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Content piracy surges under lockdown

Content piracy has increased significantly since social distancing and lockdown measures were enforced in March, according to a UK technology company.

Andy Chatterley

Muso has released data that compares the last seven days of March with the last seven days of February and shows traffic to film piracy websites has increasing by over 40%.

Italy saw the largest increase in traffic to online film piracy sites in late March, with a 66% increase, followed by India (63%) and Spain (50%).

Muso said the “unprecedented increase” in visits to online film piracy sites in the last week of March reveals that, as more countries enforced lockdown and required citizens to self-isolate, demand for content via piracy grew exponentially.

Andy Chatterley, CEO of Muso, said: “Piracy or unlicensed consumption trends are closely linked to paid-for or licensed content. So, just as Netflix has seen large subscriber gains, we have seen a significant spike in visits to film piracy sites.

“We will continue to monitor the data closely as the pandemic continues. Whilst these numbers give a snapshot view of piracy data, there are significant deeper insights to be found across our full data set.”

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