By Larissa Knapp, MPA Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer
The following post was first published July 8, 2024 by Forbes Argentina and has been translated for the Alliance in Action blog.
Over the course of 27 years at the FBI, I worked with law enforcement partners at home and abroad to take down illicit networks and put criminals behind bars.
Since joining the Motion Picture Association last month, I’ve trained my focus onto the film, television and sports broadcasting industry, but the core mission remains clear: to halt nefarious activities across the globe and spare the public from harm – in our case, by fighting digital piracy.
This threat is seeping into markets, communities, smartphones and laptops everywhere. The pirate operators behind these illegal sites and services are criminal actors, and they’ve gone viral and virtual. They’ve become parts of vast, international criminal enterprises. They engage in digital theft, taking others’ creative work designed for movie theater, TV, or computer screens, and illegally distribute it across the globe.
Combating this illegal activity could not be more vital or urgent. Because whenever someone logs onto one of these seemingly innocuous websites and accesses stolen content, it does more than put consumers’ privacy, personal data, or payment information at risk. The pirate operators behind these illegal services undermine the businesses, workforce, and entire ecosystem behind some of the world’s favorite movies, TV shows, and sporting events.
Simply put, this insidious form of theft impacts lives and livelihoods in Argentina and across Latin America.
As of 2019, the film and television industry was responsible for 1.6 million jobs in Latin America and accounted for an economic output of $13.3 billion. In Argentina alone, this sector has supported upwards of 630,000 jobs. And we’re talking about more than casts and crews; that includes caterers, construction companies, legal services, and local Argentine businesses that benefit when a production comes to town.
When online pirate operators are allowed to set up shop, grow, and function with impunity, this vast segment of the economy takes a hit. To give just a few more facts and figures, piracy costs $733 million per year for the audiovisual industry in Latin America; those losses total at least $176 million just in Argentina, according to a study commissioned by the Center for Telecommunications Studies in Latin America (CET). too: there are about 26 million unique monthly users of illegal piracy websites in this country.
So the question is: what are we doing to counter the scourge of digital piracy, protect this critical industry creating jobs in Argentina, and improve public safety online?
One key answer for me? Going back to my roots and uniting a coalition of law enforcement agencies, government officials, private sector leaders, and legal investigators to take down illicit networks of digital piracy operators wherever they exist and persist.
That’s already been happening in this nation and across this hemisphere. Just last December, police officers, agents, and investigators from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States executed the latest phase of “Operation 404,” a unified effort to combat digital piracy across borders.
Since this operation began five years ago, it has successfully blocked over 2,500 piracy sites and nearly 750 streaming apps, most of them based in Latin America. From the start, this campaign was backed by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, or ACE, the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition.
Operation 404 is one of the largest anti-piracy initiatives in the Americas – or anywhere, for that matter. But it’s only one part of an even more expansive campaign to take down piracy sites and services in this region and elsewhere.
Look back, for instance, to November 2022, just before the men’s World Cup, when ACE and others successfully shut down a service known as Futbollibre.net – an illegal site that showed Argentine and European league soccer matches and attracted nearly 43 million visits per month, with most of its traffic coming from Argentina. Or consider what happened a year later when ACE and company helped take down Futbolparatodos, another popular illegal live soccer streaming website. Or think about the case of Cuevana.tv, headquartered in Peru and bringing in roughly 180 million visits each month, where a decade-long investigation ultimately ended its unlawful operations.
All these actions are essential if we want to mitigate the harmful effects of digital piracy on economies, businesses, workers, and individuals in Latin America and beyond. And this work is moving forward.
Right here in Argentina, authorities have ramped up their prosecutions against those violating copyright laws, and the MPA and ACE commend their leadership for tackling this issue head-on through the judicial system.
Now, we need to keep that momentum going. We need to sustain and expand the drive, in the courts, in policymaking, and with regulatory measures, to defend intellectual property.
And I am calling on business leaders and law enforcement agencies throughout Latin America to continue taking clear and aggressive action against digital piracy operations, to vigorously report and prosecute cases of copyright infringement, and to protect this region’s thriving creative marketplace. I am calling on local residents to do their part as well – to learn best practices in identifying illicit websites and remain vigilant to this danger when they surf the web.
When digital pirates succeed, businesses, workers, and consumers suffer. But when we combat them, the entertainment industry is stronger, audiences are safer, and the entire economy is better off. That’s a win for all of us.
