA has sent unrestricted gifts to IDEA center since 2012, totaling several million dollars. In recent years, the gift amounted to $1 million annually.

There is no evidence that the research findings are in any way influenced by this funding, of course. The connected researchers have repeatedly pointed out that they operate completely independently, which Danaher confirms.

“To me, the top value of the center is that it allows me to sometimes access data to which I otherwise would not have access but protects me from outside influences,” Danaher notes, using the movie industry sales figures that were used in a Megaupload study as an example

“In other words, once I get studio data through the IDEA Center for a particular project, I am guaranteed the ability to publish my results for that paper regardless of what they say,” he adds.

—

Danaher, Brett and Sivan, Liron and Smith, Michael D. and Telang, Rahul, The Impact of Online Piracy Website Blocking on Consumer Choices (February 12, 2024). Available at SSRN .

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

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Over the years, we’ve witnessed dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Initially, these pointed out that piracy is illegal and immoral, hoping to change people’s views.

“ Don’t Copy That Floppy ” and “ You Wouldn’t Steal a Car ” are prime examples of these early attempts. While these campaigns captured the interest of a broad public, mostly for amusement purposes, they did little to stop piracy.

In recent years the tone of anti-piracy campaigns has changed. Instead of focusing on legal aspects and financial losses, they now place emphasis on pirates themselves being at risk , by associating piracy with ransomware, credit card theft, and other evils.

Just in the past month, two public service announcement campaigns were launched, both with a strong focus on security threats. In addition to rightsholders, these campaigns include State Attorneys General and the U.S. Government’s IPR Center , each adding extra weight to the messaging.

Is Cyber Hygiene a Remedy to IPTV Infringement?

Anti-piracy groups must have a good reason to focus on security issues instead of copyright law. Perhaps the former is more effective?

A new paper titled “ Is cyber hygiene a remedy to IPTV infringement? ” suggests that this could indeed be the case.

With this study, researchers from the University of Oxford, Bournemouth University and Hamad bin Khalifa University researched how psychological factors, including risk-taking and security behaviors, impact people’s tendency to use shady IPTV services. Put differently, what determines whether people are more likely to use ‘risky’ piracy services?

After completing several questionnaires, the UK-based respondents were presented with a mockup of an IPTV service. There were several mockup versions, ranging from a clean interface to ones with popups, even spy- or ransomware. For each version, respondents had to rate the perceived risk level, and their risk-taking inclination.

The resulting scores allow the researchers to see how much risk people are willing to take, with the built-in assumption that unlicensed ‘pirate’ streaming services generally have more risky signs.

Internet Addicted Pirates with Psychopath Personalities

The researchers hypothesized that people who score higher on Internet addiction traits tend to be less reluctant to use risky piracy services. The same should apply to people with dark personalities , which is a combination of the personality traits narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

The results of the study confirmed these predictions, showing that people who score higher on Internet addiction and dark personality traits are more likely to see risky streaming platforms as less problematic.

Vasilis Katos , Computer Science Professor at Bournemouth University, informs TorrentFreak that this is both good and bad news for anti-piracy advocates. Dark personality traits are relatively fixed and hard to change, but digital addiction can be addressed.

“Our findings show that people’s propensity to risk taking – in our case viewing AV content with a risk of getting infected by malware – is dependent on two main aspects: one’s dark personality traits and the degree of digital addiction.”

“The former is considered pretty constant and stable over time, as the dark personality traits have genetical and biological components, therefore less prone to change. For digital addiction, however, we accept that there are interventions where people can adopt in order to heal,” Katos says.

Cybersecurity Behavior

There is an important caveat, as the researchers stress that addressing Internet addiction might not only affect online piracy, but also legal consumption. After all, binge-watching on official streaming platforms is also a form of addiction.

A more straightforward option to deter pirates lies in the online security realm. The study reveals that people’s cybersecurity practices and behaviors, mediate the link between digital addiction and risky IPTV viewing.

This mediating effect suggests that when people are warned or educated about the risk of malware, fraud, and other evils on pirate sites, they are less likely to use these services.

“[I]n order to reduce the likelihood of someone consuming illegal IPTV content, we can address their digital addiction and/or improve their cybersecurity behaviour and hygiene,” Katos notes.

Piracy Genes?

Put differently, the anti-piracy campaigns that focus on security awareness aspects, which we have seen pop up repeatedly in recent years, can be an effective strategy; perhaps even more effective than legal threats.

That said, the researchers stress that piracy is a complex issue that no single measure can solve. People who are born with dark personalities, particularly the psychopathy trait, are genetically predisposed to take more risks online.

No matter how many malware threats there are, some people are simply willing to take the risk; just like there will always be people who step in to launch new piracy services. It’s in their genes, apparently.

“[A]lthough these [security-focused] campaigns could contribute to the decrease of risky IPTV viewing practices, they will not eliminate the problem, as there is always the portion of the population that are risk takers and perhaps seek thrills, as part of their psyche,” Katos concludes.

—

A copy of the preprint article covering the research in detail is available below. The results have not yet been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as such.

Shah R, Cemiloglu D, Yucel C, Ali R, Katos V. Is cyber hygiene a remedy to IPTV infringement? A study of online streaming behaviours and cybersecurity practices . Research Square; 2023.

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

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments