Streaming Pirates Are Hollywood’s New Villains
Illegal subscription services that steal films or TV shows bring in $2 billion a year in ads and subscriber fees.
Ever since taking on Netflix Inc. at its own game, old Hollywood has struggled to turn a profit in streaming, with the likes of Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ losing billions of dollars each year, sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was. But the age of streaming has been a boon for some unintended winners: pirates that use software to rip a film or television show in seconds from legitimate online video platforms and host the titles on their own, illegitimate services, which rake in about $2 billion annually from ads and subscriptions.
With no video production costs, illicit streaming sites such as myflixer.to and projectfreetv.space have achieved profit margins approaching 90%, according to the Motion Picture Association, a trade group representing Hollywood studios that’s working to crack down on the thousands of illegal platforms that have cropped up in recent years.