The Media Industries Most Affected by Piracy

TV networks, streaming services, Hollywood studios: Producers of audiovisual content like TV shows and movies are hit hardest by online piracy, a recent report by anti-piracy company Muso finds. In 2022, 46 percent of all visits to piracy websites pointed towards sites hosting or otherwise providing illicit TV content, while around 13 percent of the traffic was generated by visits to film piracy sites. As our chart shows, music and software account for a much lower share of illicit website traffic.

These two media categories combined account for less than 15 percent of the total traffic directed at piracy portals. The publishing sector, which includes ebooks and scans of print media and other similar works, represents 28 percent of global piracy traffic. Drilling deeper into the TV and film sectors, Muso reports that the top 5 countries in terms of visits are the United States (14 billion), India (9 billion), Russia (8 billion), China and the United Kingdom (4 billion each). Illicit streaming sites make up 95 percent of the TV piracy traffic as well as the majority of traffic aimed at illegally obtaining or viewing movies. Torrents, the preferred delivery method for peer-to-peer file sharing in the early 00s, have lost their standing and now contribute only a negligible amount to total traffic to piracy-related sites.

According to Muso, piracy websites saw 215 billion visits in 2022, up 18 percent from the year prior. The estimated revenue loss due to piracy differs greatly depending on the source. For example, one of the more recent reports from June 2019, authored by Nera Economic Consulting and the Global Innovation Policy Center, claimed missed earnings of $29 billion for the U.S. economy per year due to global video piracy. While these numbers can't be independently verified, they at least provide a rough ballpark of the economic impact of media piracy.