Hollywood and Netflix Report Top Piracy Threats To US Government (torrentfreak.com) 103
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent its latest overview of notorious piracy markets to the US Government. The Hollywood group, which also represents Netflix, lists a broad variety of online piracy threats. Aside from traditional pirate sites, it also includes domain registries, hosting providers, advertisers, and apps. [...] The MPA report typically provides a detailed overview of the piracy landscape. This year, the USTR further asked rightsholders to explain how piracy impacts US workers. According to the movie industry group, the effect is significant. "In 2020, there were an estimated 137.2 billion visits to film and TV piracy sites globally, which cost the U.S. economy at least $29.2 billion in lost revenue each year. Specifically, piracy has been estimated to reduce employment in our industry between 230,000 and 560,000 jobs," MPA writes, citing external research. The MPA notes that piracy is a global problem that requires cooperation from the broader Internet ecosystem. Services that see themselves as neutral intermediaries, operating parts of the core Internet infrastructure, should take responsibility. "All stakeholders in the internet ecosystem -- including hosting providers, DNS providers, cloud services, advertising networks, payment processors, social networks, and search engines -- should actively seek to reduce support for notoriously infringing sites," MPA writes.
The industry group views Cloudflare as part of this group and mentions the US company by name in its submission. "Cloudflare's customers include some of the most notorious, longstanding pirate websites in the world, including the massively popular streaming site cuevana3.me and The Pirate Bay," MPA notes, adding that repeated notices of infringement elicited no action on Cloudflare's part. The notorious markets list is limited to non-US operations, so Cloudflare itself isn't one of the MPA's targets. Various other Internet services are, including several third-party intermediaries. The MPA's list of notorious markets calls out domain name registries, including the Russian .RU registry, and the companies that maintain the records for the .CH, .CC, .IO, .ME and .TO domain names. These continue to keep pirate sites on board, despite numerous complaints. The same is true for the payment provider VoguePay, which is reportedly quite popular among IPTV services. In addition, advertisers such as 1XBET and Propeller Ads are called out as well. The latter company rebutted MPA's accusations last year but that didn't prevent it from being highlighted again.
Hosting companies are also cited as intermediaries that could and should do more. Instead, some find themselves appealing to pirate services with products such as "bulletproof" hosting. Squitter.eu and Amaratu are two such examples, the MPA reports. In addition to third-party intermediaries, there is also a category of services that caters to pirates directly. These "piracy as a service" (PaaS) companies offer tools that allow people to start a pirate site with minimal effort. "PaaS encompasses a suite of often off-the-shelf services that make it easy for would-be pirates without any technical knowledge to create, operate, and monetize a fully functioning pirate operation," MPA writes. [...] Actual pirate sites themselves are also mentioned, including the usual suspects The Pirate Bay, RARBG and YTS. In addition to torrent sites, the MPA also lists direct download hubs, streaming portals and linking sites, including Uptobox.com, Fmovies.to and Egy.best. Various dedicated piracy apps get a mention as well, and the MPA further includes a long list of unauthorized IPTV services. The anti-piracy group says that it has identified more than a thousand pirate IPTV platforms, so the list provided to the USTR is certainly not exhaustive. In fact, the MPA says that all companies, sites, and services are part of a broader piracy problem. Those flagged in the MPA's report are just examples of some of the worst offenders, nothing more. A list of all sites and services that are highlighted and categorized in MPA's notorious markets submission (PDF) can be found in the article.
The industry group views Cloudflare as part of this group and mentions the US company by name in its submission. "Cloudflare's customers include some of the most notorious, longstanding pirate websites in the world, including the massively popular streaming site cuevana3.me and The Pirate Bay," MPA notes, adding that repeated notices of infringement elicited no action on Cloudflare's part. The notorious markets list is limited to non-US operations, so Cloudflare itself isn't one of the MPA's targets. Various other Internet services are, including several third-party intermediaries. The MPA's list of notorious markets calls out domain name registries, including the Russian .RU registry, and the companies that maintain the records for the .CH, .CC, .IO, .ME and .TO domain names. These continue to keep pirate sites on board, despite numerous complaints. The same is true for the payment provider VoguePay, which is reportedly quite popular among IPTV services. In addition, advertisers such as 1XBET and Propeller Ads are called out as well. The latter company rebutted MPA's accusations last year but that didn't prevent it from being highlighted again.
