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One of the greatest threats to the international entertainment industry is piracy, now thought to be depriving the industry of as much as US$71 billion each year and now threatening millions of livelihoods and undermining the future of the industry.
This massive loss of income is more than the gross domestic product of whole geographical regions and the threat posed means the legitimate industry must take action to stop piracy and protect the rights of content creators and providers.
The action being taken sees a combination of forces being united in defence of legitimacy, involving governments, entertainment businesses and the millions of professionals in the industry.
According to MultiChoice Zimbabwe publicity and public relations manager Liz Dziva, the MultiChoice network across Africa is throwing its weight behind Partners Against Piracy, an international campaign against content piracy.
“PAP works to protect the livelihoods of the many creative personalities, broadcast professionals and all the other layers of legitimate employees, all of whom are determined to save the industry and support local economies,” she said.
“It seems that piracy of creative content is rising at alarming rates, especially since the onset of Covid-19 lockdowns, which forced many people to stay home and which resulted in a surge in demand for television and film entertainment. “
According to digital platform security specialist Irdeto, more than 345 million visits were recorded on the top 10 global streaming piracy sites in the three months between June to August 2021 alone, with a core of major African countries witnessing more than 16 million visits in that time. In Africa, the sharing of content without paying licence fees is practised by individuals. web start-ups and even large organisations. They deprive creators, licence holders and distributors of their earned income and this seriously threatens the sustainability of Africa’s creative sector.
“We in Zimbabwe’s entertainment industry are determined to clamp down on content piracy and we are looking to working closely with Partners Against Piracy in this fight,” said Ms Dziva. “Piracy impacts the economy and the ability of our creative professionals to earn a living. It harms investor confidence and tax revenue and can also affect trade opportunities if we are seen as a country in which intellectual property is not respected and protected.”
PAP is a multi-stakeholder awareness programme helping fight the piracy menace by educating the public on the consequences of piracy and the threat it poses to livelihoods and to society as a whole. It wants to help Africa’s creatives earn a living from their talent, freeing them to continue creating relevant, entertaining content that reflects the culture and interests of the continent.
PAP is already a Pan-African coalition that was launched in Kenya in 2018, championed by the Kenya Copyright Board. It was also launched in neighbouring Zambia last year, championed by the National Arts Council there.
“MultiChoice hopes that here in Zimbabwe we can now emulate this collective action that we are seeing elsewhere, so that in the end everyone benefits and not just the people involved in piracy,” said Ms Dziva.
In the UK in 2019 three men who sold illegal English Premier League streams to more than 1 000 pubs, clubs and homes were jailed for a total of 17 years. In Australia, a man received an 18-month suspended jail sentence for operating an illegal network that allowed more than 8 000 people to access for free the television broadcasts of the Foxtel subscription service.
Closer to home, regular raids of piracy operations are being conducted across the continent and recent court cases signal the turning of the tide against piracy on a commercial scale.
In Seychelles, the Supreme Court deliberated in a case brought by MultiChoice Africa Holdings BV and SuperSport International (Pty) Ltd against Intelvision Limited and found that Intelvision had broken the law when it broadcast matches from the 2019 African Cup of Nations football tournament while not holding broadcast rights.
In Rwanda, a commercial court ordered Victory TV Ltd to suspend unlawful broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League and English Premier League football games, to which it did not have the rights. Victory TV appealed the judgement, but the Court of Appeal in Kigali subsequently rejected the appeal. Other cases are pending in Seychelles and in Kenya.
“People often ask us what constitutes piracy,” said Ms Dziva.
“Content piracy involves the unauthorised acquisition, use, sharing or selling of copyrighted content. Put simply, piracy is theft.”
As high-quality content and advanced streaming technology becomes more easily available, it has also become easier for pirates to illegally acquire and redistribute content. There are two main categories of piracy: broadcasting piracy and cyberpiracy.
Broadcasting piracy involves the use of video and audio content without the consent of rightsholders. It can take many forms: cable piracy, in which a cable-service subscriber shares content with a few neighbours, or a hotel only pays for a single-dwelling subscription; cross-border piracy, as when decoders are bought under false pretences in one country and then shipped to neighbouring countries, sold and illegally connected; commercial piracy, in which companies purchase decoders and activate them as single-unit dwelling subscriptions using false information.
They then illegally transmit to multi-unit dwellings like hotels and housing complexes; public-screening piracy, in which a residential pay-TV decoder is activated illegally for screening channels on a big screen in public areas; rebroadcasting piracy, in which pirate operations illegally activate one or more pay-TV decoders, then use them to transmit channels in an encrypted format; grey-market piracy, in which there is the sale of content-browsing devices that are not approved for sale in a particular market.
Cyber piracy, or internet piracy, is the biggest threat to content owners, broadcasters and operators. The content most often pirated via the internet is software, music, literature and video content, including live sports and the latest series and movies.
“It’s time to act and we at MultiChoice will help spearhead a collective approach to the problem here in Zimbabwe, where many people do not feel that piracy is an issue that needs to be tackled,” said Ms Dziva.
“At heart it’s not just a legal issue and one about formal laws; it’s a moral issue and about doing things right, and it is here we must attack first, to gain the acceptance among the general population that piracy is wrong and that it damages everyone, even the people who think they are benefitting from ‘free’ access to content that should be paid for.”