Online piracy can backfire on you
Consumers of illegal content unwittingly expose themselves to cybercriminals–study
Erol (not his real name), a 34-year-old content specialist in a startup, has relied heavily on streaming online content to preserve his sanity since the onset of the pandemic.
“When I’m watching movies or any series, it feels like I am being transported to a different time—a time when the world feels right. It’s like an escape from our daily dose of reality of sickness, death, community quarantines and bickering politicians,” says Erol.
But because of his eagerness to know what would happen in the next episode when on a series binge, he would turn to illegal sites and applications to access pirated materials at times, exposing him to the perils of the internet.
“I accidentally clicked a popup ad while viewing an episode. I thought it was okay because I was still able to watch the episode. The next day, I found out my Facebook account was compromised,” he recalls.
He was blocked from his own Facebook account, while his friends were barraged with messages that he was in a financial rut and needed to borrow cash.
“I was more embarrassed than angry,” he relates.
After that incident, Erol stopped using illegal sites and apps. “It’s like Martial law. #NeverAgain,” he swears. He now considers his subscription to legitimate content providers like Netflix a small price to pay for his peace of mind.
Stealing content
Piracy, or the illegal reproduction or distribution of copyrighted materials, hurts the entertainment industry the most, depriving content creators of income. It has hit not only the artists and celebrities but also the technical staffers who are usually on a no work, no pay scheme.
A survey commissioned by the Asia Video Industry Association’s (Avia) Coalition Against Piracy and conducted by YouGov in 2020 on the online content viewing behavior of Filipino consumers showed that 49 percent access streaming piracy websites or torrent sites. The propensity for piracy goes as high as 53 percent within the 25 to 34 demographic.
Online piracy is considered a criminal activity under Republic Act No. 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. Penalties include jail time of up to 20 years and a fine of up to P500,000. Other laws such as the Intellectual Property Code and the Anti-Camcording Law are also in place to combat piracy.
And yet, these online pirates and their patrons remain undeterred from stealing digital content. In fact, the gravity of piracy in the Philippines has now dwarfed those in neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia, as these two countries have intensified mechanisms to stymie online pirates.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a private sector coalition composed of trade associations representing US copyright-based industries, warned long ago that the country was “rapidly becoming a central battlefield in the increasingly intense campaign against optical media piracy in Southeast Asia; but the country remains ill-prepared to fight this battle.”
As a result, the IIPA placed the Philippines on the “Priority Watch List” in 2010, citing ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights. “Although some agencies continue making progress to increase raid and seizure activity, these efforts have proven insufficient to address widespread piracy and counterfeiting in the country,” according to the IIPA.
Exposure risks
Aside from the staggering financial and economic losses suffered by the entertainment industry due to unbridled online piracy, it also exposes those who patronize illegal content to cybercriminals.
Similar to Erol’s case, malicious ads and pop-ups in piracy sites and streaming apps are used by cybercriminals to infect devices with malware. These often lead to loss of privacy and personal data or identity theft. They may even cripple devices and hold data hostage.
A December 2021 study commissioned by Avia through YouGov titled “Time to Compromise” showed how a test personal computer was compromised within 42 seconds of visiting a piracy website. A test Android device was hacked within 1:18 seconds of installing a popular piracy-related app.
Once a search term is typed, the user is immediately targeted for infection. For instance, clicking on a movie title can trigger the download of a file with the title name plus an “.apk” extension, which contains malware that can read and write to external storage, access Wi-Fi and the calendar.
When users click “play” to stream, they may also encounter a request to allow notifications that could contain malicious links or use a CAPTCHA to confirm that they are human. Clicking the CAPTCHA provides an opportunity for malware download and installation.
In addition, ads and repeated pop-ups are designed to confuse and encourage users to install software detrimental to their machines, such as the Chrome extension called “Adblock 360,” which actually operates as adware.
“We found that a typical user visiting these sites would be infected by ransomware, a number of trojan horses, and other Advanced Persistent Threats ... Malware authors can in turn gain access to consumer PCs and mobile devices, and all of the data held in storage, but also access to banking login details and other sensitive logins,” the report says.
Allies needed
Globe, in partnership with Avia, believes that piracy can be better addressed by enacting structural reforms to complement awareness campaigns and site-blocking efforts.
The Ayala-led telecom provider supports amendments to the Intellectual Property Code to institutionalize rolling site blocking of piracy sites, which will enable internet service providers to block them out and their iterations under a single case filing, says Yoly Crisanto, Globe chief sustainability officer and senior vice president for corporate communications.
To protect the livelihood of creators and shield the public from phishing, malware and cybersecurity threats, Globe has been pursuing the #PlayItRight campaign to educate the public about the perils of accessing pirated content online, such as exposure to malware and inappropriate content.
The campaign, launched in 2017, seeks to discourage end users from downloading illegally distributed content, which not only eats into legitimate sales of content creators, but also renders viewers vulnerable to online threats. This could lead to a breach of their privacy and unauthorized access of personal data.
“We also undertake interventions by working with industry leaders and the government to report and block piracy sites,” Crisanto says.
Globe partnered with the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to create an appropriate site-blocking mechanism that will put more teeth into the fight against cyberpirates.
Under the #PlayItRight campaign, Globe vows to take “proactive” steps in both information dissemination and technology fronts. To ensure that its customers will subscribe to legitimate content sources, it partners with global and local content creators and platforms. Globe was the first to introduce Netflix and Spotify as part of its consumer content bundles, and is in continued partnership with Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go, Viu and many more.
During the pandemic, Globe also launched UPSTREAM, a platform that provides seamless pay-per-view access to international and local online video content.
In March last year, Globe was a signatory to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) led by IPOPHL and the Department of Trade and Industry that mobilized top e-commerce platforms and intellectual property owners in an effort to stop the sale of counterfeit or pirated goods. Under the MoU, online selling platforms and brands agreed on a mechanism for the speedy removal of counterfeit goods from virtual marketplaces.
“Globe firmly stands behind filmmakers and entertainment content creators. We must respect their hard work and help sustain their jobs and the lives that depend on them by fighting online content piracy. Pirated content also often contains malware, that is why we encourage everyone to download from legitimate sources only,” says Crisanto.