Hosting companies are also cited as intermediaries that could and should do more. Instead, some find themselves appealing to pirate services with products such as "bulletproof" hosting. Squitter.eu and Amaratu are two such examples, the MPA reports. In addition to third-party intermediaries, there is also a category of services that caters to pirates directly. These "piracy as a service" (PaaS) companies offer tools that allow people to start a pirate site with minimal effort. "PaaS encompasses a suite of often off-the-shelf services that make it easy for would-be pirates without any technical knowledge to create, operate, and monetize a fully functioning pirate operation," MPA writes. [...] Actual pirate sites themselves are also mentioned, including the usual suspects The Pirate Bay, RARBG and YTS. In addition to torrent sites, the MPA also lists direct download hubs, streaming portals and linking sites, including Uptobox.com, Fmovies.to and Egy.best. Various dedicated piracy apps get a mention as well, and the MPA further includes a long list of unauthorized IPTV services. The anti-piracy group says that it has identified more than a thousand pirate IPTV platforms, so the list provided to the USTR is certainly not exhaustive. In fact, the MPA says that all companies, sites, and services are part of a broader piracy problem. Those flagged in the MPA's report are just examples of some of the worst offenders, nothing more. A list of all sites and services that are highlighted and categorized in MPA's notorious markets submission (PDF) can be found in the article.
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news: The MAFIAA has no problem in lying to government.
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Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Song of the South is on archive.org in full 1080p restored HD. It's out of copyright.
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Add to it - to get access you have to sell your soul and to be forced to watch stuff that you don't want to watch that's attached to the show/movie you watch like copyright warnings and ads of various kinds. At best it's just promotions for other shows/movies.
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The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent its latest overview of notorious piracy markets to the US Government. The Hollywood group, which also represents Netflix, lists a broad variety of online piracy threats. Aside from traditional pirate sites, it also includes domain registries, hosting providers, advertisers, and apps. [...] The MPA report typically provides a detailed overview of the piracy landscape. This year, the USTR further asked rightsholders to explain how piracy impacts US workers. According to the movie industry group, [blah blah blah blah blah]
tl;dr:
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is rather rediculous that they would assume people who are pirating media, especially overseas, would otherwise purchase that media.
And the job loss figures are absolutely ludicrous. They already greenlight every mediocre bit of media they can get their hands on, are we to believe that without the "losses" of piracy they would be putting out thousands of additional movies/tv shows a year? Where would they put them, 10 new streaming services? People already are unwilling to purchase and watch half of what's out there.
Let's be honest, the bulk of these "losses" are from the top grossing most popular products, and given how profitable those are, they are already doing absolutely as many as the market will bear. They are not funding or labor constrained. They are constrained by the attention span of the people.
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Everyone is a criminal and everyone is against us.
That's just giving me the Judge Dredd feeling.
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Industry that bases itself around selling fantasies presents fantasy numbers to government.
WTFGTFOFOAD!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: WTFGTFOFOAD!?!? (Score:2)
Your assets ARE protected (Score:2)
Legal and regulation protect almost everything you do or become involved with. Guardrails protect your labour, your home, your car, your possessions, your rights... almost everything is afforded some level of automatic presumed protection. I can't wander into what's possibly your largest asset, your home, and claim it as my own because there are legal mechanisms in place to protect the concept of ownership. And anything you commit to paper is automatically copyrighted. They're asking for enforcement of exis
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Progress matey (Score:3)
If only sailing ships back in the day had been plug and play, aar. We only had peg legs and parrots.
pulling numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
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Pretty sure a lot more shows are cancelled by Netflix' policy of "Oh no, this isn't NEW anymore, we need something NEW because people don't want to finish the story, they want NEW AND SHINY!"
