Ibosiola et al. (2018)
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Source Details
Ibosiola et al. (2018) | |
Title: | Movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Exploring Illegal Streaming Cyberlockers |
Author(s): | Ibosiola, D., Steer, B., Garcia-Recuero, A., Stringhini, G., Uhlig, S., Tyson, G. |
Year: | 2018 |
Citation: | Ibosiola, D., Steer, B., Garcia-Recuero, A., Stringhini, G., Uhlig, S., and Tyson, G. (2018) Movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Exploring Illegal Streaming Cyberlockers. Available: http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~tysong/files/ICWSM18.pdf (last accessed: 11 June 2019) |
Link(s): | Open Access |
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About the Data | |
Data Description: | Data were gathered from three indexing sites (putlocker.is, watchseries.gs and voldy.cr) and 33 prominent cyberlockers using monthly crawls on all published videos therein. Data were also obtained regarding the characteristics of the videos themselves, such as release date and genre. Thereafter, the study examined corresponding takedown notices against the cyberlockers using the Lumen database. |
Data Type: | Secondary data |
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Cross Country Study?: | No |
Comparative Study?: | No |
Literature review?: | No |
Government or policy study?: | No |
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Abstract
“Online video piracy (OVP) is a contentious topic, with strong proponents on both sides of the argument. Recently, a number of illegal websites, called streaming cyberlockers, have begun to dominate OVP. These websites specialise in dis-tributing pirated content, underpinned by third party indexing services offering easy-to-access directories of content. This paper performs the first exploration of this new ecosystem. It characterises the content, as well the streaming cyberlockers’ individual attributes. We find a remarkably centralised system with just a few networks, countries and cyberlockers under-pinning most provisioning. We also investigate the actions of copyright enforcers. We find they tend to target small subsets of the ecosystem, although they appear quite successful. 84%of copyright notices see content removed.”
Main Results of the Study
The study finds that cyberlockers use a different distribution system than their P2P counterparts, evidencing a centralised “all eggs in one basket” approach. Over half of all content (58%) is hosted within only two autonomous systems. This represents a high risk approach to hosting infringing content, and as such individual operators host multiple replica websites in order to evade legal action. Of complaints issued against cyberlockers, the study finds a small number of aggressive enforcers are responsible for the bulk of complaints, with the top 10 complainants issuing 96% of all reported URLs. Mostly the complainants are comprised of large content producers (e.g. Fox, Walt Disney) or third party anti-piracy companies (e.g. Rivendell), who use a bulk approach to enforcement.The study cautions that cyberlockers are not exclusive copyright infringement zones, with some films observed being over 100 years old. In this respect, older content is less aggressively pursued than more recent content, with only 6% of pre-1950 films having their links removed.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
The study does not make any explicit policy recommendations, but encourages future research on the relationships between cyberlockers.
Coverage of Study
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