Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm.
However, reports of phishing and malware stemming from streaming piracy, which occurs through various methods besides a Fire TV Stick, seem to be rather limited.
In the US, however, there aren’t nearly as many publicized efforts to combat illegal streaming on Amazon devices.
While Enders’ report accuses Amazon of contributing to the piracy problem, as the owner of its own streaming service, Prime Video, Amazon has an incentive to fight piracy.
DRM limitations Enders’ report also blamed poorly updated DRM systems, especially from Google and Microsoft, for contributing to streaming piracy.
A report released today by the media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm Enders Analysis claims that Amazon Fire Sticks are making streaming piracy possible to the tune of “billions of dollars.”. According to the report’s authors, technologies from other media companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also making it possible for “industrial scale theft.”. “.”.
As streaming services increasingly obtain the rights to live programming, such as athletic events, the report, “Video Piracy: Big Tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem,” emphasizes the global rise in streaming service piracy while concentrating on the European market.
According to the BBC, the report indicates that large events that attract tens of thousands of pirate viewers can have multiple simultaneous illegal streams.
Enders’ report blames Google and Microsoft for the alleged “continued depreciation” of their digital rights management (DRM) systems, Widevine and PlayReady, respectively, and Facebook for displaying ads for access to illegal streams. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook were contacted by Ars Technica for comment, but they did not respond prior to publication.
The report supports grievances made by the biggest European soccer streamer in the world, DAZN, as well as by others in the industry. At The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in February, Tom Burrows, DAZN’s head of global rights, stated that streaming piracy is “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry.”. Nick Herm, the COO of Sky Group, a European telecom company owned by Comcast, estimated at the same event that piracy was costing his company “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue. Enders co-founder Claire Enders stated at the time that “roughly 50 percent of most markets” are made up of people who pirate athletic events. “”.
Fire sticks with jailbreaks.
According to Friday’s Enders report, Fire Sticks are a major source of streaming piracy and are referred to as “piracy enablers.”. “.”.
Enders’ report highlighted security threats that pirate viewers must deal with, such as giving email addresses and credit card numbers to unidentified parties, which leaves users open to malware and phishing scams. However, there don’t seem to be many reports of malware and phishing attacks related to streaming piracy, which can happen via a variety of devices other than a Fire TV Stick.
Nevertheless, Herm claimed that Fire Sticks are responsible for “roughly half of the piracy in the UK” at the February Financial Times event. “”.
“People assume it must be alright because it is a genuine brand. For this reason, they provide criminal gangs with their credit card details. “Amazon is not interacting with us as frequently as we would like,” he stated.
A campaign to combat the unlawful use of Fire Sticks has been launched in the UK. For instance, a man was sentenced to three years and four months in November 2024 for hacking Fire Sticks. Another man received a two-year suspended sentence in June 2024 after police discovered jailbroken Fire Sticks in his house. But there aren’t nearly as many well-publicized initiatives in the US to stop illegal streaming on Amazon devices.
An Amazon representative who was contacted for comment told Ars Technica:.
Pirated content jeopardizes our customers’ security and privacy and is against our intellectual property rights policies. We collaborate with relevant authorities and industry partners to prevent piracy and shield consumers from the dangers of downloading illegal content. We caution users about the dangers of downloading or using apps from unidentified sources, and we ban apps from our Appstore that violate third parties’ rights.
The Amazon representative also informed Ars that Amazon has supported law enforcement initiatives, such as the UK IP Crime Group and the London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, and collaborates with industry partners to dismantle piracy networks.
constraints of DRM.
According to Enders’ report, streaming piracy is also a result of outdated DRM systems, particularly those from Google and Microsoft. According to the report, Microsoft’s PlayReady and Google’s Widevine “are now compromised across various security levels,” indicating a lack of maintenance. Microsoft released version 4.6, the most recent major update to PlayReady, in December 2022.
The report authors wrote:.
The DRM products offered by Microsoft and Google have been in sharp decline for more than 20 years.
The technology architecture, licensing, and support model must all be completely redesigned. This is a low priority, as evidenced by the lack of interaction with content owners.
Apart from Enders’ report, earlier this year, the Italian government chastised Google for allegedly not blocking pirate websites that were discovered by AGCOM, Italy’s communication regulator. Google was ordered to contaminate its public DNS servers in March by the Court of Milan in order to prevent unlawful soccer streams.
Along with the tech behemoths mentioned above, France earlier this month ordered five VPN providers—NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, and CyberGhost—to block websites that stream sports illegally. As expected, VPN providers have denounced the action as creating “a dangerous precedent,” according to i2Coalition, an Internet infrastructure trade group that oversees the global VPN Trust Initiative consortium of VPN providers.
an expanding issue.
In an effort to combat online piracy, content owners and distributors face new difficulties as the Internet continues to establish itself as the main platform for viewing television series, films, and, more and more, live events.
Tech companies and law enforcement will likely work harder to prevent piracy as laws and rights holders tighten their regulations. At the same time, hackers will continue to look for new ways to allow illegal streams.