If the companies don't feel obligated to sell me a full story, I don't feel obligated to pay them a single cent for the incomplete one they're peddling.
Par for the course (Score:2)
They always assume and expect us to believe that people would pay for their content if they couldn't get it for free. At least in my case, this is false.
Re:Par for the course (Score:4, Insightful)
Once I could afford paying, it was never about availability of pirate sites, it was about lack of rationally priced legal alternatives.
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I'm pretty sure they didn't pull these numbers out of thin air. My guess is their source is a much darker and far more unpleasant place, especially in the olfactory department.
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What, like the back of a Volkswagen?
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I see that they are still pulling numbers out of thin air...
The 230,000 - 560,000 jobs, that's laying it on really thick. The industry is operating as normal, it's not like productions are getting cancelled because of piracy.
You're looking at it the wrong way. People who pirate that many shows wouldn't pay for them, so the number of jobs in the industry would not increase. People who spend that much time watching all those shows are clearly not working as much as they could. If they weren't pirates they'd be so much more productive! By my calculations half a million fte jobs is a lowball number... </sarc>
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Art and entertainment have value. Movies and music made for the purpose of generating as much money as possible have no
Re: pulling numbers (Score:1)
People that keep paying for content they don't like perpetuate the problem. We have all the tools needed to end studio/distro monopoly and directly fund the talent and projects we want.
Why would they hire more people (Score:3)
For what I wish was the last time, companies don't hire because they have money. Companies hired to meet demand. This is a fundamental aspect of the economy that people fail to understand. Not the guys running Hollywood and netflix. They understand it. But the people reading these propaganda stories pushed by them
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Why do you hate competition, Capitalism and markets?
Because they produce crap like that? I tried to like them, I really did, but it's a really, really hard sell, ya know...
Re: Why would they hire more people (Score:3)
When all else fails, use the commie slam.
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To produce more copies you just copy the files these days. It doesn't cost the company anything. In fact the pirates are probably saving them money by storing, distributing, and advertising for them at zero cost.
Yes you have to pay the artist to produce the product in the first place, but after that the content exists. It will never cost more to produce it unless you want to pay someone for some other service like marketing it or distributing it, but that isn't a production cost, that's a sales and distr
That report from the MPA is gold! (Score:5, Funny)
They have very thoughtfully compiled a list of handy streaming platforms...
Thank you, MPA. I never knew that you were so kind.
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The good old "Streisand Effect".
Re: That report from the MPA is gold! (Score:2)
My first thought was "cuevana3.me"? I never heard about it before, but... thanks ðYS
Also, thanks for that nifty list of a 1000 alternative download sites, plus instructions for rolling my own ðY
Why would they do this? (Score:2)
The MPAA indicates significant piracy. Wonder why? Well when these companies continue to play the shell game with media. it's a wonder why anyone would choose to continue with this endless game where no one can own anything. The last ultimate format was clearly the DVD once CSS was broken. Past that, the industry made an active choice to ensure that customers can never actually own anything they've paid for and streaming services have only tipped the scales even further into their favor.
Give customers w
"consume" (Score:2)
"Give customers what they want. The ability to buy media and consume it wherever"
I really wish the line of thinking that is behind the use of "consume" would stop. I watch a movie, I don't "consume" it. I'm not disagreeing with your post, and everyone these days uses "consume". But it's not an appropriate word to use for every single product and dare I say that term is dehumanizing?
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In fairness, I do feel that I "consume" a book or a movie somewhat, in the sense that once I've read it or watched, it's lost a lot of its value. If it's a book or a good movie, it may regain some value over time and I may want to read or watch it again. But it'll never be like the first time.
Music is a little more immune to this, as good music is often played over and over, and the better it is, the more it's played. But even the best music tends to wear out also, and it sure is never like the first time e
Re: "consume" (Score:2)
I don't. I have a set of CDs and downloads I listen very regularly. Weekly at least, the LotR soundtrack is played here because there is always someone listening to it. And even if my feelings about it change, it is still not consumed. I can still give it away, as fresh as the day I downloaded it.
