Digital content piracy and brand dilution is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year, and costs are passed along to consumers who pay for increased subscription costs.

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Over the past 10 years, business leaders have cited content creation as one of the most expensive and time consuming aspects of their marketing budget. Protecting content is becoming increasingly important as more channels and user accounts flood the internet, making it harder to spot piracy and disinformation and enforce laws.

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Types of Content Copyright Issues Online

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Industries of all kinds are struggling to keep up with changing piracy tactics, especially those in entertainment, sports, and media. What risks are out there for branded content? Here are a few ways your content faces danger to keep an eye out for:

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Understanding Online Piracy

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The most blatant act of content copyright infringement is the direct theft of content from a source and the reproduction of it on another site.

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Pirated video material gets over 230 billion views a year. More than 80% of global online piracy can be attributed to illegal streaming services.

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Why is piracy so dangerous? It prevents the organization who created/paid for the content from seeing a return on their investment, either through site traffic, subscriptions, or direct payment for the content (such as movies and sporting events).

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Annual global revenue losses from digital piracy are between $40 and $97.1 billion in the movie industry.

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Piracy impacts brands ability to gain revenue from content or events, leading to higher prices for consumers. While it may be easy to say that if someone watches free content on an unauthorized site that there is no real harm being done, consider this: when brands, sports teams, entertainment, or media outlets put out content for free, they are expecting traffic to their site. The site where they serve ads. The ads are how they are generating revenue. So every time traffic is pulled away from their site, they are losing the ability to gain the best advertisers and may not be able to keep their content free to viewers anymore.

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Did you know that piracy also slows bandwidth? Currently, illegal downloading of copyrighted materials takes up 24% of the global bandwidth.

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Managing Trademark, Copyright, and Brand Dilution

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Trademark, copyright, or brand dilution occurs anytime someone uses a logo, likeness, or other brand element in a way that it was not intended. This happens all the time and can range from mostly harmless to severely damaging depending on the nature of the infringement.

Examples include:

• Using a company’s logo on content that is not from the brand (misrepresenting an account, person, product, service, or content as being associated with a brand)
• Intentionally disparaging a brand through falsely posing as part of the brand
• Misusing the likeness of individuals including sports team members, entertainers, or characters
• Including the brand alongside content that is harmful to the brand’s reputation (illegal drugs or acts, disparaging content, violence, etc.

‍Dealing with Abusive Language and Threats

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It’s true that every day there are more than 4 million threatening or abusive comments made across various media channels. While these threats are usually harmless physically, they are damaging to your brand’s reputation.

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Threatening comments, content, and posts around your logo, tagline, people, locations, etc. all create uncertainty and negative feelings in your target audience.

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Complicating these matters even further is the fact that many users don’t know they’re viewing pirated or copyright protected content. They may also share this content to their networks, spreading the problem even further.

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Effective Ways to Protect Your Copyrighted Content

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Here are five ways to keep your content, and your revenue, safe online:

1. Detection is key. Finding instances of piracy or copyright infringement is complicated because there are millions of websites and even more users out there sharing content every day. Tools like Redflag AI can spot these issues using machine learning to search millions of pages at a time for your content.
2. Copyright your material. There are significantly fewer legal repercussions for content that isn't copyrighted. Most content can be automatically protected by copyright assuming it meets basic criteria, however copyrighting your work officially makes it easier to monitor and to enforce having it taken down from pirated sites.
3. Remember that content takes on different forms - protect them all. You’ll need to watch video, image, text, and even audio for your various forms of content. It's critical to choose a platform that's capable of all four.
4. Educate your audience. Often the best watchdogs are our users and viewers. Many people are consuming pirated content unknowingly or are unaware of the impact that content piracy or brand dilution have on the economy, including job loss and increasing prices.
5. Have the content removed from the infringing site. You can request that content be taken down via the DMCA and, in some cases, to the FBI. Copyright issues are protected legally, but are considered civil matters in most instances. You can also report copyright infringement to Google and repeat offenders will often have their site de-indexed, making it harder for a user to find. (Google does not take down sites.) Working with a company like Redflag AI will help you spot copyright issues and disinformation detection and continue to find the latest sites that pop up daily.

If you're looking for more information on protecting your brand from piracy, disinformation, threatening or abusive language, or analyzing the content that's surrounding it, contact Redflag AI and we'll walk you through the options.