Pith Number

pith:TCQDNSGP

pith:2026:TCQDNSGPKORJO6S5VYHA3C4M47

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Binge, Bot, Repeat: Unpacking the Ecosystem of Video Piracy on Telegram

Jaishnoor Kaur, Josef Horacek, Nowshin Tabassum, Sadikshya Gyawali, Sayak Saha Roy, Shirin Nilizadeh, Taylor Graham

Telegram video piracy channels distributed 19,033 copyrighted titles with 4.85 billion views, causing at least $17.49 billion in losses.

arxiv:2605.08418 v2 · 2026-05-08 · cs.CR · cs.CY

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{TCQDNSGPKORJO6S5VYHA3C4M47}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

The channels collectively distributed 19,033 unique copyrighted titles originating from 175 countries, accumulating over 4.85B unique views and resulting in a lower-bound estimated financial loss of $17.49B for content rights holders. The ecosystem is deliberately engineered to be resilient against takedown efforts, frequently redirecting users through chains of intermediary channels and automated bots.

C2weakest assumption

That the fine-grained taxonomy accurately captures post intent and activity at scale, and that view counts and title uniqueness can be reliably measured without significant overcounting or undercounting from Telegram's platform data.

C3one line summary

First large-scale mixed-methods analysis of Telegram video piracy reveals a resilient bot-and-channel ecosystem distributing thousands of titles with billions in estimated losses and introduces an open-source detection framework that aided real-world takedowns.

Formal links

2 machine-checked theorem links

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-21T01:04:27.133986Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

98a036c8cf53a2977a5dae0e0d8b8ce7e0773116ed9cf9754904540602e48d57

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.08418 · arxiv_version: 2605.08418v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.08418 · pith_short_12: TCQDNSGPKORJ · pith_short_16: TCQDNSGPKORJO6S5 · pith_short_8: TCQDNSGP

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/TCQDNSGPKORJO6S5VYHA3C4M47 \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 98a036c8cf53a2977a5dae0e0d8b8ce7e0773116ed9cf9754904540602e48d57

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "b281202c6bfef29f29c6a127cbc8818667cf5dcf06598dc9a8fba0f10abddbba",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "cs.CY"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.CR",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-08T19:24:39Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "db955f2e55db149e266974d23d3eadbeb10f5c4786cb4987fea3c46915ee2348"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.08418",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}