Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content

Embedded in the cerebral cortex of anyone who watched a DVD between 2004 and 2008, is the same core memory: watching the You Wouldn’t Steal a Car advert.

It lasts just 48 seconds. Anxiety-inducing electro kicks in as a girl, sitting in front of a desktop computer, downloads a film on a website that looks like Teletext. The camera lurches and the tagline, stylised in a ransom typeface, flies in: “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR.”

Cue a stock character crook nicking what looks to be a Saab. The last word then changes to “HANDBAG” and “TELEVISION” before we see the same usual suspect running away with the goods. Finally, it gets to the crux: “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A MOVIE” it accuses, before warning that: “DOWNLOADING PIRATED FILMS IS ILLEGAL.” The girl, convinced, cancels her download. “PIRACY, IT’S A CRIME” flashes up.

Government campaigns have historically been very hit and miss, mainly miss. This one, it turns out, was miles off, a wild swing that went wrong, an inflatable tube man wielding a pool noodle against a grasshopper. “It was like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. But totally missing the fly and smashing goodwill towards the music and film industries,” says Dr Kate Whitman, a research fellow at University of Portsmouth and expert in piracy and how it makes us behave. Created by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (a spokesperson from FACT, who are often credited, told Huck they were not involved) in 2004, it was included on countless DVDs as an unskippable feature.

The analogy was, of course, totally false: stealing a movie is not like stealing a car. “The comparison of downloading a movie to stealing physical objects like cars and handbags seemed rather extreme to many viewers. This incongruity made it stand out and ripe for mockery. The repetitive nature of the message on DVDs and in theaters, paired with the dramatic music and footage, only added to this,” says Ernesto Van der Sar, founder of the piracy publication TorrentFreak. One meme captures the fallacy perfectly: “Imagine your car gets stolen, but it’s still there in the morning.”

The advert also activated the “social proof” lever by showing how normal the behaviour is. If it’s pervasive enough to warrant a (surprisingly) big-budget advert, then it’s a social norm and therefore you’re not a social outsider for illegally downloading a film. “It's such a core memory and so iconic. It didn't work because they just made it look so cool. They highlighted how easy it is to steal a movie,” says Laura, a 25-year-old London-based freelance writer who regularly pirates.

It rapidly reached pastiche status, leading to memes, parodies and even stick-and-poke tattoos. And, in fact, the You Wouldn't Steal a Car ad may have actually increased piracy rates.

Millions of us in the UK, like Laura, are still stealing movies 20 years on. Piracy has never been more rife and, now, it’s mainly through illegal streaming, which increased by 38.6% between 2021 and 2022. According to estimates from the IPO, online copyright infringement – which includes piracy – costs the UK economy £9bn and creates 80,500 job losses each year. It’s big business for the pirate sites, too. According to an op-ed from New Digital Age, each of the UK's top ten most-visited pirate websites is making £20m a year from advertising.

The image of piracy has, of course, drastically changed. Online piracy began in the 1980s, when dial-up modems (remember the noise?) led to 'warez' groups that distributed files. Napster, launched in 1999 and swiftly followed by Limewire, saw MP3s traded between early pirates. Soon after, the likes of Pirate Bay (dramatised in a Swedish TV show of the same name this year) and Megaupload (started by notorious internet overlord Kim Dotcom) distributed files across the globe. But physical piracy was still far more popular. In the early 2000s, it was standard practice in the UK to buy a stack of pirate DVDs at your local pub or market from your neighbourhood huckster.

FACT estimated that 3 million DVDs would be confiscated in 2004 – but that represented just 5% of the total in the UK. In 2006, the largest pirate DVD factory in the UK was closed down, capable of producing 60,000 discs a day. Law enforcement noted that it was churning out everything from Ice Age 2 to bestiality pornos. Film downloading began to go mainstream around this time, though it was still very slow, with each flick taking between 8 and 12 hours to download. The industry was rattled with the Motion Picture Association of America claiming it would fine viewers with £16,300 per film. About the price of popcorn these days, then.

Then, in 2007, Netflix launched its streaming platform and, with an ominous tudum, the film industry was changed forever. A torrent of pirate streaming sites followed suit, using similar technology and interfaces but stacked with unlicensed copies of movies. Putlocker, launched in the UK in 2011, registered 800,000 visitors a day after a year. In 2014, the police successfully closed down its original site but it has since started a quick change act of different domains, moving from Iceland to Vietnam to Luxembourg. A clone is still live under the domain “.llc” – ironically standing for “limited liability company” – promising an unrivalled selection of movies and TV series without any sign-up.

A host of other sites with strange URLs and dodgy ads exist in corners of the internet, from Solarmovie to 123Movies. “I have used many a website through the years because they obviously tend to disappear,” Laura says. While the original versions have shut down, their names have become de facto brands, continuing to haunt the web and the dreams of FACT officials. This bountiful black market makes piracy an endless game of whack-a-mole, where the hammer-wielder, not the mole, is blind. It’s a Sisyphean task for the cyber police.

These new sites render the You Wouldn’t Steal a Car extremely anachronistic but one thing still rings true. Piracy is a crime. “Streaming, downloading or sharing unauthorised TV content, film or sports content is a crime,” states the FACT website. In fact, it’s now a more serious offence. An amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 earlier this year saw the maximum penalty for infringing copyright online rise from two years to ten years.

That being said it’s almost impossible to catch any criminals. “Consumers knew they were likely to have better technical knowledge than the makers of the advert, and would be unlikely to be caught. And that they would be unlikely to be prosecuted if they were,” Dr. Whitman says. The new amendment requires the pirate to be making money from their actions or causing a loss to the owner.

While thousands of people have been issued warnings, no one in the UK has ever been fined or prosecuted for watching an unauthorised stream. “I don't even use a VPN. The government hasn't even got the digital infrastructure to make a website that's functional. How are they going to stop it?” Rhys, a London-based writer, says.

The crackdown is, anti-piracy advocates assure us, on. Pirate hunters registered a significant victory in August when a coalition led by Ace – composed of members from the likes of Netflix, Apple TV+ and Walt Disney – worked with Vietnamese police to shut down Fmovies. Labelled "the largest pirate streaming operation in the world" with more than 6.7bn visits in a single year, it was a flagship win for the film industry.

A small win that pales into insignificance when looking at a different black market that is currently winning the fight: bootleg sport. “It’s certainly an area of interest at the moment and a focus of my research. It's expensive to consume legally, but fans are very passionate about it - which provides a good money making opportunity for pirates,” Dr. Whitman says. A YouGov survey last year found that 5.1 million adults in England, Scotland and Wales pirated sport last year. Rhys is part of the crew and uses Reddit to find illegal streams. “I do watch sport – football in particular – three or four times a week and I pirate all of that. It's a piece of piss and the quality is immaculate.”

Others are using a dodgy fire stick, a device that’s already become as widespread and widely parodied in British culture as the vape. Adverts on social media offer these plug-and-play streaming devices – usually cracked versions of the Amazon Fire Stick – that can access pirate streaming platforms like Kodi and show sport from across the globe. Police – working with FACT and Sky TV – have closed 3,000 adverts on social media for illegal IPTV services. A few rogue pirates have been made an example of; in May 2023, five people were jailed for more than 30 years for selling subscriptions to illegal streaming networks. But, for the most part, it’s a losing battle.

It’s not just films and sport that’s being pirated. Pretty much any sort of content is up for grabs. For creatives who can’t afford the Adobe Suite, there are cracked versions offering every piece of the slickly-designed software for free. And for bookworms without much paper to spare, there are online, all-you-can-read libraries. “Downloading books is really fuelling my love of reading. My whole life, I would buy books from Waterstones but you spend £6.99 and might only read the first chapter and realise you don't like it very much,” Lucy, a 28-year-old teacher from London, says.

Cutting costs is, of course, the main reason that people will always pirate. Streaming has stretched budgets; the average Brit now pays out nearly £500 a year on subscriptions, with cheaper pricing plans on the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime funnelling adverts down our throats foie-gras style. “In this cost of living crisis I can't afford to pay for streaming services. Renting a movie legally online is a real last resort for me,” Laura says. To top it off, loads of movie streaming services don’t always have a wide selection: Putlocker, for example, has far more films than Netflix. Streamers giving us less for our money makes piracy more alluring.

Sport, too, is a bank breaker. “It's really inconvenient and very expensive to do it legitimately. In the UK, Premier League games at 3pm on a Saturday aren't televised to get people to go to the stadiums, but they're always sold out and most people can't afford them anyway. It would take about three or four different subscriptions to be able to watch every single game your team plays,” Rhys says.

For other pirates, it’s less about the money and more about the culture. Piracy is, at its heart, an anti-capitalist, anarchic movement. While some sites make money, other file-sharers and server-hosters do it to realise a cybernetic utopia of open source content. This is particularly important for marginalised communities. “There are so many countries where for queer people, film is only accessible through VPN or piracy. They deserve to have outlets where they can enjoy cinema,” says Eva, a 24-year-old London-based artist. Although she grew up in Australia, one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly countries in the world, she didn't feel safe using her mum's credit card to watch a queer film before coming out, so secretly downloaded lesbian flicks like Annabelle via a YouTube-to-MP4 converter.

Even some creatives who make movies are cool with people taking them. Luna Carmoon, director of this year’s excellent Hoard, grew up watching hundreds of movies on Putlocker as a working class filmmaker. “I wouldn't be the person I am today without piracy. I'd be really boring. I was lucky enough to be the first generation who could travel the world instantly via these streaming links and the blessed gods of subtitles,” she says.

She’s grateful for the pirates’ buccaneering spirit. “I've got to discover so much outside of my small world. I hope that loads of people find my work [illegally] and go down a rabbit hole of cinema. I think that's pretty fucking sweet. I adore the patron saints of piracy,” she continues. Laura agrees: “I can't imagine as a teenager with no money not being able to pirate films and music. That's why I support it.”

All of this makes the messaging for anti-piracy advocates a real headache. For starters, simply bringing up piracy can be a bad idea. “Even talking about other people's piracy (ironically as we're doing now) will increase piracy by making it more salient. Generally speaking people do not like being told that they're not allowed to do fun things,” Dr. Whitman says. When it comes to the campaigns, they have, of course, learnt from their mistakes. Stealing a car is not like stealing a movie. “This ad was really a lesson in how not to deter a crime. The level of threat implied in the advert was not reflective of the crime - to the point of ridicule,” she continues.

Fear, though, is still the main weapon. FACT churns out content about the dangers of illegal streaming, warning us that criminals profit from content and that we are left at the mercy of malware and viruses. “Lately [some sites] have downloaded dangerous files onto my computer. So it's not ideal,” Laura concedes. Anyone who has ever used a shady football streaming site knows firsthand the amount of unsavoury pop-ups that appear. But, after a few (read: about 3000) clicks of various red ‘Xs’ you’re on your way.

Perhaps, appealing to altruism is the answer. “If you can indicate to people that piracy has a detrimental effect to a local community – affecting local businesses, creatives and charity endeavours – people are far more motivated to reduce their illegal consumption. This suggests that people do care about harm to others, just that typically the harm of piracy is too distant for people to worry too much about,” says Dr. Whitman.

But it’s this distance that makes piracy so palatable for so many of us, and something that doesn’t trigger pangs of guilt. “I know it's probably doing some damage to the film industry but I don't feel bad about it,” Laura says. Many people who pirate do draw some lines. Rhys, for example, would never pirate porn as it directly impacts sex workers. Laura, meanwhile, still regularly goes to the cinema and wouldn’t pirate something she really rated. “I still go to the cinema and pay for films. I don't feel like I'm completely not supporting the arts. I'd never pirate a really iconic or gorgeous film or something new that comes out that doesn't look like shit,” she says.

But there’s still a saturation point in terms of what people can afford. And Eva believes that this sort of messaging is rich coming from the government. “[The war on piracy] is just a scapegoat for defending art that already exists in an environment where it's chronically underfunded,” she says. Plus, it’s hard to feel bad for the streaming sites when they themselves give so little to artists: Spotify may be legal, but isn't paying artists up to $0.004 per stream basically daylight robbery? Rhys feels the same about footy. “I think there's a Robin Hood effect. Until they do something relatively responsible for the fan base [like supporting grassroots football], I'm just going to get it for free.”

Maybe the real game-changer would be slashing costs. Rhys says he’d watch football legally if there was a cheap subscription offering all your club’s games and Laura would stream movies legally if movie services were as well-stocked as music services. But once you’re hooked on pirate content – and you’re enjoying something as good as the real thing for free – it’s hard to go back.

When it comes to the bigger picture, though, Dr. Whitman thinks it's about catching the salty sea dogs rather than the measly small fries. “Rather than blame the public, I would advocate for more upstream interventions. For example, looking at the legal businesses who facilitate or indirectly profit from piracy – I think that's where the moral issue really lies,” she says, pointing the finger at advertisers.

But then again, most pirate sites need this advertising money to continue. Without it, there would be no one running the ship for the rest of us; no invisible gang stealing invisible cars for us to invisibly drive.

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