Aussie Piracy Survey: ‘Poor Picture’ & ‘Slow Device’ = Cybersecurity Issues

Creative Content Australia has new anti-piracy campaign underway alongside the release of its annual Piracy Behaviors and Attitudes survey. In line with current anti-piracy trends, the group hopes to draw attention to the downsides of using pirate sites. "More than two million Australians who admit to visiting illegal streaming sites or pirate sites say they’ve experienced a form of online crime." Let's take a closer look.

Creative Content Australia (CCA) has just released the 2023 edition of its Australian Piracy Behaviors and Attitudes survey.

Research for ‘wave 15’ was carried out nationally between October 3 and October 9, 2023, among 1,293 adult respondents (18+). The results of the survey arrive just a few months after the publication of broader research carried out on behalf of the Australian government.

Both reports broadly agree that around four-in-ten Aussies pirate (or have pirated) small to large amounts of content with varying frequency. The CCA survey reports a “continued downward piracy trend in recent years, noting that frequency was also down in 2023.

Reasons For Pirating Less: Convenient Access to Legal Content

A question directed at the 52% of respondents who claim have pirated less during the last year, reads as follows: Which of the following reasons best explain why you think you are downloading or streaming pirated content less than 12 months ago?

Source: CCA Piracy Behaviors and Attitudes Survey 2023 (pdf)

Cited by 64% of respondents from the ‘pirating less’ category, “I have access to enough content via paid services” predictably takes the top slot, showing that meeting or exceeding consumer demands is the most effective anti-piracy mechanism there is.

In second position, “It takes too much time and effort to find pirated content these days” was cited by 36% of respondents. This suggests that when having “enough content via paid services” (#1, 64%) is combined with frustrated access to pirated content (#2, 36%), all respondents who pirated less over the last year responded positively when presented with easily accessed legal content.

Does Site-Blocking Have an Effective Counterpart?

The fifth most-cited reason for pirating less is directly related to “too much time/effort to find pirated content” mentioned above. Pirated content has only become harder to find due to outside interference and in Australia, site-blocking is persistent. That 19% of the ‘pirating less’ group cited site-blocking as a reason isn’t a particularly big surprise.

However, since respondents were able to select more than one reason from the list, if the 19% who cited site-blocking responded consistently, they likely would’ve selected “too much time/effort” as well. The figures show that 36% selected the latter, while site-blocking alone managed just 19%, or close to half the number claiming that piracy fails the time/effort test.

Given that unblocked pirate streaming portals are easy to find, tend to carry all content, and don’t require payment or an account, even services like Netflix would struggle to compete on the ‘time and effort’ front. So if we rule out extra convenience offered by legal platforms, that raises the possibility of other anti-piracy measures accounting for the 17% gap between 19% (blocking) and 36% (time/effort).

Removal of blocked sites from Google search results may be a candidate, likewise anti-piracy measures on social media. Here, however, the data is too limited to draw any firm conclusion.

Before moving on, the third most popular reason cited by the ‘pirating less’ group is “I felt bad about pirating.” That 22% felt guilty about some aspect of not paying for content seems perfectly reasonable; at least if we ignore the fact that they didn’t feel guilty enough to stop altogether.

Cybersecurity: Hacking, Malware, and….Poor Viewing Quality?

Creative Content Australia operates its main site, Content Cafe, and also The Price of Piracy, which carries messaging that dovetails perfectly with StreamSafely in the United States, and BeStreamWise in the UK.

In addition to promoting its ‘Spin the Pirate Wheel’ campaign, a conclusion drawn from the survey also features on the front page.

Image credit: The Price of Piracy (homepage)

Since “2 million” appears nowhere in the survey, we have to assume this is an extrapolation of the responses provided by pirates.

According to the footer of slide 45, which covers “pirates experiencing cyber security issues such as hacking,” the base was those who experienced a blocked site, of which 92 were ‘persistent pirates’ (one or more pirate activities per week) and 143 were deemed ‘casual’ (one or more activities monthly or less often) – 235 pirates in total.

The question asked was actually quite specific: “Have you ever experienced any of the following when you have accessed pirated content on any device via apps / add-ons?”

Note: The published survey document appears to have at least 15 pages missing, 31 pages total versus at least 46 pages originally. The public version’s cybersecurity section runs sequentially, pages 44, 45, 46, so we assume that public statements regarding cybersecurity relate to these pages, not to those pages withheld.

In this context the inclusion of ‘poor viewing quality’ as a cybersecurity issue is bewildering on so many levels it’s difficult to know where to begin. Devices running slowly (#2 most popular response) can be attributable to anything, and the same goes for #5 ‘Your device crashing’, and #6 ‘Another internet device crashing’.

If we accept that age-inappropriate content made available on pirate sites is a cybersecurity issue, we can see that roughly a third said they’d seen such material playing on their device. Yet the closest option to answer doesn’t seem to take into account that ‘age-inappropriate’ content playing on a users’ device may be result of the user requesting it.

In any event, the option applies to none of the respondents in the survey because every last one is an adult. The content may very well be inappropriate, but not on age grounds.

Hacking, Malware, ID Theft, Fraud, Botnets

Seeing ‘poor viewing quality’ appearing here as the leading cybersecurity issue faced by the greatest number of pirates, isn’t a surprise. In an earlier report from the UK, which we had to fight to obtain, popups were included to push general malware claims over the line. For reference, EU law forces popups on most EU internet users every day.

Surveys, research, and similar studies are currently going to huge lengths to construct a framework of fear around the threats associated with app-based piracy services. The purpose, of course, is to stop people from pirating content.

The truth is that scare campaigns will only ever enjoy limited success, while cold hard facts can be more terrifying and only need to be read once. When presented by a neutral security company like ESET, the impact of specific facts is obvious.

In the final slide, a comparison is made between the cybersecurity issues pirates say they have experienced, versus the security issues faced by non pirates.

Campaigns to steer people away from pirate sites and services due to security risks are reaching saturation point and that could carry a risk of desensitization.

Other than telling consumers of pirated content to simply avoid pirate sites, there’s still no harm prevention component, despite many governments having been briefed on various threats but no obvious signs of anything being done.

There’s no need to overcomplicate things. Name the apps, version numbers and hashes, have a neutral security vendor analyze and then report the harms in terms everyone can understand, and publish the evidence online for everyone to consume and discuss openly.

The 2023 Australian Piracy Behaviors and Attitudes survey is available here (pdf)

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