Online pirates thrive on legitimate ad dollars

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Movie and music piracy thrives online in part because crafty website operators receive advertising dollars from major companies like Comcast, Ford and McDonald's.

That's the conclusion of several recent reports that shed light on Internet piracy's funding sources.

Content thieves attract visitors with the promise of free downloads and streams of the latest hit movies, TV shows and songs. Then they profit by pulling in advertising from around the Internet, often concealing their illicit activities so advertising brands remain unaware.

Pirate websites run ads that are sometimes covered up by other graphics. They automatically launch legitimate-looking websites as pop-up windows that advertisers don't realize are associated with piracy. At the end of the day, the pirate website operators still receive a check for serving up a number of views and clicks.

The illicit activity is estimated to generate millions of dollars annually. That's only a small portion of the roughly $40 billion of online ad spending every year. Yet it is helping to feed the creation of millions of copyright-infringing websites that provide stolen content to a growing global audience.

"[Companies] placed their ads on the assumption that they were going to be on high-quality sites and they're not," said Mark Berns, vice president of MediaLink LLC, a consulting firm that produced a study looking into the practice called "Good Money Gone Bad."