RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Brazil’s Audiovisual Industry and Commerce Federation (FICA) announced at the Rio Film Festival’s RioMarket the launch at the end of October of an anti-piracy awareness campaign in free-to-air and pay television, radio, out-of-home (OOH) advertising and movie theaters.
Local media, telecom and exhibition groups are supporting the campaign by providing free advertising space on their platforms. Local ad agency 11:21 created the pro bono advertising campaign, which will initially reach São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, the three most populous states in Brazil, and eventually be expanded countrywide, 11:21’s CEO Gustavo Bastos told Variety.
“The theft of intellectual property is a problem that must be tackled worldwide. The loss of revenue is enormous and affects the entire audiovisual industry ecosystem. What is even more concerning is that ordinary people do not realize the implications of their actions when they use, for example, an illegal TV box,” Walkiria Barbosa, president of FICA, told Variety. “Fortunately, we have managed to bring together major partners to launch this far-reaching campaign, which is now getting underway.”
Disque Denúncia, a Brazilian anonymous crime-reporting hotline, is a campaign partner. The initiative allows citizens to report suspected criminal activities without revealing their identities.
Bastos said the campaign will use the language of films and series to communicate the danger of piracy. They created pirate characters for the campaign inspired by pirate productions.
“Anti-piracy campaigns generally adopt a law-enforcement tone, emphasizing repression, which tends to alienate audiences. We chose a cinematic approach instead, drawing inspiration from pirate productions,” Bastos said.
A 2022 study of Brazil’s Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) pointed out that piracy caused annual losses of 12 billion reais ($2.4 billion) in the country, Jonas Antunes Couto, president of the Brazilian Pay-TV Association (ABTA), told Variety. The study also identified piracy practices in about 4.5 million households in Brazil.
According to Couto, illegal TV boxes, mostly smuggled from Asia, have become the major concern in Brazil’s fight against audiovisual piracy. These devices allow consumers to access movies, television series, live sports broadcasts and other content without authorization from copyright holders. Connected to TV sets and the internet, these relatively inexpensive devices can provide access to vast libraries of pirated content, often eliminating the need for legitimate streaming subscriptions or pay-TV services.
“Piracy is a global phenomenon. In our view, those behind this business are not small-scale operators, but large criminal organizations that engage in other illegal activities, including cybercrime, to finance their operations,” Couto said.
Beyond the financial damage inflicted on pay-TV operators, streaming platforms and audiovisual producers, distributors and exhibitors, illegal TV boxes may also pose significant cybersecurity risks, as they may contain malware that can expose users to data theft, unauthorized access to personal information and other cyber threats.
Claro is one of the corporations supporting the campaign. In addition to mobile and fixed-line telephony and high-speed broadband internet, Claro offers in Brazil pay-TV and digital entertainment services and is directly affected by piracy.
“A major anti-piracy operation carried out in Argentina last year succeeded in shutting down one of Latin America’s largest hubs for pirated content. In the three months following the operation, sales of pay-TV subscription packages in Brazil increased by more than 20%,” said Fernando Magalhães, Claro’s director of programing and content. “But it’s a cat-and-mouse game. As anti-piracy efforts become more technologically sophisticated, piracy itself evolves technologically as well.”
