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Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm. Technologies from other media conglomerates, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also enabling what the report’s authors deem an “industrial scale of theft."

The report, "Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem," focuses on the European market but highlights the global growth of piracy of streaming services as they increasingly acquire rights to live programs, like sporting events.

The research by Enders Analysis accuses Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft of "ambivalence and inertia" over a problem it says costs broadcasters revenue and puts users at an increased risk of cyber-crime.

Gareth Sutcliffe and Ollie Meir, who authored the research, described the Amazon Fire Stick - which they argue is the device many people use to access illegal streams - as "a piracy enabler".

Enders say there are often multiple streams of individual events - such as high profile football games - each of which can have tens of thousands of people watching them.

“What perhaps the AI ‘black box’ can guarantee is a certain level of performance from advertisers who otherwise aren’t savvy about more manual campaign management,” said Jamie MacEwan, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “And Amazon has to offer this solution competitively with Google and Meta’s equivalents to ensure it’s offering the full suite of expected services, as more advertisers get used to buying this way.”

Jamie MacEwan, senior analyst at Enders Analysis, estimated that "almost half of Apple's revenue is exposed to China."

Enders Analysis, a media industry research firm, said last week that Mr Cardinale’s status as a newcomer to news publishing meant the regulatory process could be smooth and complete by September. The potential involvement of Lord Rothermere, the owner of The Daily Mail, as a minority shareholder alongside RedBird could complicate matters.