Nairobi, Aug. 9 -- Two decades ago, piracy meant buying a bootleg DVD from a vendor or copying music onto a blank CD. Today, the illicit business has largely disappeared from the streets and moved online.

A football match that normally requires a paid subscription can be streamed for free on an anonymous website.

The latest blockbuster movie appears on a Telegram channel hours after its release while software, books and music are downloaded with clicks, often without users giving much thought to how the content got there.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, piracy revolved around CDs and DVDs, as commercial bootleggers - illegal content makers, distributors or sellers - duplicated discs while consumers copied music and movies from one CD-R t...