The MPA's Emilie Anthonis Warns Of B2B Pirates & The Threat Of ‘Piracy As A Service'

Yahoo

10-06-2025

The latest frontline in the battle against the illegal distribution of content is the fight against those providing would-be pirates with off-the-shelf piracy kits, according to the Motion Picture Association's Europe, Middle East & Africa boss.
Emilie Anthonis is the MPA's first non-American, and first female, boss in the EMEA region. She was promoted to President and Managing Director last year, and started work in the role in Jan.
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'One of the concerning trends we're seeing is piracy as a service,' she said at the ongoing NEM industry confab in Dubrovnik. 'It really makes the problem of piracy, or fighting piracy, even more complicated. Piracy as a service is a B2B piracy model. It's a little bit like a wholesale market for pirates selling turnkey solutions to aspirational criminals.'
The piracy as a service issue massively lowers the barrier to entry for budding piracy site operators. Effectively, people can buy the tech, know how, and assets required to set up a DIY piracy store. The piracy as a service providers are offering various tools and services that can power streaming services, file-sharing sites and download platforms.
'Today, you don't need to have any IT knowledge to start your piracy website,' Brussels-based Anthonis explained. 'You can get these turnkey packages. So, for example, you have streaming platforms that are white labeled that you just have to brand. You can buy access to all the underlying content. You have monetization services that you can just plug in.'
With the b2b pirates ramping up activity, the challenge for the MPA, content owners, and authorities is to try and deal with the issue at source.
'It really decentralizes the problem of piracy. If you don't get to the wholesale problem, you have to find all the retail privacy services that rely on them,' Anthonis said.
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