Apple TV Plus becomes part of anti-piracy coalition

Apple’s video streaming service Apple TV Plus has joined the Motion Picture Association of America’s Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which is an anti-piracy coalition committed to “supporting the legal marketplace for video content and addressing the challenge of online piracy.”

Founded in June 2017, there are 30 major global entertainment companies and film studios for protecting profits from copyrighted material joined in. Netflix and Amazon are founding members among other member content studios like Sky, Disney, NBC, BBC, ViacomCBS, Star India, and VFox.

ACE was formed with the intension to demolish the piracy ecosystem that harms creators, costing companies as much as $71 billion annually, as noted by Axios. Streaming piracy is a greater concern to Apple as it is heavily investing in Originals under Apple TV Plus.

Apple will be joining the governing board of ACE alongside members of the Motion Picture Association: Amazon, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony Picture, and Warner Bros.

Streaming piracy is a growing problem representing 80% of all piracy today. Since its launch, ACE has “achieved many successful global enforcement actions” against illegal streaming services and unauthorized content.

TV creators, and especially streamers, have observed piracy being a massive problem. It not only harms the content creators but also the consumers when accessing illegal content – one-third of pirate sites target consumers with malware that can lead to identify theft and financial loss, according to Digital Citizens Alliance.