Is piracy dying?

FML1990

FML1990

FML1990

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Sorry if threads about piracy aren't allowed. Not too sure.
Feel free to delete it if they aren't.


Anyway, I remember back in around 2006(ish) I discovered torrents after years of downloading virus's and malware everyweek on torrent programs.
And then, most torrents would have absolutely tons of people seeding, and it remained this way for a few years. Today is seems like everything is going down the toilet.
Private trackers used to be amazing. There was a ton of websites for it. No government blocking.
Now it seems like the private trackers are terrible. There are only two decent websites to get the torrents off (one of these is full of malicious adverts)

Currently on *** the most seeded torrent in the audio section has 1531

The video section is abit different with the most having 28000 but it drops off pretty fast to 8000 just 20 torrents behind that.

What the hell is the deal and why is it dying off?
 
Partly due to a certain truth that some of the big media companies/rights agencies don't seem to want to accept - that a good percentage of people who pirate are not freeloaders and would pay if the services caught up with the times.

The latest season of the walking dead for instance you can legally purchase and download online from a variety of mainstream sites like amazon and iTunes hours after the episodes air instead of having to wait like 6+ months - I bet that has reduced the number of people "illegally" downloading episodes a fair bit.

Legal services have been slowly catching up i.e. spotify and some of the newer services where you can buy DRM free high quality tracks etc. will have taken a big chunk out of the number of people downloading music from less legal sources.
 
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Done a slight edit - feel free for discussion, but please make no hints, or names of software or sites used.
 
No, piracy isn't dying. No, you shouldn't really be surprised that private trackers are few and far between. No, you shouldn't really be talking about it on here :)
 
Of course it isn't dying, torrents aren't the only thing out there for you to obtain pirated material, this is for the most who do not know where else to get it from. **** is huge, then you got private release groups who actually crack and spread the material via FXP groups, private FTP servers hosted around the world either by botnets or the like, that are not accessible by the average joe, need I go on?

Piracy will never die.
 
Moses said:
You can subscribe to Netflix + Amazon Prime + Spotify for £not much/month and get it all through phones/tablets/TVs/speakers easily. How much cheaper do people want it? A lot of stuff is aired earlier in the US but it's often just by a week or two... and some stuff is on more expensive platforms like sky movies, but you can always have the services I ,emotions then top up with purchases now and then.
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Not all piracy is about getting things free. It's about not getting ripped off. Or sometimes just getting things in a convenient format. Or even getting things that are hard to find.

Take one of my childhood favorite TV shows. Malcolm in the middle.
22 Disk box set. £80 for something that I would watch once.

If this was available on a format such as netflix or something similar I would go there but sadly it's not.
 
Don't forget that trackers are pretty obsolete too - we're now on magnet links and peer finding etc, you can run a torrent without any kind of trackers now. So the seed numbers are way lower than the true figure, it can take literally hours for the computer to find some seeders.
 
Smokey Deza said:
Games are getting harder and harder to crack. They get cracked, but it's never day release anymore.

Denuvo put a huge spanner in the works.
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Yes but if it can be made, it can be unmade/reverse engineered.

It will get harder, but there will always be people who will find ways around it.

Denuvo isn't uncrackable either just as the release group 3DM proved when Dragon Origins was cracked, even Denuvo stated themselves every protected game gets cracked eventually.
 
Moses said:
53p an episode if you get the set from Amazon. Then you can just sell on the set anyway so in reality the cost will be lower than that. How cheap should it be?!
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I know that sounds cheap but its old as hell surely it should devalue with age. 480p 4:3, terrible quality yet the breaking bad box set is only £36 (Throw an extra £8 on top if you want the bluray).
 
FML1990 said:
Take one of my childhood favorite TV shows. Malcolm in the middle.
22 Disk box set. £80 for something that I would watch once.

If this was available on a format such as netflix or something similar I would go there but sadly it's not.
Click to expand...

It's on Netflix, 7 seasons. Month free viewing too if you're not currently a subscriber, you could possibly watch it all for nothing. :)
 
SonniLombardi said:
Of course it isn't dying, torrents aren't the only thing out there for you to obtain pirated material, this is for the most who do not know where else to get it from. Usenet is huge, then you got private release groups who actually crack and spread the material via FXP groups, private FTP servers hosted around the world either by botnets or the like, that are not accessible by the average joe, need I go on?

Piracy will never die.
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Usenet isn't for the average Joe indeed but a quick google will point people in the right direction pretty quick(as long as they are actively seeking for torrent alternatives). I think most people assume piracy equals getting it for free, hence if they find out about **** they might not see past the minimal fee.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a fee for **** right?

Piracy isn't going anywhere, if anything its getting bigger underneath the easily found torrent websites.
 
SciNeT said:
It's on Netflix, 7 seasons. Month free viewing too if you're not currently a subscriber, you could possibly watch it all for nothing. :)
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Might be worth signing back up to netflix. I had it around 2 years ago. The choice was pretty terrible. Seemed terrible about 6 months back as well when I went on my girlfriends.

PS: I was using that just as an example of something that I thought would be hard to find, then realised they had it on amazon for a ridiculous price. Never would I of thought something like that would be on netflix
 
C35799Gamble said:
Usenet isn't for the average Joe indeed but a quick google will point people in the right direction pretty quick(as long as they are actively seeking for torrent alternatives). I think most people assume piracy equals getting it for free, hence if they find out about usenet they might not see past the minimal fee.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a fee for usenet right?

Piracy isn't going anywhere, if anything its getting bigger underneath the easily found torrent websites.
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Depends what **** provider you use, there are some providers out there who retain free 7 day trials etc, and most are very cheap anyway. Plus you got the problems of server retention and files getting removed because of age and bad retention/incomplete missing. That's why you get par files to repair and fix missing blocks etc. The good thing about usenet is that you always max out your connection speed and don't have to upload.

Plus it isn't as simple as just signing up to a provider and getting pirated material, there is more to it than that but obviously I won't go into details about that here.
 
Moses said:
You can subscribe to Netflix + Amazon Prime + Spotify for £not much/month and get it all through phones/tablets/TVs/speakers easily. How much cheaper do people want it?
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£23 a month.

Needs to be cheaper than that, I'm afraid. I don't watch or listen to much, but I also am not paying £5 per movie rental.

For a brief while I thought NowTV might be the answer, but Sky Movies' selection is truly abysmal. No Sky, I will not pay for the privilege of watching Aliens or Mad Max on demand. **** off, those films are ancient - we've all seen them 100 times!

The service I want is £3 film rental in HD (why is SD even an option these days?).

Otherwise I'm happy to wait for films to hit the small screen, which they all inevitably do.

But it seems that all rental companies have conspired to set a standard price. £5 for a HD rental and £4 for an SD rental. Blow me, you ain't getting a penny of my hard earned.

When my NowTV sub expires (I've not watched anything this month, it's been truly pathetic), I'll go back to not watching movies at all, and I won't feel any great loss. Maybe I'll torrent something if I feel like it.

Btw, NowTV is ****e.
 
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