For years, CreativeFuture has sounded the alarm about how online piracy harms the U.S. economy and eliminates jobs.

The need for a solution to this economic scourge has always been critical, which the new Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) and IP House report exposing the direct link between streaming piracy and organized crime makes glaringly obvious. If you have spent even a modicum of time reading our blogs, letters, or filings, you will know that there is already a safe and effective tool against piracy in use in nearly 60 countries around the world.

Say it with us: SITE BLOCKING!

Site blocking laws in the U.S. could begin to address the economic and cultural harm caused by piracy, while evidently hampering the operations of transnational crime syndicates operating outside U.S. jurisdiction. Thanks to the good work done by our friends over at DCA and IP House, we’re now able to detail just how important a site blocking law would be not only to the American creative community and economy, but to global public safety.

Report Summary

The report, titled Organized. Piracy. Crime. How Global Piracy Networks Became Organized Crime Syndicates – And What Needs to Be Done About It, was published in April 2026 by DCA and IP House, a company helping to enforce copyrights in 100 countries.

As the report shows, streaming piracy has been defined as a form of organized crime since at least 2010. But as the internet went through its own evolution over the years, organized crime changed from “centralized, hierarchical, and territorial” to “digital, decentralized, and borderless,” and our laws haven’t kept up.

The report’s main evidence comes from official documents by law enforcement authorities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan. While the indictments and press releases date from 2016 to 2024, the underlying investigations often began five or more years earlier.

Piracy as Organized Crime

The United Nations defines a criminal organization as a conspiracy among at least three individuals to commit one or more major crimes for the purpose of financial gain. Many of the piracy rings investigated in the report not only met this definition, but also engaged in human trafficking, drug sales, arms trading, terrorism, and money laundering.

Novel criminal enterprises and established syndicates such as the Italian Camorra became interested in piracy for its high profit margins and low legal risks.

Digital crime operates on an unprecedented scale, yet it is difficult to trace. Servers and personnel are distributed across numerous countries, and ringleaders may be unknown to fellow conspirators. Cryptocurrency obscures illicit flows of money, helping those who profit to avoid accountability.

Prosecutions against piracy rings rely on organized crime statutes, but the internet enables international criminal groups to target people within another country while evading traditional enforcement. Even when legal authorities cooperate across borders to conduct lengthy investigations and disrupt piracy rings, different criminal organizations soon take their place, as we have previously explained.

Key Examples

The numerous legal cases provided in the DCA/IP House report provide a sense of how streaming piracy has become such an integral part of organized crime.

Kickass Torrents

In June 2016, U.S. law enforcement announced charges against Artem Vaulin, who ran Kickass Torrents under an online alias. Drawing over 50 million visitors per month, the file-sharing network facilitated the theft of films and other copyrighted media worth over $1 billion between November 2008 and July 2016. Meanwhile, Vaulin’s piracy ring profited from ad revenues estimated at $12.5 million to $22.3 million per year. The money was laundered through fronts like the Ukrainian company Cryptonet. Vaulin was arrested in Poland in 2016, but disappeared on bail before extradition to the United States.

IPTV Network with 560+ Resellers

In November 2024, legal authorities across Europe cooperated to shut down a piracy syndicate with 100 domains and 560+ resellers. The suspects used Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) to provide 22 million subscribers with stolen films and television series, as well as over 2500 channels, costing rightsholders $10 billion euros (around $10.5 billion). Illicit subscription revenues amounted to $3 billion euros (over $3 billion) per year. Police confiscated 29 computer servers, as well as drugs and firearms, after conducting searches across nine countries. Eleven individuals were arrested in Croatia.

As these examples indicate, piracy organizations steal a breathtaking number of creative works. A study commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce found that this massive theft reduces revenues for American filmmakers by $29.2 billion-$71 billion and costs 230,000-560,000 jobs per year.

Site Blocking: An Overdue Remedy

Passing laws that establish a judicial process to direct U.S. internet companies to block criminal sites is a commonsense tool we could use to impede overseas criminal enterprises.

The DCA report observed that nearly 60 other countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, and many members of the European Union already allow site blocking. For 15 years, site blocking has helped curtail piracy and recover business for legal streamers. According to a study of site blocking in the U.K., use of legal streaming services rose by about 10% once notorious infringers were blocked. A subsequent study found similar results in India and an improvement of about 5% in Brazil.

Importantly, these countries have accomplished this without meaningful impediments to free speech or internet infrastructure.

Conclusion

There is no perfect solution to eradicate piracy. Transnational cybercriminals have done substantial harm since 2010, despite the gradual adoption of site blocking around the world. But compared to organized crime prosecutions, judicial site blocking is a more efficient way to protect creative industries and slow down the flow of money to dangerous criminal enterprises.

We need new laws to fight piracy. That’s why we organized a site blocking petition, which gathered over 145,000 signatures, and continue to coordinate meetings between creatives and policymakers in Washington, D.C. Congress can provide the creative communities with a safe, effective tool to stop the theft of our works – all while introducing a new way to cut into the illicit profits of criminal enterprises. The time to bring site blocking to the United States is long overdue.