Piracy

Cyberstronomy researchers have worked for more than 15 years on anti-piracy research. Our focus has been on (a) identifying consumers risks from using piracy sites, (b) following the money trail in complex advertising networks to understand who benefits, and (c) identifying the links to organise crime. 

Our independent research reports have been funded by a range of global organisations, including:

• The Motion Picture Association

• Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment

• The Asia Video Industry Association (previously known as Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, or CASBAA)

• The Premier League

• The Digital Citizens Alliance

• The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance

Partners

We deliver our research in partnership with leading universities including:

• The Indian School of Business

• The Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

• La Trobe University

• Macquarie University

• YouGov

Industry Reports

• A Systematic Approach to Measuring Advertising Transparency Online: An Australian Case Study (2013)

• Measuring Online Advertising Transparency in Singapore: An Investigation of Threats to Users (2013)

• Mainstream Advertising on Rogue Websites in Hong Kong: A Comparison of Chinese and Western Titles (2014)

• The Prevalence of High-Risk and Mainstream Advertisements Targeting Canadians on Rogue Websites (2014)

• Mainstream Advertising Support for Online Piracy in Taiwan (2014)

• Mainstream Advertising on Rogue Websites in Malaysia: A Comparison of Local and Foreign Content (2014)

• Do Rogue Websites and High Risk Advertising Undermine Social Policy in Vietnam? (2014)

• How Risky are Piracy Websites for Indonesians? The Role of Search (2014)

• Sweet As? Advertising on Rogue Websites in New Zealand (2014)

• The Impact of High Risk Advertising on Thai Social Values: The Role of Piracy Websites (2015)

• An Analysis of Piracy Website Advertising in Brazil and Its Linkages to Child Exploitation Material (2016)

• Consumer Risk and Digital Piracy – Where Does Malware Come From? (2021)

• Time to Compromise: How Cyber Criminals use Ads to Compromise Devices through Piracy Websites and Apps (2022)

• Consumer Risks from Piracy Sites in the Philippines (2023)

• Scams, Cyber Threats and Illicit Sports Streaming in Singapore (2024)

Research Papers

• Comb, M., & Watters, P. A. (2016). Peeking behind the great firewall: Privacy on Chinese file sharing networks. In 2016 14th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST) (pp. 650-656). IEEE.

• Watters, P. A., & Ziegler, J. (2016). Controlling information behaviour: the case for access control. Behaviour & Information Technology, 35(4), 268-276.

• Lee, S. J., & Watters, P. A. (2016). Gathering intelligence on high-risk advertising and film piracy: A study of the digital underground. Automating open source intelligence, 89-102.

• Watters, P. A., Watters, M. F., & Ziegler, J. (2015, January). Maximising eyeballs but facilitating cybercrime? ethical challenges for online advertising in new zealand. In 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 1742-1749). IEEE.

• Watters, P. (2015). Censorship is f̶u̶t̶i̶l̶e̶ possible but difficult: A study in algorithmic ethnography. First Monday.

• Watters, P. A., Watters, M., & Ziegler, J. (2014, November). Malicious advertising and music piracy: a New Zealand case study. In 2014 Fifth Cybercrime and Trustworthy Computing Conference (pp. 22-29). IEEE.

• Herps, A., Watters, P. A., & Pineda-Villavicencio, G. (2013). Measuring surveillance in online advertising: a big data approach. In 2013 Fourth Cybercrime and Trustworthy Computing Workshop (pp. 30-35). IEEE.

• Watters, P., & Layton, R. (2011). Fake file detection in P2P networks by consensus and reputation. In 2011 First International Workshop on Complexity and Data Mining (pp. 80-83). IEEE.

• Watters, P. A., Layton, R., & Dazeley, R. (2011). How much material on BitTorrent is infringing content? A case study. Information Security Technical Report, 16(2), 79-87.

• Mee, J., & Watters, P. A. (2006). Detecting and tracing copyright infringements in P2P networks. In International Conference on Networking, International Conference on Systems and International Conference on Mobile Communications and Learning Technologies (ICNICONSMCL'06) (pp. 60-60). IEEE.