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EU Study: Online Piracy Rebounds, but Not Due to COVID-19Ernesto Van der Sar, 21 Sep 10:34 AM The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO

EU Study: Online Piracy Rebounds, but Not Due to COVID-19 Ernesto Van der Sar, 21 Sep 10:34 AM The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) regularly conducts studies to see how piracy rates evolve over time. These studies also identify the various barriers and drivers behind this activity, which helps to shape future policies. This week, EUIPO released the latest installment of its biannual report on copyright infringement in the EU and UK. This study aims to document various piracy trends and the socioeconomic factors that trigger them. The EU report is largely based on data from UK piracy tracking firm MUSO, which is widely used for these types of longitudinal studies. Piracy Rebounds In previous studies, a clear downtrend was visible, suggesting that piracy had seen its peak. While this may still be the case, the most recent data suggests that there was a notable increase in piracy levels over the past two years. Overall, the latest study shows that piracy traffic started to grow again at the start of 2021, after years of decline. "The main finding is that the declining trend seen in the earlier studies seems to be reversing, with piracy increasing again, mainly due to increases in piracy of TV content and publications," the report reads. Current piracy levels are still nowhere near what they were five years ago. However, a trend reversal is notable and may suggest that we're at a pivotal point in time. COVID Not to Blame The EU report is the first detailed multi-country piracy study to investigate the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is important, as many stakeholders maintain that this global event increased piracy overall. Earlier this month, for example, the Motion Picture Association presented the following conclusion in its advice on future anti-piracy strategies. "Studies show that piracy in the U.S. increased during the lockdown. These trends have continued past the pandemic, as consumers are now more comfortable with accessing copyrighted content through illegal piracy services," the MPA said. The Hollywood group based its conclusion on an early week-to-week piracy traffic comparison from MUSO, which indeed signaled a temporary increase. However, a follow-up report by MUSO later clarified that this effect was short-lived, as online piracy declined in the months after. The new EU study now confirms that piracy was actually lowered during the pandemic, at least in the EU. While American trends are not included, these tend to be similar to those in Europe, at least in terms of direction. "The models confirm that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to reducing film and TV piracy," the research concludes, adding that there was no positive or negative effect on music. Film piracy dropped during COVID Indeed, looking at the graphs presented in the report, there is a clear COVID dip visible. According to the researchers, more people may have switched to legal services during the lockdowns. "One possible reason for this phenomenon is that users may have opted for legal platforms as a simpler way to access the type of content they are interested in, coupled with limited opportunities to spend money on outside entertainment." While not mentioned in the report, another explanation is that fewer high-profile releases came out during the lockdowns. Fewer releases typically result in a piracy dip. TV Piracy is Booming, Music Not So Looking at the different content categories, we see that TV piracy remains dominant. According to the researchers, 48 % of the total aggregated piracy volume can be attributed to TV. TV is also largely responsible for the recent rebound, together with the new publishing category that was added to the report this year. The evolution of all content piracy shows that the piracy totals remain below the 2017 level. Piracy per Category This overview further shows that music piracy, which was once widespread, is now a relatively fringe activity in the EU. This is good news for the music industry, which has seen its enforcement efforts against streamripping platforms pay off. The EUIPO report also examined live sports piracy for the first time. While the available data is limited, there's a significant increase of roughly 75% visible between the start of 2021 and the end of 2022. Regional Differences Previous studies have shown that streaming is by far the most dominant piracy vehicle today, beating alternatives such as torrents and direct downloads. This trend remains intact. There are notable regional differences between countries, however. As shown below, film pirates in Romania and Italy almost exclusively rely on streaming, while torrents and direct downloads remain fairly popular in Spain and the Netherlands. Piracy Preferences per Country Various countries also differ in the volume and type of content consumed. Piracy is most popular in Estonia and Latvia, while it's relatively out of favor in Germany and Italy. Content per Country The bar chart above further shows different preferences for the type of content. In Greece, film piracy is good for 25% of the total piracy volume, for example, while in Poland it's as low as 5%. Income and Legal Options In addition to providing dozens of descriptive graphs and charts, the researchers also analyzed the data to identify potential key drivers of piracy. This produced some interesting observations. The econometric analysis, which is limited to the movie, TV, and music categories, shows that the number of available legal alternatives reduces piracy. This means that the availability of more legal streaming services correlates to lower piracy numbers. The income level of a country has a significant impact on piracy rates. Low per capita income, a high degree of income inequality, and high youth unemployment are all associated with increased consumption of pirated content. A Massive Caveat All in all, EUIPO's biannual report is a great way to measure and track how piracy trends develop over time. That said, it comes with a massive caveat. The study relies on MUSO's data and is largely based on website visits. This means that IPTV piracy is not taken into account at all. The same is true for other types of piracy, such as apps and streaming devices. EU's own research has shown that IPTV piracy is a billion-dollar industry. While it isn't as easy to measure as web-based traffic, it would be good to see some more details on it in future reports. