Behind the Cyberlocker Door: A Report on How Shadowy Cyberlocker Businesses Use Credit Card Companies to Make Millions A NetNames Report for Digital Citizens Alliance

“As a society, we can no longer shrug off content theft as the isolated activity of high school and college students who want to watch a movie or listen to music for free. Recent reports, this one by NetNames and one earlier this year by MediaLink, lay bare the truth that content theft is big business, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year – essentially bleeding the Internet for profit while making it less attractive for generations to come. Content theft harms not only creators whose products are stolen and legitimate distributors that are forced to compete with cyberlockers who pay nothing for the content that drives their business. It also hurts consumers who pay the price for “free” content in a reduction of quality choices as revenues are reduced, and may be subjected to identity theft and malware that cyberlockers are associated with. New research by NetNames has demonstrated that:
•It’s easy to profit on the Internet when you leverage other people’s creative works. In fact, it is possible you could make millions of dollars doing so.
•There is a compelling difference between the business models of rogue cyberlockers that peddle in content theft and legitimate cloud storage services.
•Malware is a serious issue when it comes to content theft.
•Major brands are victimized by content thieves who leverage these brands to make their own rogue sites seem legitimate.
•That all it takes for bad operators to succeed is for the facilitators of commerce – payment processors and the advertising industry, among other stakeholders– to do nothing. In the NetNames research, for example, MasterCard and Visa could be used to buy subscriptions on almost all the cyberlockers.
The question is what we do about it. It’s going to take concerted action by the Internet and the payment processors, advertising industries, consumers, public interest groups, Internet safety organizations and responsible government officials to address this corrosive issue that threatens our basic trust in our online world.”