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Re: "consume" (Score:2)
"This is the reason I don't like buying a lot of books or movies. Unlike music, once a book or movie has been consumed, it usually just takes up space on a shelf unless I go to ebay and sell it"
Depending on the book, I'll go back and reread some of the chapters. Especially texts by Orwell. For me it's once through to get a good gist of the storyline, and going back to really deep think it. Maybe my brain is wired differently from most.
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Re: "consume" (Score:2)
My brain "consumes" the content, I suppose. :-|
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I really wish the line of thinking that is behind the use of "consume" would stop
This is a quibble over a perfectly legit use of the word. As one of the definitions of the word consume is to "engage in economic activity." And the use of consume as a word for engage without specific use case is well established. Such as the sentence, "he was consumed by his work." Consume as a intransitive verb meaning engage in economic activity is actually better in line with it's etymology, where the word derives from the Latin word consumere, which means someone whom buys something. It is only i
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You're wrong.
And the use of consume as a word for engage without specific use case is well established. Such as the sentence, "he was consumed by his work."
This sentence "he was consumed by his work." means that the persons attention was taken away in whole (consumed) by his work.
It does not mean 'engaged in economic activity'.
Consumption means you use up the value of something.
You can consume food, you can consume shampoo.
You cannot, however, consume a movie unless you eat it or burn it.
Consumption refers to stuff that loses its value after use.
where the word derives from the Latin word consumere, which means someone whom buys something.
Bullshit.
'Con' means 'all' or 'altogether'
'Sumere' means 'to take (up)'
Together they mean 'take up ev
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The etymology isn't relevant to the psychology here. People don't know the Latin it derives from. They do know which other meanings the English word has, that it means both "devour" and "purchase".
The comparison to make isn't They Live, rather George Orwell's explorations of the psychology of language. Although I have issues with Orwell's analysis, at least it's analyzing the right thing, not what someone speaking Middle English might have thought in 1300 AD while their language was still mingling itself wi
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"The MPAA complains endlessly about piracy but it itself is the sole source for why people elect to pirate media."
Bullshit. People pirate media because that makes it free. Nobody pirates it strictly to take a moral stance. Spending time locating media, dodging sketchy uploads, transcoding, and serving because it's "convenient". Convenient is subscribing to the service.
The "Utopia" you describe is simply a bridge too far. You want to destroy the model from the top to the bottom. Good luck.
Thanks hollywood! (Score:5, Funny)
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It's a bit of a hollow victory, given that most of the crap they're producing isn't even worth the effort to steal it.
Re: Thanks hollywood! (Score:3)
Well there is a huge demand for new Hollywood movies so either people these days really like crao content, or the content isn't as much crap as you think.
There will always be piracy, it was true back in the beginnings of the home video era. But most people don't pirate, and I don't see studios on the streets begging for food and spare change. But if they really want to cut down on piracy, they need to make things customer friendly. Meaning no region locks, no "not available in your country", no weir
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Yes, people like crap. And they have been trained to have every payoff instantly. You can't take time to create a mood in a movie any more, because the only mood you create is impatience.
Re: Thanks hollywood! (Score:2)
What is "crap" anyway? YASHM (Yet another super hero movie) with huge FX and a shallow storyline? Meh, good enough for a 2 hour escape and a thrill. I've watched many "crap" movies, often 70s/80s grindhouse flix but again it was a thrill and a detour from the seriousness of the world.
Even if nearly every movie was high end art with a well crafted and thick storyline, people will eventually grow tired of it and pop in the "Emoji Movie" DVD for something to laugh at and mock with their friends.
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To me it's when the script is worse than the storyline in the comic book :)
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I just had this thought looking at the site mentioned in TFS. It took like 12 pages to even see something I'd want to watch, and that was the Hobbit trilogy from 10 years ago that already lives warm and snug on my NAS.
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Without this report, I'd have never heard of half of these sites. Now my piracy game is upped.
