A coordinated anti-piracy operation across five Latin American countries has blocked 317 websites linked to illegal music services, stream ripping and, in dozens of cases, malware distribution.
Operation LUMEN was carried out September 22nd and 23rd, with authorities in Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic working together on the cross-border action. Peru’s intellectual-property authority INDECOPI devised and led the operation with support from IFPI, the organization representing the recording industry internationally.
The targeted domains averaged approximately 15 million visits per month over the past year and reached more than 5.4 million unique visitors during that period, MBW details, citing IFPI.
Internet service providers in the participating countries have been instructed to block access to the identified domains. Rather than pursuing hundreds of individual listeners, Operation LUMEN targets the online infrastructure that makes unauthorized music available to large audiences.
Another part of the crackdown reaches beyond copyright. Forty-four of the 317 targeted sites were associated with malware distribution or other malicious activity, according to IFPI, with more than 4.7 million users affected.
Five Countries Are Acting at Once
The cross-border structure separates Operation LUMEN from a routine national blocking order.
INDECOPI coordinated the initiative from Peru, while participating agencies included Paraguay’s National Directorate of Intellectual Property, Brazil’s CyberGaeco and national film agency ANCINE, the Dominican Republic’s National Copyright Office and Ecuador’s National Intellectual Rights Service.
The 317 blocked domains were distributed unevenly across the five participating markets. Andina’s reporting gives the following breakdown:
| Country | Sites Blocked |
|---|---|
| Brazil | 143 |
| Peru | 132 |
| Paraguay | 18 |
| Dominican Republic | 13 |
| Ecuador | 11 |
Brazil and Peru therefore account for most of the domains involved, but the coordinated action matters because piracy services rarely fit neatly inside one national jurisdiction.
A website can be operated from one country, registered through infrastructure elsewhere and visited by listeners across an entire region. Rights holders increasingly treat online piracy as an enforcement problem requiring cooperation between governments, internet providers and international music organizations rather than a sequence of isolated national cases.
Stream Ripping Changed What Music Piracy Looks Like
The modern piracy problem looks different from the one that confronted the record business when Napster emerged in 1999.
File-sharing networks once offered digital access that the legitimate music market often could not match. Subscription streaming eventually removed much of that advantage by putting enormous licensed catalogs behind an app and, in many cases, a relatively inexpensive monthly subscription.
Unauthorized services adapted.
Stream ripping remains one of the clearest examples. A user can take a link from a streaming or video service and enter it into an external website or tool that converts the streamed content into a permanent downloadable file.
IFPI identifies stream ripping and illegal digital downloads among the continuing forms of online music infringement in today’s streaming-led market. The process effectively uses legitimate streaming availability as source material for an unauthorized download.
That makes the Spotify era less of an ending for piracy than a change in its mechanics. The recording may already be available legally, but piracy services can still offer ways to keep files permanently, bypass subscriptions or redistribute music outside licensed platforms.
Malware Adds Another Risk to the Crackdown
Not every site targeted under Operation LUMEN is simply accused of providing unauthorized music.
IFPI says 44 of the 317 domains were linked to malware distribution or other malicious activity affecting more than 4.7 million users. That gives the operation a consumer-security dimension alongside its copyright purpose.
Illegal download and stream-ripping sites can monetize traffic through advertising, redirects or software downloads rather than through the music itself. Someone looking for a free audio file can therefore encounter risks unrelated to copyright infringement.
Brazil has already used that connection between piracy and cybersecurity as an enforcement target. In 2024, Operation Redirect deactivated eight illegal music sites that authorities said were sharing unauthorized recordings while exposing visitors to malware and viruses.
Those eight sites had collectively received more than 12 million visits in Brazil during the preceding year. Targets included linking sites, stream-ripping services and torrent search engines.
Operation LUMEN applies a similar combination of copyright and consumer-security concerns across borders and on a much larger group of domains.
Blocking a Site Is Different From Closing It
The mechanics of Operation LUMEN matter because blocking a website and shutting it down are not the same thing.
When an internet service provider blocks a domain, users connecting through that provider are prevented from reaching the identified address. The underlying service may continue operating elsewhere unless separate enforcement removes its hosting, domain or other infrastructure.
