On a university campus in Jakarta, a group of students gather in a small classroom after hours. The windows are covered. The lights are dim. A projector hums to life.
The film they are about to watch—The Act of Killing—is not officially available to them.
For years, this documentary examining Indonesia’s mass killings of 1965–66 circulated not through cinemas or television, but through encrypted files, private screenings, and pirated copies. Its subject matter—raw, accusatory, and politically sensitive—made wide domestic distribution nearly impossible.
And yet, it spread like wildfire.
They watched it because someone shared a file. Because someone translated subtitles. Because someone decided the story mattered more than the rules surrounding it.
In rooms like this, piracy did not feel like theft. It felt like access.
For much of the past decade, the expansion of streaming platforms promised to make piracy obsolete. With services like Netflix and Disney offering vast libraries at relatively low monthly costs, the argument went, audiences would no longer need to seek out illegal alternatives.
But that promise has proven uneven.
Streaming catalogs are not global; they are fragmented by licensing agreements that determine what is available—and where. A film accessible in Los Angeles may be invisible in Lagos. A documentary celebrated at international festivals may never appear on any platform in the country it concerns.
Even when films are technically available, they are not always accessible. Subscription fees, while modest in wealthier countries, can represent a significant barrier elsewhere. Educational institutions often face even steeper costs: screening rights for a single documentary can run into hundreds of dollars, placing them out of reach for many classrooms.
The result is not a world of universal access, but one of persistent gaps.
And into those gaps, piracy flows.
In 2015, a documentary about air pollution in China briefly captured the nation’s attention. Under the Dome, produced by journalist Chai Jing, was released online and quickly went viral, amassing hundreds of millions of views in a matter of days.
Then it disappeared.
Chinese authorities censored the film, removing it from major platforms. But by then, it had already been downloaded, copied, and redistributed across the internet. Unofficial versions spread through file-sharing networks, ensuring that even as the state erased the original, the film itself endured.
Piracy, in this case, acted less like a black market and more like a preservation system—one that resisted not economic barriers, but political ones.
A similar dynamic unfolded in India with India's Daughter, a film examining the 2012 Delhi gang rape. After the Indian government banned the documentary, citing concerns over public order, it circulated widely online through unauthorized uploads and downloads. Millions watched it anyway.
In both cases, piracy did something the formal distribution system would not: it kept controversial, uncomfortable stories in public circulation.
Not all examples are tied to censorship. Some emerge from more ordinary, but no less consequential, constraints.
When Citizenfour—Laura Poitras’s Oscar-winning film about Edward Snowden—was released, it quickly became essential viewing for those trying to understand the scope of global surveillance. Yet access was uneven. In some regions, the film’s release was delayed or limited; in others, it was absent entirely.
Activists, educators, and students filled the gap.
Pirated copies of Citizenfour circulated widely, appearing in classrooms, community centers, and informal gatherings. The film became part of teach-ins and public discussions, often screened without licensing, but with clear intent: to inform.
This is one of piracy’s quieter roles—not as entertainment, but as infrastructure for civic education.
In other cases, piracy serves as a kind of accidental archive.
Consider the films distributed by The Criterion Collection, a company known for restoring and releasing classic and international cinema. While celebrated, these releases are often expensive and region-locked, limiting their accessibility.
Online, however, many of these films circulate freely.
Cinephile communities—some highly organized—rip, subtitle, and distribute rare works, making them available to audiences who would otherwise have no access. For film students in countries without robust libraries or film programs, these networks function as an informal curriculum.
A similar pattern exists in academia, where platforms like Sci-Hub provide free access to millions of paywalled research papers. Widely used by students and researchers around the world, Sci-Hub has been described by supporters as a necessary workaround to a system that restricts knowledge behind expensive barriers.
The comparison is not exact, but the logic is similar: when access is limited, parallel systems emerge.
For filmmakers, especially those working independently, piracy presents a genuine dilemma.
Documentaries are often produced with limited budgets and rely on a patchwork of funding sources—grants, festival sales, educational licensing—to recoup costs. Unauthorized distribution can undermine these fragile revenue streams, making it harder to sustain future work.
And yet, some filmmakers have taken a more ambivalent view.
The creators of The Act of Killing not only tolerated but, in some cases, quietly encouraged underground screenings in Indonesia, recognizing that official distribution would not reach the audiences most affected by the film’s subject.
In Iran, directors like Jafar Panahi have seen their films banned domestically, only to circulate through informal networks—USB drives, satellite broadcasts, and online sharing. In such contexts, piracy is not merely a threat to income; it is often the only viable path to an audience.
The question, then, is not simply whether piracy harms filmmakers. It is whether the absence of piracy would leave some films unseen altogether.
At its core, the persistence of piracy points to a deeper issue: the global distribution system for film is not designed for universal access.
It is shaped by territorial licensing agreements, platform strategies, disparities between regions and selective censorship.
These forces determine not just what is profitable, but what is visible.
In this landscape, piracy functions as a kind of pressure valve—a way for audiences to access what the system withholds. It is not a solution, but it is a response.
It can exploit creators. It can also amplify them.
It can undermine industries. It can also bypass censorship.
It can be driven by convenience. It can also be driven by necessity.
For a student who cannot afford a subscription, a banned film, or a region-locked documentary, the act of piracy may feel less like a choice than an inevitability.
If piracy is, in part, a symptom, the question becomes: what would address the underlying condition?
Some filmmakers and organizations have begun to experiment with alternatives—free online releases, pay-what-you-can models, and partnerships with educational platforms. Publicly funded media initiatives and open-access archives offer other possibilities.
But these efforts remain limited in scope, and the broader system continues to prioritize profitability over accessibility.
Until that changes, piracy is likely to persist—not as a fringe activity, but as a parallel infrastructure.
Back in Jakarta, the screening ends. The students begin to talk—about history, about responsibility, about the stories they have inherited and the ones they have been denied.
The copy of The Act of Killing they watched was unauthorized. It was, by any legal definition, illicit.
But without it, the room would have been empty.
This is the paradox at the heart of piracy in 2026: a system widely condemned, yet quietly relied upon; illegal, yet often rooted in a desire for knowledge, connection, and understanding.
It is easy to dismiss piracy as theft. Harder to confront the conditions that make it necessary.
As long as access to culture remains uneven—as long as some stories are locked behind borders, paywalls, or political barriers—the underground library of cinema will remain open.
Not because it should exist.
But because, for many, it must.