In November 2015, Federal Police in Brazil launched Operation Blackbeard, a coordinated action to take down Latin America’s most popular pirate site: MegaFilmesHD.net.
Launched in 2010 and mainly catering to the Portuguese-speaking market, the movie portal had been pulling in a reported 60 million monthly visits.
At the time, the site offered a type of convenience that most legal services couldn’t match. In addition to the free and unrestricted access to content, this also included localized features such as Portuguese subtitles or dubbing.
This reign ended when police made several arrests, including the site’s presumed operators, and seized several cars, cash, and bank accounts. These actions were welcomed by Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association (MPA), which had reported the site to the U.S. Trade Representative a month earlier.
Today, more than a decade has passed since MegafilmesHD’s demise, and online piracy is arguably a much bigger problem. Popular piracy brands such as Cuevana, Redecanais, and FlujoTV are a magnet for many millions of people
This doesn’t mean that the original shutdown has no effect whatsoever. At the time, large local pirate sites were a novelty in the region, and, being the largest site by far, MegafilmesHD clearly stood out above the rest. When this went offline, many people had to scramble for alternatives, legal or illegal.
Going Pirate or Going Legal?
Ideally, rightsholders would like to see pirates flocking to legal services when these types of shutdowns occur. That is similar to the desired response to piracy site blocking. And indeed, in some instances, this appears to be true.
For example, the “Gone in 60 Seconds” study found that the shutdown of Megaupload in 2012 resulted in a 6 to 10% increase in digital movie revenues for two major Hollywood studios.
However, a similar study on the demise of the German streaming portal Kino.to revealed something quite different. The “Catch Me If You Can” paper found that this shutdown had no measurable increase in legal consumption. Instead, people simply switched to new pirate sites and continued their habit.
These seemingly conflicting findings come together in a new study on the MegafilmesHD shutdown. While the associated paper doesn’t have a title inspired by a Hollywood blockbuster, it might as well have been titled “The Equalizer“.
“The Equalizer”: MegafilmesHD Shutdown Effect
The paper in question, published by researchers of Chapman University and Carnegie Mellon University, takes a detailed look at how the online activities of Brazilian users were affected by MegafilmesHD. To do so, they examined six months worth of clickstream data of thousands of Internet users, provided by Netquest.
The data included browsing patterns before and after the shutdown, and it included a wide variety of respondents, ranging from hardcore pirates to people who never visited MegafilmesHD at all.
After analyzing all data, the researchers found that pirates who previously used MegafilmesHD increased their visits to other pirate sites by 20% on average. Even more striking was the increase in engagement, as time spent on these alternative pirate sites surged by 61%.
This effectively confirms that high-profile shutdowns divert traffic to other pirate sites and services. This makes sense, as a single shutdown can’t realistically make all piracy go away.
However, the findings don’t end there. Additionally, the researchers also find a boost in legal use. Specifically, the data showed a 6% increase in visits to Netflix and an 11% increase in time spent on the platform among MegafilmesHD users.
Crucially, this uptick wasn’t simply caused by existing Netflix subscribers watching more content. The researchers found a causal link between high MegafilmesHD usage and the probability of someone becoming a new Netflix subscriber in the months following the raid.
The Wealth and Gender Gap
While these findings may all seem logical, the most compelling part of the research covers which people switched to legal options and who remained pirates. It appears that “The Equalizer” effect was not felt equally across all demographics.
Since costs play an important role, it makes sense that there’s a wealth factor involved. And indeed, the research found that students and unemployed individuals were less likely to sign up for Netflix, likely because price remains a primary barrier to entry.
Interestingly, gender also plays a key role. The researchers found that women were more likely to stop piracy altogether following the shutdown. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to persist, often “doubling down” by searching for new illegal sources.
It is these types of nuances that reveal the complexity of online piracy and the effectiveness of enforcement actions.
Ultimately, the researchers conclude that while a single-site shutdown can generate measurable legal gains, those gains are in part limited to users who can afford the alternative.
For rightsholders and policymakers, the “take-home” message is that enforcement is only half the battle. Without appealing and affordable legal alternatives, even the most successful police operation may be nothing more than another round of whack-a-mole, driving traffic from one pirate site to the next one.
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Danaher, B, Hersh, J, and Smith, MD. 2025. “From Bootleg to Binge: User Migration and Legal Demand Following Brazil’s MegafilmesHD Shutdown”. Review of Economics Research on Copyright Issues, Vol 22, pp 1-32.
Note: This research was conducted as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics (IDEA), which receives unrestricted funding from the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The authors note that all findings and any errors remain entirely their own.
