Pirate Site Blocking Can’t Prevent Pay TV Subscriber Decline in Uruguay

Uruguay's Ministry of Industry issued a decree in October 2022 which heralded the country's first pirate site blocking program. Since then the country has blocked over 300 pirate domains following requests from various broadcasters. Some other figures of interest; in December 2022, there were around 573,000 pay TV subscribers in Uruguay. A year later that figure had fallen to 496,000. Pay TV revenues were less affected than one might expect.

According to the latest Freedom House report, citizens of the United States benefit from robust freedoms of expression and a wide array of other civil liberties. For that, the country receives a score of 83/100.

With just 3.4 million citizens, the relatively tiny country of Uruguay receives 96/100 and, while it’s certainly not perfect, it does a lot of things right. Given that the United States is currently mulling the introduction of a pirate site-blocking program, lawmakers may like to take a look at Uruguay’s program. Not necessarily the implementation, but the government’s dedication to transparency.

Fox Networks Blocked RojaDirecta

The first pirate site blockade in Uruguay was back in 2018. Fox Networks Group Latin America filed a criminal case against popular sports streaming portal RojaDirecta and a court ultimately instructed local ISPs to block the site. Fox described the ruling as “the beginning of judicial awareness on online piracy issues.”

With the passing of Article 712 of Law No. 19,924 in 2020, the Communications Services Regulatory Unit (URSEC) was set to take responsibility for processing blocking requests.

On October 25, 2022, the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM) issued a decree noting that the State has an obligation to protect intellectual property; through a site-blocking program, it would seek to “eliminate the broadcasting of television signals broadcast through the Internet or similar networks, for unauthorized commercial purposes.”

The system required pay TV rightsholders to file “a well-founded complaint with the URSEC, as an affidavit,” and after an evaluation of the complaint, URSEC would advise local service providers to block the domains listed in the application for an initial 30-day period, in advance of a judicial review.

Rightsholders Begin Filing Applications

This semi-administrative approach to site-blocking appears to work well in Uruguay. In some countries where similar programs exist, limited or even no judicial oversight has translated into a veil of secrecy, where applications and decisions are made in private and transparency doesn’t exist. Uruguay’s approach is the polar opposite.

Taking the most recent successful application as an example, every application and decision has a reference number, every rightsholder applicant is named, and the channels to receive protection (and the domains to be blocked) are made available to the public with flawless transparency.

An extract from a recent URSEC blocking decision

The decision above is notable for targeting RojaDirecta domains, some six years after Fox Networks first tried to block the platform in Uruguay. Overall, however, every decision handed down in Uruguay is notable due to URSEC’s transparency and the inclusion of each decision in a publicly available dataset.

Uruguay Reaches 300 Domains Blocked

The data reveals that the first blocking application was filed by Consorcio Cable Visión San José and requested the blocking of two domains; librefutboltv.com and sfntv.xyz.

URSEC granted the application under decision 78/0223 dated May 10, 2023. By the end of June 2023, Consorcio Cable Visión had filed successful applications that went on to block another 13 domains, including futbollibre.lol, futbol-libre.org, pirlo.tv, megatelevisionhd.live, and megadeportes.xyz.

The most prolific site-blocking applicant since launch, with over 220 domains blocked by URSEC, is broadcasting market leader Directv del Uruguay Ltda, with Trinidad Video Cable S.A a distant third place.

For those interested in the fine detail, URSEC provides a convenient spreadsheet of all successful applications from May 2023 to date. Continuously updated, it provides the name of the applicant, the domains to be blocked, and a reference number linking to each full decision.

URSEC Blocking Data

To our knowledge, no other country in the world makes this much data available, and certainly not in such a convenient format. Italy’s approach is good but not quite as convenient; while some other countries in Europe offer limited data but force interested parties to hunt for it.

Spain’s reports are not bad if three months out of date is acceptable, but even that’s preferable to the approach of Portugal and France, which prefer to keep the public almost completely in the dark. That doesn’t inspire confidence in subsequent transparency reporting, at least in the event any exists.

Does Uruguay’s Blocking Scheme Work?

In common with all blocking schemes, no matter where they are in the world, assessments on their effectiveness mostly rely on reporting from those who request the blocks. These reports aren’t particularly useful. It’s hardly surprising that, when all ISPs blocked the domain piratedmovies999.xyz, nobody could access it, so blocking was up to 100% effective for that domain.

A better accounting could include sales data or subscriber numbers, but those tend not to be suitable for public consumption. The opposite is true for pay TV subscriber numbers, which are made public for each region, along with the revenue those subscriptions generate overall.

Unfortunately, TV subscriber numbers are trending strongly in the wrong direction and have been for some time. Figures reported for December 2022, just a couple of months after the government confirmed blocking was on the way, reveal that there were 573,746 pay TV subscribers, a far cry from a peak of 733,002 in June 2018.

Pay TV subscriptions, going downhill fast

As the chart above shows, the number of (legitimate) subscribers didn’t improve in 2023, even when challenged by site blocking. When compared to the figures reported for December 2022, the number of subscribers in December 2023 was down 77,619, a reduction of 13.5% in 12 months.

The reasons behind such a dramatic fall in subscriber numbers are for the experts to address. However, no particular skills are needed to look at other transparency data provided by the government, which reveals how much revenue was generated from pay TV subscribers in Uruguay.

It appears that when pay TV revenues hit their peak in late December 2021, there were 606,909 pay TV subscribers. In late 2023, when the number of subscribers had fallen 18% to 496,127, revenue to broadcasters during the same period fell just 4.3%.

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