Nearly half of online South Americans consume pirate video


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Juan Fernandez Gonzalez

| 25 January 2016




A report from NetNames and Alianza has found that 110 million South Americans have recently used a pirate platform to download or stream films and series.



Each year, 789 petabytes (789 million gigabytes or 1.5 million streaming hours) are used for pirate video consumption in South America, says the research by Alianza Contra la Piratería, the American anti-pay-TV piracy association.

The report looked at data and broadband consumption over a month in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, and found that almost 50% of the 223.3 million Internet users in South America regularly access a pirate platform.

Most of them (62.7 million unique users) prefer cyber-locking systems - a third-party platform providing file storing and file sharing. Over 46 million people use the classic peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent, Pirate Bay and Cuevana, and 8.8 unique users opt for online streaming.

According to the report, pirate video viewing is most common in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, while is not so extensive in Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. However, countries like Colombia are being affected by other forms of piracy, like under-reporting and illegal set-top boxes.

“Online piracy represents a serious threat for copyright protection. We all know it exists, but this is the first time a report has extensively described and quantified the problem,” said Michael Hartman, senior VP, DirecTV, Latin America. “This data will enable Alianza to develop strategies to fight piracy.”