There is a growing form of piracy that streaming giants still don’t know how to solve — because the people doing it aren’t thieves by choice. They are simply unable to pay.
In countries across the Middle East and North Africa (and in several other regions hit by sanctions or economic collapse), millions of people turn to illegal streaming, shared hard drives, and underground Telegram channels not because they want to steal content, but because the legal path has been completely blocked by forces outside their control.
The Reality on the Ground
In Syria and Lebanon, international sanctions and banking crises have made it nearly impossible to use foreign payment cards. Even when people have money, Visa and Mastercard transactions are often rejected, and local banks are unstable.
The result is simple: people who would happily pay for Netflix, Disney+, or Spotify instead rely on VPNs and pirate sites just to access the same shows and music everyone else is watching.
In Algeria, university students have turned the exchange of external hard drives into a campus ritual — passing around terabytes of the latest series, Hollywood blockbusters, and underground music.
In Egypt, specialized Telegram channels have become the de facto distribution network for Korean dramas, Turkish series, and niche music that official platforms either don’t offer or geo-block.
Not a Moral Failing — A Structural One
This is what makes “forced piracy” different from traditional file-sharing. It is not driven by greed or laziness. It is driven by necessity.
- Sanctions prevent legitimate payments;
- Currency controls and banking restrictions block subscriptions;
- Geo-blocking leaves huge parts of the catalog unavailable;
- Hyperinflation and economic crises make even cheap monthly fees feel impossible.
The Wired investigation that first highlighted this phenomenon shows the scale: in many of these countries, a significant portion of the population has no realistic legal way to consume popular culture.
The Hidden Cost
Everyone already knows the usual arguments against piracy: it reduces revenue for creators, discourages investment in local content, and often comes bundled with malware. Those risks remain real.
But the deeper tragedy is this: platforms are losing potential paying customers not because of competition or bad product — but because the global financial system has made legal access impossible for entire populations.
Meanwhile, the gray market keeps evolving in creative and dangerous ways. People who cannot pay end up watching pirated copies anyway — and the streaming services, studios, and artists get zero revenue from them.
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The Uncomfortable Truth
The dream of a truly global, frictionless paid internet — where anyone with an internet connection can simply click “subscribe” — has quietly become an illusion. In too many places, the infrastructure for legal consumption simply does not exist.
Streaming platforms keep raising prices in wealthy markets to offset massive content costs. At the same time, in large parts of the world, even basic payment infrastructure is crumbling. The result is a growing class of “forced pirates” who would prefer to pay but literally cannot.
Until the industry finds a way to solve payment access in sanctioned and crisis-hit countries — or accepts lower prices and alternative payment methods in those regions — this particular form of piracy will remain not just unsolvable, but inevitable.
The content is being watched.
The money is simply not reaching the people who create it.
And in 2026, that gap is wider than ever.
