Apple Struggling to Keep Up With Increasing Piracy of Apple TV+ Content

As the popularity of Apple TV+ grows, Apple appears to be struggling to contend with increasing levels of online piracy, despite concerted efforts to take down its stolen content, MacRumors has found.

Apple TV Piracy Feature 1
Piracy is a lucrative business for torrent sites, with a report from August estimating that the top five piracy websites raise around $18.3 million in ad revenue and sponsorships per year. According to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), streaming piracy represents up to 80 percent of piracy, costing companies as much as $71 billion annually.

Although Google has increasingly cracked down on websites that host pirated content, site operators often change domains and redirect users to avoid takedowns and keep torrent links accessible. In a research paper published in 2018, Google conceded that there will "be new sites dedicated to making copyrighted works available as long as there is money to be made doing so."

Apple largely avoided the need to combat online piracy until the launch of ‌Apple TV‌+ in November 2019. Since then, ‌Apple TV‌+ shows and movies have proliferated throughout piracy sites across the internet.

While Apple has a clear piracy prevention statement for software, this does not extend to its video entertainment content, which is instead covered by Apple's terms and conditions of service. From MacRumors' findings, some of Apple's most popular shows and movies have at least 2,000 active seeders on each major piracy site, going up to as many as approximately 125,000 seeders per title. Download trends broadly map to the popularity of Apple's various shows and movies, with the likes of "Ted Lasso," "The Morning Show," and "SEE" garnering the most downloads.

Apple is a governing member of the Motion Picture Association of America's ACE, an influential anti-piracy group committed to "supporting the legal marketplace for video content and addressing the challenge of online piracy" that also includes Netflix, Amazon, Comcast, Disney, NBC, MGM, ViacomCBS, Paramount, Fox, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., and others. Apple also works with the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).

Streaming production studios and distributors, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, have attempted to curtail the illegal sharing of movies and TV shows using specific enforcement partners who flag stolen content on their behalf. Apple has followed suit, inking working deals with multiple firms specializing in digital copyright protection, including Corsearch Inc. and OpSec Security. They operate by issuing DMCA takedown orders for pirated online content.

According to information accessed by MacRumors, Corsearch has issued more than 320,000 DMCA orders to Google, citing copyright infringement for ‌Apple TV‌+ content. These orders only stop Google from indexing flagged piracy sites and do little to curtail the actual hosting of pirated content. Delist requests on Apple's behalf reached an all-time high on August 16 this year, with more than 8,500 requests to Google in a single day.

MacRumors tracked numerous domains and URLs used to pirate ‌Apple TV‌+ content and found that none were taken down by Apple or its partners over the course of a week. On the contrary, during this period, the website's catalog of stolen ‌Apple TV‌+ content grew, sometimes within just hours of new episodes being released on ‌Apple TV‌+ itself.

Apple and its partners must issue DMCA orders to the websites themselves to get them taken down, a process that can be cumbersome. To make matters more complex, some sites do not host ‌Apple TV‌+ content directly but act as an aggregator for content hosted elsewhere.

The websites we tracked were hosted by Cloudflare, a popular web infrastructure company that provides digital security and CDN, or content delivery network. As outlined in its abuse policy, Cloudflare cannot take sites down as it does not directly host them. Instead, it can redirect cases of reported digital copyright infringement to the piracy site's hosting provider or owner.

Actioned DMCA orders show that Apple and its partners tend to focus on more obscure websites that host ‌Apple TV‌+ content infrequently rather than more persistent, larger piracy sites hosting ‌Apple TV‌+ content in larger swathes.

Although 91.2 percent of Apple's delist requests were successfully actioned, the growth and availability of ‌Apple TV‌+ content on torrent sites does not seem to have been significantly impeded by its efforts, with the company firmly falling into the same issues experienced by its rivals in the entertainment industry. Apple, Corsearch, and OpSec declined to respond to requests for comment.

Popular Stories

ios 19 messages app

Apple Sues Jon Prosser Over iOS 26 Leaks

Thursday July 17, 2025 8:40 pm PDT by
Earlier this year, YouTuber Jon Prosser shared multiple videos showing off what he claimed to be re-created renderings of what was then presumed to be called iOS 19 and which was eventually unveiled by Apple as iOS 26 at WWDC in June. In his first video back in January, Prosser showed off a Camera app redesign with a simpler set of buttons for moving between photo and video modes, and he...
iOS 26 on Three iPhones

Here's When to Expect the iOS 26 Public Beta

Tuesday July 15, 2025 11:07 am PDT by
Apple previously announced that a public beta of iOS 26 would be available in July, and now a more specific timeframe has surfaced. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today said that Apple's public betas should be released on or around Wednesday, July 23. In other words, expect the public betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, and more to be available at some point next week. Apple will be releasing...
iPhone 17 Colors

