Apple's Apple TV+ division has joined the Motion Picture Association of America's Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy group committed to "supporting the legal marketplace for video content and addressing the challenge of online piracy."
ACE first launched in June 2017 with Netflix and Amazon as founding members, and dozens of movie and content studios have joined like Comcast, Disney, NBC, BBC, AMC, MGM, ViacomCBS, Paramount, Fox, and others.
Apple TV+ will join the ACE governing board, which includes Amazon, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., in addition to Apple.
ACE's goal is to disrupt the piracy ecosystem that harms creators, with streaming piracy representing 80 percent of all piracy today, costing companies as much as $71 billion annually. As noted by Axios, streaming piracy is a greater concern to Apple now that it has original streaming content to protect.
Streaming piracy is a growing problem representing 80% of all piracy today. Unlawful piracy operations put incredible innovation, creativity and investment at risk, to the detriment of creators, innovators and consumers alike. According to the Global Innovation Policy Center, piracy costs as much as $71 billion annually in lost domestic revenues. Additionally, consumers are harmed when accessing illegal content - one-third of pirate sites target consumers with malware that can lead to a range of problems, including identify theft and financial loss, according to a report by Digital Citizens Alliance.
An estimated 23 million individuals across nine million U.S. households use a pirate subscription IPTV service. Since it was founded, ACE has "achieved many successful global enforcement actions" against illegal streaming services and sources of unauthorized content.
Top Rated Comments
If these poor big mega rich corporations want to end piracy then they'll need to make it as easy as possible or people to get their products and that includes not each having their own little world. People will do what's easiest. And if that means piracy then so be it.
Bundling your TV channels/content into expensive packages with the exclusion of a few channels/shows that most people want is not the way to go.
My point is, Piracy is bad but so long as corporations play the crap they're playing now, it's not going away. The $120 Comcast Bill is now the $100 streaming bill with Comcast Internet on top of it.
CBS for $9
Peacock for $9
AppleTV = $5
Netflix - $12
Hulu - $10
Disney - $5
HBO Max - $15
Apple Music or Spotify thrown in for good measure
then every month, the consumers will give Comcast $60-$100 for access to those streaming services and cord cutters still can't watch NFL games on Sunday.
So yeah, of course they're pirating. Instead of giving CBS $10 a month, they're just downloading Picard and instead of giving AppleTV $5, they're going to download See and For all Mankind and probably Netflix doesn't have a huge piracy issue except for countries where its blocked because most people have an account of access a friend's but if you remove Netflix and Amazon Prime from the piracy discussion, I bet the rest of the networks have a TON of their content stolen online because when a huge number of the country is unemployed and people's salaries are growing slower than inflation and phones are $1,0000, cord-cutting is more expensive than just having cable.
Piracy is really bad but the corporations need to stop being so greedy. I have little faith that this will change.