India among top 5 countries in P2P video piracy: Irdeto study

India is plagued with a serious problem of online piracy as a new research identifies the country among the top five countries for P2P downloads. According to Irdeto’s Global Consumer Piracy Threat Report, India witnessed over 965 million P2P downloads between from January 2017 to May 2018.

Demand for high-quality video content drives P2P piracy which is sourced from either Blu-ray or early release Video on Demand and India accounts for a large proportion of piracy visits via P2P sites (60%).

Findings from Irdeto’s whitepaper on the current piracy landscape also found that India ranked fourth in downloading Blu-ray files (171 million), surpassing China in terms of ranking (50.8 million) and catching up with the U.S. (180 million).

The top five countries for P2P downloads between January 2017 and May 2018 are as follows: USA – 1.71 billion, Russia – 1.64 billion, Brazil – 1.17 billion, India – 965 million, and Netherlands – 636 million.

The report noted that web video sites source a significant proportion (28%) of their high-quality movie and TV video content from P2P sites. Irdeto tracked more than 800 million monthly downloads between January 2017 and May 2018 through its P2P Business Intelligence tracker.

This is where global activity for more than 400 popular movie and TV titles is monitored.

March 2018 was the peak in activity when nearly 977 million infringing copies of movies and TV shows were downloaded globally from P2P sites, the report stated.

Like the case for live streaming, the US again leads the world in the number of users accessing illegal content, with some significant differences in the countries also ranked high on P2P piracy, it added.

The overall popularity of pirate web video sites is growing alongside P2P, driven by visits from “casual pirates,” who go to both legitimate sites and illegal piracy sites. Five out of ten monthly visits to pirate sites by casual pirates in 2017 were to web video sites. However, in 2017, eight out of ten monthly visits to pirate sites by “committed pirates” (those who do not visit legitimate streaming sites) were to P2P sites.

The research also found that visits to P2P sites accounted for 70% of global activity for both web video and P2P platforms. This behavior led to an average of 800 million global monthly downloads from P2P sites in 2017. In addition, P2P activity in the most prominent high-piracy countries, which include Russia, India, Brazil, the Netherlands and the U.S, is either constant or increasing. The research reveals that web video sites source a significant proportion (28%) of their high-quality video content from P2P sites.

“While many expect P2P piracy to be taken over by streaming and direct downloads, it’s clear that this has not happened yet. P2P piracy is still a big threat to the industry, in which the overall piracy problem is growing,” said Irdeto VP cybersecurity service Peter Cossack. “While the increase in bandwidth and social media has facilitated growth in content redistribution piracy, particularly around live sporting events, it is clear that other forms of piracy are not going away any time soon. This must be considered by content owners and rights holders in their security strategies.”

The research looked at P2P and web video trends in 19 high piracy countries: US, Russia, France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, UK, and Ukraine. Data on visits to P2P and web video sites provided by a web analytics partner covered activity at 962 piracy sites from January through September 2017.