You're not already pirating more things than you could ever hope to watch?
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Nah, I'm not a Hollywood exec, I don't have that pressing urge to have more than I can use.
Re: Thanks hollywood! (Score:2)
Some people do online hoarding which often involves pirated material.
Re: Thanks hollywood! (Score:2)
No, that fate is relegated to my Steam game library.
Re: Thanks hollywood! (Score:2)
Nope. I sometimes encounter a trailer or an artist I want to know more about, so I download a bit. But it's pretty rare. I have Netflix and I don't have the time to watch other stuff besides that.
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however (Score:1)
Re: however (Score:2)
"Us vs. them" is not good for the customer or the studios.
boo hoo (Score:2)
"NOOOO We're only making $900B at a time when the entire economy is collapsing, it's not FAAAAIR"
Crimeflare needs to stop (Score:1)
Cloudflare aka crimeflare, ignores the majority of things sent to them to take down, claims they do not host (when they do in fact host the DNS of the piracy sites) and sends any contact information you send them directly to the pirates.
If anything, Cloudflare is the reason the rule exists, because if you don't explicitly state that the company can't ignore requests for action, they will lean on the "we're only a proxy" (they're not) excuse. Optimization and DDoS protection are things that involve changing
Re: Crimeflare needs to stop (Score:2)
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Well, if the Internet is the road, in all reasonableness, Cloudflare drives the getaway car.
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Thank you. You made me admire Cloudflare even more than I already did!
They are their own biggest threat (Score:2)
Piracy? Really? (Score:1)
Like guys in boats with parrots and swords n shit row up to the local Blockbuster and steal all the DVDs?
That must be quite a site!
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I'd picture it a bit like this [youtube.com].
Top Piracy Threats (Score:2)
Just guessing, but... Movies that no one wants to pay to see, or aren't improved by seeing, in the theater? Movies/TV shows that would be fine on broadcast/cable, but not worth even $8-15 / month more on <insert-streaming-service>+ ? Way too many streaming services carrying way too much exclusive content?
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Way too many streaming services carrying way too much exclusive content?
... most of which if movie-length is a crappy clone of some real A-ticket franchise (Hi Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, at minimum - looking at 99% of all your in-house movies here, they exist only to answer the question "I searched for the movie I wanted, do you have a wish.com version of that?"), or if a series 90% likely to be catalog filler with at best 10% real gems.
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If the content is that bad, don't fucking watch it. Good lord.
Make it easy for people to give you their money (Score:3)
Basically repeating other comments, but: make it easy for people to give you their money, and piracy will virtually disappear.
There is far less music piracy than there once was. Bands I care about, I can usually buy downloads from the band. Otherwise - for better or for worse - any streaming service will let me listen to basically any music. So I only need one service, done.
Computer games - Steam (love it or hate it) means that I can get basically any game I want, instantly and painlessly. One service, done.
Movies and TV shows? It's chaos, not only because of all the streaming services with "exclusive" content, but also because those services add and remove stuff from their catalogs all the time. There is nowhere that you can go, to buy whatever movies or shows you are interested in. Hence: piracy thrives.
All they have to do, to solve the problem: make it easy for people to buy what they want.
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Steam (love it or hate it) means that I can get basically any game I want, instantly and painlessly. One service, done.
Except for the games which you buy on steam and then wind up having to install another service to play them anyway, whee! GTA, I'm looking at you.
The Real Crime. (Score:2)
Hey want to get an accurate report on entertainment theft? Just ask the competition! I'm sure they'll provide a fair and balanced view to back up their business impact statements and associated tax write-offs (not that there's an ulterior motive or anything)
Want to talk about crime? It's criminal to assume Hollywood is capable of putting out an original thought anymore. Entertainment today is being forced to bring back original movies to replay in theaters because they can't even puke up a decent remake
You're not co-operating (Score:2)
Translation: You have to spend your money protecting MY property.
