• by Wayne Friedman , January 26, 2022

Piracy of all types -- movies and television, publishing and software -- continues to grow worldwide, up 16% for a nine-month period in 2021 over the same period a year ago, according to a new survey by Akamai.

Television and video content remains the most-pirated -- totaling 67 billion global total visits by users to piracy websites.

The definition of “visits” is websites “offering access to movies or television shows, either directly through a browser or mobile application, as well as torrent downloads,” unlicensed streams and downloads.

“Piracy is still a growing problem with an overall 16% increase,” said James Mason, chief technology officer of MUSO, a company that tracks television, movies, software and publications. MUSO produced the survey for Akamai.

The top five most-pirated TV shows are Disney+’s “Loki” (Season One); Disney+’s “WandaVision,” (Season One); Hulu’s “Rick and Morty” (Season Five); Disney+’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (Season One), and AMC/Netflix's “The Walking Dead” (Season 10).

HBO show “Game of Thrones” -- formerly a longtime top-pirated show (Season Eight) -- came in at sixth place.

After TV, the next-most pirated business is publishing, at 30 billion visits. The film industry came in at 14.5 billion visits, followed by the music industry with 10.8 billion visits and software (video games and modern PC software) at 8.9 billion visits.

The top five most pirated movies last year were also some of the better-performing movies in terms of theatrical box office:

Warner Bros. “Godzilla vs. Kong,” HBO Max’s “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” Walt Disney’s “Black Widow,” Universal Pictures’ “F9: The Fast Saga” and Warner Bros.’ “Mortal Kombat.”