All 15 New iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro Colors Revealed in Latest Leak

Wednesday July 16, 2025 6:50 am PDT by
We may finally have a definitive list of all color options for the iPhone 17 series, ahead of the devices launching in September. MacRumors concept In a report for Macworld today, Filipe Espósito said he obtained an "internal document" that allegedly reveals all of the color options for the upcoming iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max models. The report includes ...
iPhone 17 Pro Dark Blue and Orange

Ranked: The Best Features Rumored for the iPhone 17 Lineup

Wednesday July 16, 2025 4:17 pm PDT by
We have just under two months to go until the debut of Apple's iPhone 17 models, and rumors have been ramping up in recent weeks. We went through everything we know so far, pulling out the most exciting rumors and highlighting some other changes that aren't going to be so great. Top Tier Ultra Thin iPhone 17 Air - The iPhone 17 Air is 2025's most exciting iPhone rumor, because it's the...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature Homescreen

Foldable iPhone's Thickness and Price Range Detailed in New Reports

Wednesday July 16, 2025 11:31 am PDT by
Apple's long-rumored foldable iPhone will likely have a starting price between $1,800 and $2,000 in the U.S., analysts at investment banking firm UBS said this week. If so, the foldable iPhone would cost more than a MacBook Pro, which starts at $1,599. With a starting price of at least $1,800, the foldable iPhone would be the most expensive iPhone model ever released, topping the Pro Max at...
Apple Watch Ultra 2 Complications

Apple Watch Ultra 3: What to Expect

Sunday July 13, 2025 10:30 am PDT by
The long wait for an Apple Watch Ultra 3 is nearly over, and a handful of new features and changes have been rumored for the device. Below, we recap what to expect from the Apple Watch Ultra 3:Satellite connectivity for sending and receiving text messages when Wi-Fi and cellular coverage is unavailable 5G support, up from LTE on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Likely a wide-angle OLED display that ...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

iPhone 17 Pro Coming Soon With These 16 New Features

Friday July 11, 2025 12:40 pm PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are only two months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models. Latest Rumors These rumors surfaced in June and July:A redesigned Dynamic Island: It has been rumored that all iPhone 17 models will have a redesigned Dynamic Island interface — it might ...
Apple Hornsby

Apple Store Near Sydney Permanently Closing Later This Year

Monday July 14, 2025 6:14 pm PDT by
Apple today said its store at the Westfield Hornsby shopping mall, in Hornsby, Australia, will be permanently closing in October. Apple Hornsby In a statement shared with Australian tech news website EFTM (via Reddit), Apple said that it has decided not to renew its lease at Westfield Hornsby. Apple said all affected retail employees will be given the opportunity to work at Apple's nearby...

Top Rated Comments

Kar98 Avatar
49 months ago
Rise of piracy: I want to watch stuff at home at my convenience
Rise of streaming services: now I can watch conveniently at home, at my leisure and at reasonable prices. Piracy went waaaay down.
Fragmentation of streaming services: now I need subscriptions to like a dozen different streaming services to watch content at home at my convenience. Stopped at Netflix, a shared Hulu sub and Amazon Prime since we have the latter anyway. Anything that’s not there either doesn’t get watched, or pirated.

TLDR, piracy is on the rise again because there’s too many damn streaming services all wanting their pound of flesh.
Score: 114 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adamjackson Avatar
49 months ago

Sad that people wont pay $5 a month for content they enjoy.
It’s Not $5 a month
It’s $5+$5+$15+$65+$20+$10+$12

…and then you still miss out on the new Star Trek because you have to also pay for CBS so screw it, we’ll pirate it. That’s what people are doing. They’re paying $150 a month for 10 different services and they still can’t watch Picard (or insert whatever show is exclusive here)
Score: 94 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adamjackson Avatar
49 months ago
Piracy of music is WAY down. Why? The most popular music in the world is on every streaming service. I give Spotify $10 and I get it all.

There is no one stop shop for video and there needs to be for people to not pirate content. If the big three record labels each operated their own $10 a month music service, people would be pirating music still.
Score: 76 Votes (Like | Disagree)
contacos Avatar
49 months ago
Welcome to the internet
Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tevion5 Avatar
49 months ago
Could be decent free press, alerting people that Apple TV+ actually has content people want to watch!
Score: 37 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ChromeAce Avatar
49 months ago
Once the iPhone child porn scanner is in place, they can next start searching Macs, iPhones, and iPads for unlicensed video content.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)