What about the electric power companies? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I looked at their list for research purposes, here's the list of all of the new additions:
â" Cda.pl
â" Cuevana3.me (new)
â" Cuevana.pro (new)
â" Dytt8.net, Dy2018.com, Dygod.net, and Ygdy8.com
â" Egy.best
â" Fmovies.to
â" Fullhdizlesene (new)
â" Gimy.app
â" Gnula.se/Gnula.nu
â" Hesgoal.com (new)
â" KatmovieHD (new)
â" Myflixer.to (new)
â" NooNoo.tv (new)
â" Rezka.ag (new)
â" Soap2Day (new)
â" Streaming Community (new)
â" Tamilblasters / St
This seems like a leading economic indicator... (Score:2)
To me, this seems like a leading economic indicator that the economy is worsening. When the *AA guys start wringing their hands to governments and saying how much they are losing, and how they need their pocket Congresscritters to pass more laws. In reality, even though streaming services are more valued than food oftentimes, the reason why there are "losses", is that people are losing jobs and starting to cut back. People are going from 10+ streaming services to just a few they use, or if things get rea
Numbers are always hopelessly inflated (Score:2)
"In 2020, there were an estimated 137.2 billion visits to film and TV piracy sites globally, which cost the U.S. economy at least $29.2 billion in lost revenue each year."
As usual these numbers are always hopelessly inflated because they assume that everyone who pirates a film would have paid for it otherwise, which is simply not the case whatsoever.
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As usual these numbers are always hopelessly inflated because they assume that everyone who pirates a film would have paid for it otherwise, which is simply not the case whatsoever.
Many, many times I've downloaded something, started watching it, realized it was garbage, deleted it, and then apologized profusely to the electrons that bravely sacrificed themselves for my futility.
Not feeling sorry (Score:2)
While actors, singers, producers and co. live in ridiculously large mansions, own yachts, planes, cars etc. and dispose of absurde amounts of cash, I cannot feel guilty or sorry.
Sure, that doesn't make pirating legit, but it also doesn't make government spending a priority right now
They should do for movie Streaming, (Score:2)
Everyone's doing it. (Score:2)
63% of the population has internet access.
That's 4.8 Billion men, women, and children, old and young that have internet access.
With 137.2 Billion visits in 2020, that means Each person from 0 - 110 years old visited 29 times.
Sounds legit for a covid year.
Dear MPAA (Score:2)
You notice that this was on the downswing when Netflix was in its heyday, then yall decided "I want that pie" and spilt all the streaming services.
And now we are back to here.
All levels of business (Score:2)
1) Create a business model
2) do SOMETHING that makes some money
3) anything that's too hard to fix or that you perceive bothers you, whine to the government
I've seen this firsthand at the city level. Typical "downtown" businesses complain about high tax revenue centers like a mall, and in the next breath ask what can be done to cut down on strip mall development.
I've gone almost entirely streaming even though I have a full hard-copy library of HD/UHD discs, then my internet goes down. If Netflix & the s
Cost the economy? Really? (Score:2)
The money not spent on movies and TV shows was spent elsewhere, and directly it cost "the economy" nothing. I suppose you could say that indirectly it cost the economy whatever gains might result from studios being more successful. But realistically, movies and TV are among the more "top-heavy" segments of the economy, when it comes to fuelling the concentration of wealth which really does cost the economy a LOT of money.
People save some money by pirating content. But it's important to remember that they wa
Oh save us! (Score:2)
We are stacked with money and lawyers, but please Mr Government, Save Us!
Music artists are finished (Score:2)
If we don't immediately tackle the problem of tape recording hit songs from radio the music industry will be finished.
You know who will suffer? The poor artists please think of them and not our profits when you so carelessly record a song from the radio.
The fact is the music & film industry have "lost" revenue every single time anyone watched something without paying for it...right?
Every single time my kids watch Disney+ content at my friend's house they are shamefully not paying. Every single tim
Amaratu? (Score:1)
Twist on old Soviet Russia saying (Score:2)
Meanwhile, Our Catalytic Converter Was Stolen (Score:2)
Pirating sucks (Score:2)