Amazon's hugely popular Fire TVs are at the center of a media storm. A damning report from the firm Enders Analysis names them as a major "piracy facilitator," allowing illegal access to protected content, particularly sports content, worth an estimated "billions of dollars." While other tech giants are also being singled out, it is Amazon's system that is attracting criticism for its central role in this "industrial scale of theft."
It's a direct and unvarnished accusation: Fire TV Sticks, those small devices so handy for accessing our favorite streaming services, have apparently become the tool of choice for an army of pirates. The report titled Video Piracy: Tech Giants Clearly Unwilling to Address the Problem by Enders Analysis doesn't mince its words and points the finger at Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft for IPTV piracy. And it's the American e-commerce giant that's taking the blame.
According to Nick Herm, Sky Group's chief operating officer, Fire TV Sticks account for "around half of all piracy in the UK". A statistic corroborated by data provided to Enders by Sky for the first quarter of 2024, indicating that 59% of people in the UK who admitted to watching pirated content via a physical device had used an Amazon product.
Fire TV Stick: The preferred tool of pirate IPTV resellers?
The method is often the same and consists of "jailbreaking" (unlocking) devices to allow the installation of unverified third-party applications, thus opening the way to illegal streaming, particularly for live sports broadcasts, which attract tens of thousands of viewers per event. While the user can do it themselves to connect their pirate IPTV, some sellers offer an all-in-one solution with the illegal services already installed. The promise is tempting for the user who does not want to complicate the task, especially since the legitimacy of the Amazon brand can be misleading. "People think that because it's a legitimate brand, it must be acceptable. So they give their credit card details to criminal gangs," Nick Herm pointed out at the Financial Times' Business of Football Summit. He lamented that "Amazon isn't engaging with us as much as we'd like.".
In the UK, the courts have begun cracking down on those who transform and resell these modified devices. Prison sentences have been handed down, illustrating the seriousness of the problem. In other countries, users are starting to receive fines.
Faced with these accusations, Amazon, which is itself a major player in streaming with Prime Video and the holder of sports rights (such as Roland-Garros in France), is defending itself. A spokesperson told Ars Technica that "pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights and compromises the security and privacy of our customers." The company says it is working "with industry partners and law enforcement to combat piracy," banning the offending apps from its App Store and warning customers about the risks of installing apps from "unknown sources." Amazon also claims to have made changes to its Fire devices to make it more difficult to stream pirated content.
Google, Microsoft, and Meta are also singled out
However, for the authors of the Enders report and many industry players, these efforts seem insufficient given the scale of the phenomenon. Especially since the Fire TV problem is part of a broader context of failing protection systems. The report also criticizes Google and Microsoft for the "continued depreciation" of their digital rights management (DRM) systems, Widevine and PlayReady, deemed "compromised" and in need of a "complete overhaul". Meta (Facebook) is also criticized for serving ads leading to these illegal services.
"Billions of dollars" in lost revenue
The financial impact is colossal for rights holders like DAZN, which speaks of a "near-crisis", or Sky, which estimates its losses in "hundreds of millions of dollars." In total, the Enders report indicates that Amazon's Fire TV is the source of "billions of dollars in piracy". While users of pirate services expose themselves to security risks (phishing, malware), the high cost and fragmentation of legal streaming services are often cited as reasons for this enthusiasm for illegal services.
The fact remains that the ease with which Fire TV Sticks can be diverted from their primary use makes them a prime target for criticism. The question remains: will Amazon and other tech giants take sufficiently drastic measures to stem a scourge that thrives on their own technologies? The content industry, for its part, is losing patience.
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