Torrents to Telegram, piracy makes a comeback in OTT era

A bunch of techies and copyright experts have teamed up to fight digital pirates who use offshore servers to cover their tracks

- Mohua Das

Ask any teenager from the late 90s and even the most unassuming one will confess to a notorious history of discovering new music and movies through piracy. The noughties arrived with bootleg video libraries and dial-up internet modems. And the new web-straddling generation — mostly ignorant or uncaring of ethical and legal bearings of piracy — were either buying shaky-cam versions of a blockbuster off the streets or downloading entire discographies and films over peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

It was only a crackdown on illegal sites and shops and the advent of streaming tech that prompted ex-torrenters to kick their habit. However, piracy is anything but dead.

Turns out, if streaming services love the cloud, the pirates love it too since it makes it easier to download, mirror and circulate content illegally and harder for broadcasters to track them. The year 2020 particularly sparked a video piracy bonanza as the pandemic kept people home and out of theatres. Antipiracy agency Aiplex in Bengaluru notes that 23 million people in India had watched at least one episode of ‘Scam 1992’ although SonyLIV accounted for only two million subscribers while ‘Aashram’, one of MX Player’s most popular shows, would have gained 20% more viewership if watched legally. “According to a report by Digital TV Research in 2021, the loss of revenue for OTT players on account of piracy in India is expected to hit $3.08 billion by 2022, while the cost of global online streaming piracy will reach $52 billion by 2022,” points out Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex.