It's funny to think that it's still so prevalent in an age where we've never had so much readily available and inexpensive entertainment at our fingertips. Most pirates have to pay for their data, unless they're stealing wi-fi too, so why not enjoy the millions of hours of free-to-stream content on YouTube. Beyond the freemium streaming models, there are numerous streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and Showmax to choose from at relatively inexpensive subscriptions. Whether music or movies, it seems it's not enough to have first-rate entertainment just a click away. The desire to circumvent the system to land the latest TV series or movies illegally seems like all the reason pirates need to justify their actions.

While we may not like to think about it, we're the best at fooling ourselves, able to justify almost anything with enough obfuscation. We say things like "I usually pay for my entertainment" or "I'm not harming anyone" or "One or two downloads from time to time won't have an impact". This is why Piracy is so difficult to combat, trying to curtail the crisis from the point of the end-users who are enabling a criminal empire. While it's important to educate around the knock-on effect of piracy, regulators and providers are realising it's not enough. This is why local agencies are changing the way they fight piracy by focusing on tracking their way back up to the command chain.

Perhaps the real confusion stems from the word's close links with pirates of the high sea, who in spite of Johnny Depp's best efforts, are often portrayed in a heroic light. Just like the perpetuation of the infamous Pirate Bay, the idea of sailing the seven seas as a freedom-loving and rum-swilling vagabond, doesn't seem all that bad. The truth of the matter is that there's no honour among pirates because they're thieves, there to pillage and harm while the sun shines. Piracy has a macro and micro impact, which many perpetrators fail to understand. Unfortunately, whether through apathy or ignorance these people are unwittingly sabotaging the industry, undermining the enterprises and subsequently the players themselves.

The constant epidemic of piracy, affects industry professionals, including publishing, TV, animation, sports, cinema, music, and gaming. Irdeto, a global leader in digital platform cybersecurity, reports that between June and August 2021, people in five major African territories visited the top 10 identified piracy websites a total of about 17.4 million times to download content illegally. On the world stage, digital video piracy costs the entertainment industry up to $71 billion year*, damaging businesses and destroying lives and livelihoods in an economy still reeling after Covid.

Content platforms stop commissioning local content when the local industry is no longer feasible due to content piracy and copyright violations, and local material is therefore readily replaced by less expensive, often international alternatives. Even though it might be more economical, importing content stunts the development of the regional industry, locally-produced content and efforts to create jobs.

According to Justice and Constitutional Development minister Ronald Lamola, "digital technologies" such as Netflix and Showmax are "opening up new markets", showing an eagerness to invest in South Africa's film industry but piracy has the potential to collapse the industry. A negative impact on our economy and creative professionals, "we run the risk of reversing gains" if our "we are not seen as a country where Intellectual Property is respected and protected".

The Cybercrimes Act, introduced in December 2021, allows the government to tackle piracy by imposing harsher sentences on dealers and sellers, "who manipulate intellectual property to the detriment of society". Lamola believes that state resources could be used more wisely when it comes to specialised commercial crime units, who typically confiscate goods and arrest traders, saying the battle against Intellectual Property Crimes will rely on an improved system being able to resolve collaborative, jurisdictional and technological challenges to "identify and arrest the leaders of intellectual property crimes" who live across the globe.

Partners Against Piracy (PAP) is a pan-African campaign to tackle content piracy, an initiative that aims to inform and educate the public about the impacts of piracy. This partnership between governmental organizations, law enforcement organizations, distributors, content producers, and rights holders has already had results thanks to a joint operation between law enforcement agents and content-piracy detectives in apprehending a group peddling content around the Showmax series, The Wife.

*US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center