Piracy is a scourge for the cultural industry which, year after year, continues its fight against the theft of artists’ work.
Especially since the successive confinements have had an impact on the illegal consumption of content, notes the American company Akamai, the world’s leading provider of multimedia content delivery network services, in its annual report SOTI (State of the Internet), devoted this year to this phenomenon on a global scale.
For the film and television sector alone, 82 billion visits to illicit websites were thus recorded between January and September 2021, according to data from MUSO, a company providing anti-piracy solutions, market analysis and of hearing. If not all visitors take action, the company estimates that 3.7 billion actual acts of piracy over these nine months, i.e. the number of people who watched a video or downloaded a file , among other examples.
‘Godzilla vs King Kong’ most pirated movie of 2021
Among these video contents, some films have been more widely searched than others. Blockbusters like “Godzilla vs King Kong” or “Fast and Furious 9”, productions from the Marvel or DC Comics universe like “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”, “Black Widow”, “Wonder woman 1984” or even several long Disney-signed films such as “Cruella” and “Jungle Cruise” make it into the top 10 most pirated films of 2021, according to the ranking detailed below.
1. “Godzilla vs. Kong” by Adam Wingard
2. Zack Snyder’s Justice League by Zack Snyder
3. “Black Widow” by Cate Shortland
4. “Fast and Furious 9” by Justin Lin
5. “Mortal Kombat” (2021) by Simon McQuoid
6. “The Suicide Squad” (2021) by James Gunn
7. “Cruella” by Craig Gillespie
8. “Wonder Woman 1984” by Patty Jenkins
9. “Raya and the Last Dragon” by Carlos López Estrada, Don Hall
10. “Jungle Cruise” by Jaume Collet-Serra
“Loki”, “WandaVision” and “Rick and Morty”: the most pirated series
Always more present on platforms and on television, series have never been so popular as in recent years. The study therefore naturally focused on this format, in order to identify those which attract, all genres combined, the covetousness of pirate consumers. Several new creations have been attacked, such as season 1 of “Loki”, “WandaVision”, “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” or even “Superman and Loïs”. Although released in 2019, the final season of “Game of Thrones” ranks sixth among the most pirated series in 2021, as evidenced by this ranking.
1. “Loki”, season 1
2. “WandaVision”, season 1
3. “Rick and Morty”, season 5
4. “Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, Season 1
5. “The Walking Dead” Season 10
6. “Game of Thrones” Season 8
7. “Flash”, season 7
8. “Vikings” Season 6
9. “True Beauty”, season 11
10. “Superman and Lois”, season 1
Acts of piracy that are not confined to the 7th art. In all sectors, hundreds of millions of connections to illicit websites are recorded daily. Surprisingly, cinema is only the third most targeted sector with 14.5 billion visits to illegal sites. Television and publishing rank first and second among the most affected branches, with respectively more than 67 billion and 30 billion visits to fraudulent sites. The music market, which references just under 11 billion visits from dishonest platforms, comes in fourth place among the most pirated sectors.
Pirate consumers who, according to Akamai, also pay for completely legal streaming services according to the observation of online conversations dedicated to piracy, and who would therefore come to look for very specific content.