Last year, as part of Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena program, we released four spotlight reports that examined data fraud and revenue assurance issues that are facing network operators around the world.
Two of those reports focused specifically on the threats that the “Fully-Loaded Kodi Ecosystem” and “Subscription Television Piracy” pose to network operators, content creators, and rights holders.
With the issue of video piracy becoming a growing topic of interest to many in Canada, we decided to amalgamate the Canadian data collected from those reports, plus new data on BitTorrent, into a singular report to which provides real-network data on the prevalence of video piracy in Canada.
We submitted this new report last week to the CRTC as a comment on the ongoing proceedings examining online piracy and are making the report available to download on our website as well.
The Canadian specific data shows that shows that approximately 7% of Canadian households are using unofficial Kodi addons, and 8.3% of households are access pirated live television services. The figures are broadly inline with what we previously published as North America figures, so parties on both sides of the debate who have cited our data in their interventions shouldn’t have their argument invalidated.
Sandvine believes that emergent forms of piracy such as the “Fully-Loaded” Kodi ecosystem and subscription television piracy represent a real threat to the revenue streams of network operators. Not only because the content is being stolen, but because in some instance subscribers are paying to pirate these services, with no money going into the pockets of the content creators or rights holders.
While legal services like Netflix are still more widely adopted in Canada, subscription pirate television services and the “Full-Loaded” Kodi ecosystem have grown rapidly after having no adoption five years ago. The piracy figures reported in this report should also be considered a floor and not a ceiling because, our data does not capture all video piracy conducted from a traditional web browser, and it is very likely that many households are not be participating in both emergent forms of video piracy covered in this report.
If you would like some additional technical context and background on these issues, we encourage interested parties to download the following reports from Sandvine’s website:
- Video and Television Piracy: Ecosystem and Impact
- Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight: The “Fully-Loaded” Kodi Ecosystem
- Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight: Subscription Television Piracy
But for those who just want to see the latest Canadian data, you can download the Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight: Video Piracy in Canada from our website/
Topics: Featured Blog Header, Internet Phenomena
