As digital piracy rises amid pandemic, original content creators losing money: EY
“The second wave has accelerated this problem because more and more people are now looking at these things sitting at home, and now the technology infrastructure enables you to view anything and everything from home,” EY India, Partner – Forensic and Integrity Services, Mukul Shrivastava, told .
He further said, “The situation was the same then (first wave) and probably worse now because people are now used to watching everything on an OTT platform and they would go to any angle to watch free content.”
In the new age, some of the methods by which people pillage video content include – password and credential sharing, sharing files over internet and via social media, and purchasing illegal streaming boxes.
On the risk of original content creators losing revenue due to piracy, he said, “I think that is a huge problem. We definitely saw that increased last year and it continues this year also. We are working with clients on how to curtail this piracy.”
When asked by how much the content creators in India could lose going forward due to digital piracy, Shrivastava said while there is no data to quantify it, “I would say more than whatever revenues organisations are making from the genuine display of movies or any other creative content, they are losing three, four, five times that money because of piracy.”
