Pirated streaming platforms: a problem that goes beyond entertainment

What are Magis TV and Xuper TV: They are illegal internet protocol television (IPTV) platforms that operate outside international and local regulatory frameworks. Their expansion is mainly due to increased broadband penetration and faster internet speeds, factors that facilitate quick and easy access to massive broadcast streams. They also benefit from the lower purchasing power of certain segments, such as young people, and from the old myth that everything on the internet is free and that free doesn't hurt anyone.

These platforms operate under three main business models:

1) Illegal subscription: charging monthly fees to end users in exchange for a wide range of channels.

2) Business to Business (B2B): Reselling IPTV packages at wholesale level and installing equipment for illegal distribution.

3) Live broadcasting portals: Free-to-air broadcasts financed indirectly by spreading malware and monetising advertising (gambling, online gambling or adult content).

Interest in these technologies is widespread in Chile, and even illegal IPTV portals are among the most visited in the country.

On intellectual property:

The proliferation in the use of these platforms generates various problems.

• Unlicensed content and illegally retransmitted signals: These platforms retransmit and make available audiovisual catalogues and live events without the express authorisation of the rights holders, such as audiovisual production companies, in direct violation of intellectual property legislation.
• The cross-cutting economic impact: Industries whose core business consists of licensing content they own in exchange for a fee suffer a significant loss if users who should pay do not do so and enjoy this content for free.
• Losses in the millions: Globally, the industry suffers from access to tens of millions of illegal contents annually.
• Risk to sport and employment: In disciplines such as football, TV rights account for more than 50% of clubs' turnover. By reducing this revenue, the continuity of professional sport is jeopardised, direct jobs are destroyed and substantial tax evasion is generated to the detriment of the state's tax coffers.
• Competitive distortion: Unfair and disproportionate competition is generated against legal streaming services and local operators that do invest heavily in acquiring legitimate licenses.

The case of "Paris" and the hardware market

The infrastructure of digital piracy is not limited to software but requires logistical support and physical distribution of equipment. The debate in Chile intensified after the commercialisation of IPTV boxes and devices (configured to access pirate services) was detected through formal commercial channels. The digital and executive ecosystem publicly questioned the Paris multi-store marketplace for allowing the sale of these decoders associated with unauthorised signals.

It led to an in-depth discussion on the responsibility of intermediaries and marketplaces. It showed that piracy control should not only pursue the anonymous signal sender, but also control the marketing chain of devices that facilitate and automate illicit access to subscription networks.

Regulation: 

In the framework of a lawsuit filed by Warner Bro, the 19th Civil Court of Santiago issued a ruling ordering the cessation and blocking of these illegal transmissions for infringement of the Intellectual Property Law, due to the unauthorised retransmission of its audiovisual catalogue.

The court order is part of a broader context in which, first, the Subtel's official notice addressed to internet access service providers (ISPs), which aims to comply with court rulings ordering the blocking of IPTV platforms that retransmit content without authorisation, and second, the recent reactivation in the Economy Commission of the Chamber of Deputies of a bill that seeks to strengthen the protection of intellectual property in the digital environment, explicitly incorporating figures related to technological protection measures in Law No. 17,336.º 17.336. The initiative seeks to establish penalties for those who circumvent or facilitate the circumvention of technological systems designed to control access to protected content, as well as for those who develop, market or use tools aimed at breaching such barriers.

Data protection:

There is one question that hardly anyone asks before installing one of these unofficial streaming apps on their Smart TV: what does this software do when I am not watching the screen? Digital piracy has also become a personal data protection and cybersecurity issue, and in Chile, with the entry into force of Law No. 21.719 amending Law No. 19.628, this shift has concrete legal consequences.

These apps, when distributed outside the official shops, force the user to disable device protections and grant administrator permissions that no legitimate video app would need, such as access to deep storage, local network management and invisible background execution.

Such excessive permissions are the gateway to a massive processing of personal data including consumption habits, credentials, browsing behaviour and access to personal data that is done outside any legal framework.

A pirate app that captures data without valid consent and without a legitimate purpose breaches every principle established by law. There is no privacy notice, no identifiable data controller, no basis for legitimisation. It is thus the antithesis of the model that the Chilean law seeks to install.

The user without rights

Unlike a legal service, where the owner can exercise his or her rights, here the consumer is left in the most absolute defencelessness. The Personal Data Protection Law recognises the BARSOP rights (Access, Rectification, Suppression, Opposition, Portability and Blocking) and creates the Personal Data Protection Agency as the supervisory authority, with a sanctioning regime of up to 20,000 UTM in cases of very serious infringements.

But these rights can only be exercised against a data controller who exists, who is identified and who is subject to the law. To whom does the user of a pirate app hosted on an anonymous server abroad complain? To whom does he demand access to or deletion of his data? The transaction takes place entirely outside the legal framework, as the user has no guarantee, no complaint channel, and no real way of protecting his privacy. They give up their rights without even knowing that they are giving them up.

Smart TV as a gateway to the digital home

The real business of these platforms is not to give away TV, but to monetise the user's digital infrastructure through silent criminal techniques: injection of banking Trojans that capture credentials, hidden cryptocurrency mining that overheats and degrades the equipment, and the conversion of the home router into a botnet node used for attacks on a global scale.

Once infected, the malware scans the local network looking to jump onto home computers and phones, where passwords, cards and sensitive information live. The TV is really the weak link through which everything else enters. And uninstalling the app does not always eliminate the risk, because some Trojans persist in the root folders of the system. The only fully effective solution is usually a factory format.

The new legal debate

The data tells the story. A study by the Coalition of Content Creators and Industries found that 63% of users of illegal content had to register for access, that 59% perceive more spam since then, and that although 80% remember cookie warnings, that consent is rarely valid. Reinterpreted under the Chilean lens, these figures describe exactly the practices that the Law prohibits: collection without a basis for legitimisation, absence of informed consent and no transparency.

The regulatory consequence is obvious, and that is that we must fully integrate intellectual property with privacy and cybersecurity as dimensions of the same phenomenon.

We talk about responsible digital consumption, data protection as an informed decision, understanding what we give away and to whom with each permission, and invisible technological risks that operate without us noticing.

If you are not paying for the product, the product is you. Turn off piracy before piracy turns off your devices.

[1] The coalition of content creators and industries (2022). Piracy and digital content consumption habits observatory 2022. http://lacoalicion. es/wp-content/uploads/ejecutivo-pirateria-2022.pdf