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Uptobox Goes Dark Following Police Raids on French Datacenters (Updated) Andy Maxwell, 20 Sep 06:43 PM It's no secret that French file-hosting platform Uptobox has been in the crosshairs of rightsholders for some time. Founded in 2011, Uptobox gained popularity by making it easy for users to upload, store, and share files with others. In April 2023 alone, Uptobox received 34 million visits, roughly a third of those from France. News that Uptobox domains had been blocked by French ISPs emerged in May, but the service remained unfazed. Rather than panic, it offered unblocking advice instead. Serious Technical Issues… Roughly three hours ago, the official Uptobox account on 'X' tweeted that the service was experiencing issues. "It appears that we have a technical problem, we are currently investigating, the network seems to be severely disrupted," the platform reported. Reports from all over Europe confirmed that Uptobox was down, accompanied by differences of opinion as to the cause. Soon after, French news outlet l'Informé broke the news that no user of the service wanted to hear. Police Raids on Two Datacenters According to l'Informé sources, around 20 police officers (see update below) raided Scaleway and OpCore, two cloud service providers based in Vitry-sur-Seine, an area in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. At the time of the report, police were still on the scene, reportedly carrying out a court-ordered "counterfeit seizure" operation targeting Uptobox, which presumably utilized servers at Scaleway and OpCore. According to l'Informé, the raids were carried out on behalf of the world's largest entertainment companies; Columbia, Paramount, StudioCanal, Warner Bros, Disney, Apple and Amazon. All are members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the world's largest anti-piracy coalition. (Update: ACE has just confirmed its involvement in the operation. Statement below) No Uptobox domains are functional at the time of writing. One Image Reportedly Sealed Uptobox's Fate A remarkable detail in l'Informé's report suggests that an image posted to Twitter almost five years ago may have marked the beginning of the end for Uptobox. It was posted to the @Starouille account just before Christmas 2018 by an individual believed to be the chief technical officer of Uptobox. 'Online' is a reference to Online SAS, the cloud hosting company that rebranded as Scaleway in 2015. DC2 is a reference to datacenter 2, a 4,500 m² facility located in Vitry-sur-Seine, the same suburb targeted by police this morning. Images courtesy of Google comprehensively clear up any remaining doubts over the location. When contacted by l'Informé for comment, representatives of the movie industry, Scaleway and OpCore all declined to answer any questions. 'Expert' Opinions Should Be Ignored Some 'experts' posting on social media are claiming that the l'Informé article is bogus. Unfortunately, they have to overcome two massive hurdles to remain credible. Most importantly, the news was broken by journalist Marc Rees, so we can safely bet the house it's authentic. Secondly, the official Uptobox account on 'X' has just provided important updates. "Following the incident, we lost access to the servers containing the user files, they are no longer reachable, we have not yet had any documented confirmation of the seizure of our servers by anyone," the first tweet reads. "The database was not affected, and for security reasons, it was relocated off-web and the servers operating the site were erased in their entirety." Uptobox reports that no user data is currently lost and if it can regain access to its servers, files and user accounts may be reconnected. "In the meantime, your files remain anonymous on our servers and are unusable. As for Premium subscriptions, these are frozen and will be restored and credited with compensation as soon as we regain access to the file servers. We are not going to give up, our team is working hard to resolve this situation as quickly as possible." Update: ACE informs us that this was not a police action, but a civil action mandated by the court. Two police officers assisted in the operation, which was orchestrated by ACE. In addition, ACE undertook action in Dubai where the main operators allegedly reside. Additional statement from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment: The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world's leading anti-piracy coalition, today announced it has shut down Uptobox and Uptostream, two of the digital piracy world's most notorious illegal video hosts. The action, conducted in France and the United Arab Emirates, puts an end to a piracy operation that was well known for a decade among distributors of infringing content. The illegal service boasted massive audiences, mainly from France, but also from Indonesia, India and Mexico, with 1.5 billion visits over the last three years. The services hosted a sizable infringing library of film and television titles affecting all ACE members and many other rightsholders, allowing users to stream and download copyright-protected content at no cost or through a paid premium subscription. The two French nationals who ran the illegal service are based in Dubai, where they amassed illegal gains from selling advertising and premium subscriptions. "The action we announced today demonstrates that even the most sophisticated piracy operations are not above the law," said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Global Content Protection Chief of the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE. "This case sends a strong message to criminal operators that their illegal actions will be put to an end eventually. They may think their operations are undercover, but ACE has the network, resources and expertise to identify them and shut them down." "Canal+ supports swift action when acts of piracy compromise intellectual property rights, which in turn has an impact on our business," said Céline Boyer, Head of Content Protection at Canal+. "Our partnership with ACE is essential to ensuring that the creative marketplace continues to thrive by addressing content piracy at its source." "France Televisions has zero tolerance for piracy and illegal distribution of content and channels," said Nathalie Bobineau, Senior Vice President of International Development of French public broadcaster France Televisions. "By collaborating with ACE, we reinforce our commitment to upholding the principles of copyright protection and preserving the value of original content." From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Are you looking for a VPN service? 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