The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA)’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) has published its 2024 annual piracy consumer survey, conducted by YouGov, which highlights the incidence of piracy is up year-on-year.

Despite a decrease in piracy on pirate TV boxes, pirate apps and streaming or torrent websites, the survey shows an increase in the incidence of piracy across the Asian region, climbing from 52 percent last year to 59 percent this year due to more piracy on social media and messaging platforms.

Particularly concerning are the increases in the Philippines (12 percent yoy) and Vietnam (13 percent yoy), with both countries also now having the region’s highest incidences of piracy amongst their populations, at 70 percent and 71 percent, respectively, AVIA said in a media statement from Singapore yesterday.

The dominance of social media and messaging platforms as the conduit to piracy not only remains, but has grown more severe, increasing by 14 percent across the region. Meanwhile, only 13 percent of consumers in the region now access pirated content through websites, and 11 percent by pirate TV boxes – both down from last year.

Awareness of the negative consequences of piracy (89 percent) remains extremely high across the region, with consumers being most aware of criminals profiting from pirate services, the risks of malware and the damage piracy causes to local industry being most prominent.

The impact of judicial or administrative orders requiring ISPs to block access to pirate sites is clear, with Indonesian (59 percent), Vietnamese (54 percent), Malaysian (42 percent) and Singaporean (28 percent) consumers saying they have either stopped entirely or rarely access pirate sites as a direct result of sites being blocked.

The survey shows a dramatic increase in the number of consumers in Asia-Pacific both searching for and accessing pirate content via social media or messaging services. CAP is continuing to work with the major platforms across the region to address this issue but remains concerned with the lack of response from some platforms, notably Telegram.

Matt Cheetham, General Manager of CAP, noted, “We are greatly encouraged by the continuing downward trend of consumers accessing pirate content from illegal websites, which reflects the work done over many years in the region by industry and governments. However, it is clear that social media and messaging platforms must do more to prevent their services being used to find and access pirate content.”