That distinction explains both the appeal and the limitation of site blocking.
Authorities do not necessarily have to locate and successfully prosecute every operator before disrupting access inside their own markets. A blocking order can instead place the obligation on local internet providers to prevent customers from reaching specified domains.
Operators can respond with new domains, mirrors or other infrastructure, which is one reason anti-piracy campaigns frequently involve additional rounds of enforcement.
IFPI has pursued both approaches internationally. In October 2025, the organization secured the closure of Y2mate.com and 11 other stream-ripping services through enforcement action in Vietnam. The sites had attracted more than 620 million global visits during the preceding year, and most of their domains ultimately passed into IFPI’s possession, IFPI says.
Operation LUMEN uses a different mechanism. Its immediate objective is to disrupt access to hundreds of domains across participating Latin American markets through ISP blocking.
Blocking Can Push Listeners Toward Legal Services
The central question is whether preventing access to piracy domains actually reduces infringement or simply sends users looking for alternatives.
IFPI has published research arguing that consistent site blocking can move at least some traffic toward licensed music.
Research cited by the organization found a 15% to 50% increase in visits to licensed music services including Spotify and Amazon Music after piracy sites were blocked. Visits to pages for new paid accounts and subscription upgrades increased between 3% and 8%, figures also cited in Peruvian coverage of Operation LUMEN.
Those figures originate with an industry organization directly involved in anti-piracy enforcement, so they should be read as IFPI’s research rather than an independent measurement of Operation LUMEN itself.
The Latin American action has only just taken place. There is not yet evidence showing how much traffic the 317 domains will lose, whether visitors will migrate to other piracy services or how much additional activity licensed platforms might receive.
Operation LUMEN now provides a much larger real-world test of that blocking strategy across several markets at once.
Latin America Makes the Timing Significant
The enforcement push arrives while Latin America is becoming increasingly valuable to the legitimate recorded-music business.
IFPI’s 2026 data shows recorded-music revenue in Latin America increased 17.1% in 2025, making it the world’s fastest-growing region for a 16th consecutive year.
Streaming accounted for 88.1% of Latin American recorded-music revenue, making the region’s piracy fight increasingly tied to the health of its legal streaming economy.
Brazil’s recorded-music revenue increased 14.1% and the country ranked as the world’s eighth-largest recorded-music market. Mexico grew 13.3% and entered the global top 10 at No. 10.
Those figures make Latin America very different from a peripheral digital market waiting for legal streaming to arrive. Licensed services are already deeply established, and recorded-music revenues are expanding rapidly.
IFPI’s directory of licensed music services lists subscription and ad-supported options across the region, including platforms operating in Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic.
For record companies and artists, unauthorized services compete for attention with platforms that return licensing revenue to rights holders. Governments can face an additional problem when piracy sites are also linked with malicious software or other security threats.
That combination helps explain why Operation LUMEN involves both national enforcement authorities and international music-industry support.
Piracy Survived the Shift to Streaming
The most revealing thing about Operation LUMEN may be that an operation of this size is necessary at all.
Legal streaming solved one of the fundamental problems that helped early digital piracy explode. Listeners no longer have to buy an entire album or search for a physical copy simply to hear one song immediately.
Access, however, was never the only reason people used unauthorized services.
IFPI’s consumer research found that avoiding subscription costs remains one motivation. Among respondents who used stream-ripping services, 55% said not wanting to pay for a music-streaming subscription was one reason they obtained music that way. The same research found stream ripping remained a widely used form of online music infringement, particularly among younger listeners.
The industry’s enforcement strategy has changed accordingly. Record companies once became infamous for lawsuits against individual file sharers. Modern anti-piracy campaigns increasingly target services, operators, domains, hosting infrastructure and internet access itself.
Operation LUMEN is a particularly large example of that shift.
Three hundred and seventeen domains have now been blocked across five countries, including dozens linked to malicious activity. Whether the action produces a lasting decline in piracy will require traffic and usage data after the blocks have had time to operate.
For now, the scale of the crackdown makes one thing clear: streaming transformed music piracy, but it did not make the problem disappear.