Why it matters: It’s somewhat ironic that arguably the biggest piracy enabler today is a device that comes from Amazon, a $2 trillion tech giant with a streaming service. According to a new report, jailbroken Amazon Fire Sticks are used to watch billions of dollars worth of pirated streams, and Google, Meta and Microsoft are exacerbating the situation.
A report from Enders Analysis, titled “Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem,” looks at the issue of illegal streams.
Driving the piracy epidemic, particularly in Europe, is the sports broadcasting industry. The BBC reports that the overall value of media rights for this business passed $60 billion last year, which means fans are paying increasingly higher prices to watch sports on TV, especially if they pay for multiple services. UK soccer fans had to pay around $1,171 in the 23/24 season if they wanted to watch all televised Premier League games.
The same is also true for mainstream streamers such as Netflix and Disney Plus, which keep raising their subscription costs and clamping down on account sharing.
Paying so much in these economically uncertain times has pushed more people into canceling their legitimate streaming services and turning to pirated alternatives.
The report notes that Tom Burrows, head of global rights at the world’s largest European soccer streamer, DAZN, called streaming piracy “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry.”
Comcast-owned European TV giant Sky Group echoed the warnings. It said piracy was costing the company “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue.
Many high-profile events, such as major games, can draw tens of thousands of viewers away from legal services and toward the many pirated streams showing the same content at a fraction of the price – or free.
Most people are familiar with jailbroken Amazon Fire Sticks being used to access illegal streaming services – the report calls the device a “piracy enabler.” According to Sky, 59% of people who watched pirated material in the UK over the last year did so using a Fire Stick. The report says that the device enables “billions of dollars in piracy” overall.
“People think that because it’s a legitimate brand, it must be OK. So they give their credit card details to criminal gangs. Amazon is not engaging with us as much as we’d like,” said Sky Group COO Nick Herm.
As with all forms of piracy, there are risks associated with this trend. Providing credit card details and email addresses to those behind the services isn’t exactly safe, and there have been cases of jailbroken, malware-infested pirate streaming devices – not just Fire Sticks – being sold on eBay, Craigslist, and the dark web.
There has been a crackdown on the sale of hacked Fire Sticks in the UK recently. Last year saw a man given a two-year suspended sentence for selling the devices, while another was jailed. Just using these sticks or illegal IPTV subscriptions is breaking the law.
It’s not just Amazon that is being blamed. The report highlights Facebook’s lack of action to stop ads for illegal streams running on the platform. Google and Microsoft are also called out for the “continued deprecation” of their respective DRM systems, Widevine and PlayReady; the report says they “are now compromised across various security levels.” Microsoft’s last update to PlayReady was December 2022.
“Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline,” reads the report. “A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority.”
Amazon says it is working with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content. The company has taken (or is about to take) steps to make turning Fire TV-branded devices into piracy boxes more difficult. These include raising the technical bar (ADB over local network disabled, tighter DRM), and adding warning messages about legality. Moreover, Amazon is switching Fire TV devices from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS later this year, which doesn’t run Android APKs at all.
