Operation LUMEN Targets 317 Sites in Latin America

Authorities in Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador are participating in Operation LUMEN, which is taking place on September 23 and was designed and managed by Peru’s intellectual property agency INDECOPI. Internet service providers in the participating countries will block access to designated domains.

The targeted sites received an average of 15 million visits per month last year and reached more than 5.4 million unique visitors during the same period. Of the 317 sites targeted, 44 were linked to malware distribution or other malicious activities and affected more than 4.7 million users.

Stream ripping works by pasting a link from a licensed service such as YouTube or Spotify into an external tool and downloading a permanent audio file from the stream. An IFPI study conducted last year examined consumer behavior after infringing sites were blocked.

IFPI reported that consistent site blocking resulted in increases of 15% to 50% in visits to licensed music services such as Spotify and Amazon Music. The same study recorded increases of 3% to 8% in visits to pages for new paid accounts and subscription upgrades. Latin America was the fastest-growing recorded music region in 2025, with recorded music revenue increasing 17.1%.