Brazil Regulator Claims '80% of Pirate TV Boxes' Were Blocked Last Week

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel claims that during an operation last week, it successfully blocked around 80% of pirate 'TV boxes' in the country. Estimates from early 2023 suggest that seven million were active in Brazil. The operation, claimed to be the most significant ever carried out, arrives just weeks after Google & Cisco were criticized for "turning a blind eye" to the IPTV piracy problem. [...] Whatever the approach, if Anatel had somehow managed to prevent 80% of all TV boxes receiving pirated content in the space of a year, that would be an extraordinary achievement. Even a week would be astonishing but the claim of millions in a day seems either incredible, non-credible, or entirely dependent on more important information or nuance that isn't being reported. Another angle is that disruption on a large scale tends to register in search results and Google data on various related search terms doesn't seem to reflect millions of TV boxes suddenly going dark in Brazil last week. At least, not for any significant length of time.

Although it was illegal...

[RussellTheMuscle]

while living in Colombia, the only ESPN I could get was from Brazil. I picked up a bit of Portuguese watching Yankees games (the only team regularly available.) O mundo do deportes! ESPN. That said, a reasonable price should be paid for such services. Wack-a-mole continues.

Pirate TV boxes?

[Powercntrl]

So, like, generic Chinese "Kodi boxes" with plugins preinstalled to stream pirated content? Those things stop working if you look at them funny.

80% is okay

[Anonymous Coward]

30-50% of the content is advertising and at least another 30% of non-advertising content is garbage. The 20% of legit accounts are covering the good content. Cut the crap, lower the price 80% and see what happens.

Re:

[BigFire]

Human nature. If you can get it for 'free', you will get it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

To beat free you need to bring value. People are willing to pay a fair price.

Re:

[geekmux]

Human nature. If you can get it for 'free', you will get it.

The generation prior to this one realized long ago there's no such thing as a 'free' lunch.

If the person in front of you arguing otherwise is now twentysomething years old, at WHAT point do you feel it justified to call that consumer a fucking idiot, since Greed is pricing cable/internet products based on their stupidity?

This, is why cable boxes that 'hardly work properly' are still a profitable venture. PT Barnum would be the world's first multi-trillionaire if he were alive today.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Human nature. If you can get it for 'free', you will get it.

No it's not. Things carrying a price will absolutely be part of a cost-benefit analysis.

Re: 80% is okay

[Flavianoep]

"Human nature. If you can get it for 'free', you will get it."

Streaming services beg to differ. A great deal of their watched content is old series and movies completely available through illegal torrents.

Hush!

[Opportunist]

Yes. Indeed. All pirate boxes are toast now. Nobody would ever want to claim anything else. They are too strong and nobody will ever dare to pirate again.

Anatel should not be taken seriously.

[TheDarkMaster]

Nobody in Brazil takes Anatel's claims seriously. What really makes people avoid buying these pirated IPTV boxes is the fact that they hardly work properly and nowadays Netflix is reasonably cheap here, even normal cable TV isn't too expensive if you avoid the "premium packages".

Re: Anatel should not be taken seriously.

[Flavianoep]

Most people just watch soap operas anyway. The most popular channel plays five soap operas a day. Even in Netflix the most popular show was a re-run of a soap opera for months.

TL;DR for you

[NomDeAlias]

They've had over a million uncertified devices seized and have been blocking IPTV servers. They have blocked over 3000 pirate servers. Google trends indicates no mass surge of people suddenly without IPTV. They are being extremely creative with their metrics to claim some sort of big win.

How?

[guruevi]

Are they just measuring traffic to a specific server and then coming back a year later and measuring traffic to that same IP? Because setting up a different IP is easy and these kinds of services travel from IP to IP just as a matter of business (many are running on stolen infrastructure, either hacked or paid for with stolen credit cards and AWS and co is just playing whack-a-mole with them).

Most of this kind of traffic is completely encrypted so even with packet inspection you'd be hard pressed to get any

Follow the money

[McLoud]

How about the "government" actually take a look in the actual over-priced monopoly that is Claro/.NET which is also the one funding this whole piracy hunt?

Re: Follow the money

[Flavianoep]

I would be more contented if they did something to give clients a choice of actually removing "free" services from internet packages. Those services are forced into you and unsubscribing has no other effect than removing a line in the detailing of your bill.