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Pan-African and multinational corporations are regular targets for content-theft syndicates out to profit from their intellectual property. To fight back against these international crime cartels, content producers are building equally sophisticated global partnerships
Content piracy is an insidious global challenge undermining the integrity of multiple creative industries, destroying careers and placing individual users of illicit content at great personal risk.
As a global scourge, it requires a global response. Fortunately, powerful partnerships are being forged across the planet and across sectors to protect content creators and the industry they work in. These partnerships involved digital content platforms, law enforcement bodies, cybersecurity firms and tech companies all working together to ensure the viability of the industries that inform, educate and entertain audiences.
The impact of digital piracy operates at two levels on the individual scale and the social scale. At both levels, the distribution and consumption of pirated content movies, series, music, live events, etc. infects networks, undermines their effectiveness and can ultimately destroy them.
For individuals, streaming a sports event from an illegal site might place them at risk of their device being infected with malware or a virus. It could also lead to their identity being stolen, their bank details being accessed and their accounts being cleaned out. This kind of crime can destroy lives and at a magnitude that far outstrips the short-lived pleasure of viewing a football match.
At the national and international level, content piracy undermines entire industries built around content production. When content is stolen through illegal streaming, the legitimate rightsholders are not compensated. That in turn means producing that content stops being viable. Productions stop, and the professionals who worked on them the actors, presenters, camera people, producers and editors go unpaid.
In this way, content piracy destroys lives on a massive scale. Superficially, piracy might seem like an innocuous pursuit viewing a stream without subscribing to the official channel. However, those effects aggregate. It all adds up, and when done at scale, digital piracy becomes a truly destructive international crime.
These impacts are particularly significant in Africa, where margins are tight. A pan-African entertainment platform like MultiChoice Africa reinvests the earnings from its homegrown African productions to produce ever more relevant, hyperlocal content for its audiences.
The platform produced 6 500 hours of content in 2024, a 12% increase on the previous year, and bringing its content library to an enormous 84 000 hours. The platform caters to audiences right across the continent in 40 languages.
In addition, the platform regularly broadcasts live feeds of many of the most popular sporting events on earth F1, the Olympic Games, Euro, World Cup and Champions League football, as well as popular local leagues.
Such popular content belonging to African broadcasters is regularly targeted by international syndicates as well as domestically produced dramas, comedies and reality TV. With an eye to protect its business, MultiChoice is part of pan-African counter-piracy coalition Partners Against Piracy.
With its cybersecurity partner Irdeto, the company follows an international crime-fighting strategy to combat digital piracy across the continent. Recent raids and arrests have been successfully conducted in Kenya, Nigeria and other parts of the continent.
Taking on global content piracy must necessarily be a global fight, requiring international partnerships.
Trying to stem the tide of an international crime of this magnitude requires international strategies. Large cross-border partnerships have been forged. In Korea, a partnership with the international police organisation Interpol recently saw operators behind major illegal platforms being arrested and an international criminal network EVO Release Group being taken down.
Worldwide anti-piracy clampdown Operation 404 involves institutions from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and the United Kingdom. The latest phase of the operation, in Brazil, served more than 30 search warrants, as well as blocking 675 websites and 14 apps.
In the USA, the Intellectual Property Rights Centre conducts actions across the world against criminal organizations infringing against the intellectual property of rightsholders. In 2023, the organisation achieved significant success, securing 206 convictions and making 2 444 seizures around the globe.
The struggle continues, but there are signs of progress. A digital crime leaves digital traces, which can be tracked, using modern technology. Irdeto has introduced a proprietary watermarking tool that allows it to embed a signal in a live sport transmission, that allows the content to be tracked to the device of any pirate user, who can then be prosecuted.
Ultimately the cyber agility of illegal streaming may be its Achilles’ heel. A global coalition is working to make this a reality, and to bring content-piracy criminals to justice. The survival of the content industry itself may depend on their success.
Reporting Content Piracy:
Reporting General Piracy:
Reporting SuperSport Piracy:
Reporting piracy via the Anti-Piracy Website:
https://www.multichoice.com/partners-against-piracy/types-of-piracy
Anti-Piracy Hotline:
+27 11 289 2684
Anti-Piracy QR Code:
