Julio García
Spain is on the European average for digital piracy, but at the top of illegal access to sporting events, almost 30% more cases than in the rest of the countries, especially when it comes to football, according to the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the DigitalEs entity.
In addition, in 2023 there were 5,000 million illegal accesses in Spain, which generated a business of 33,000 million euros (34,320 million dollars), among other data provided during the days ‘The impact of piracy in the audiovisual industry’, held at the Film Academy in Madrid, according to EFE.
The general director of DigitalEs, the employers’ association of the Spanish technology sector, Miguel Sánchez, stressed the easy access to illegal content that the population has and added that 92% of users reach illegal platforms through Google; nine out of ten of these sites have advertising.
«Piracy is not a Spanish problem, it is a European problem», he stressed, as well as recalling that, to regulate this matter, there are directives (European regulations) from 2004 «and that must be resolved». Sánchez considered that it is a fight against «criminal organisations» and the solution is to «cut off their funding».
The EUIPO observatory specialist Harrie Temmink assured that digital piracy remains on the rise among Internet users, with an average of ten accesses per month in the European Union (eight in Spain) and where ‘streaming’ websites are the most affected, with a 10% increase in illegal accesses last year.
According to data from the observatory, 80% of Europeans prefer legal sources if they are accessible and 41% admit that they doubt whether they are aware that the source is illegal. In addition, 82% recognise that accessing illegal content entails risks.
In the case of Spaniards, according to Temmink, one in three users who access content illegally is between the ages of 15 and 24. For this reason, she insisted on more campaigns and raising awareness through education.
The president of the association of independent film distributors (Adicine), Lara Pérez-Caminha, denounced that “in 2024, there were more than 6.3 million pirate links in Spain with infringements exceeding 3.5 million euros” (3.64 million dollars). She also admitted that, on social networks, piracy is “endless, since there is the possibility of uploading videos of up to 4 gigabytes with high quality, and half-hour-long films.”
