I’ve never known so many shutdowns inside 2 weeks as the last two have been. Even websites pirating manga were shut down. What happened? What’s with this massive legal wave of shutdowns, and why now?
Because streaming services are enshittifying and too many people are sailing the seas as a result. Can’t let that happen.
PerogiBoi here probably has it right. I remember during the heyday of Piracy in the early 2000’s strings of sites coming down, Comcast getting busted for illegally using Sandvine to throttle or even outright block bittorrent traffic, Limewire being sued for more money than existed in the entire monetary system of the planet at the time, and corruptly buying out the courts of a foreign country so we could put The Pirate Bay admins in prison.
When people start putting on their piracy hats, they bring out the big legal guns.
EDIT: I will literally never get over Limewire being sued for more money than existed. It proved, without a shadow of a doubt, in my mind, exactly how bullshit the fines for individual copyright violations are. If piracy resulted in more money than exists… you can’t prove to me that that is a lost sale. Because there literally was never enough money to have afforded the purchases to begin with.
Huh, TIL.
Regarding your edit, that amount wasn’t the cumulated cost of whatever Limewire were distributing, that would be idiotic indeed; rather the RIAA tried to call for a ruling that somehow those guys were causing $150,000 in damages - per instance. Now the article unfortunately doesn’t state how they possibly tried to justify that number, and I can’t be bothered to research that myself. Another thing that would interest me is how the plaintiff expected them to pay with almost every dollar on Earth.
So while I don’t think this had anything to do with “lost sales”, I do agree with the possible fines and damage calculations not being fit for any sort of realistic purpose at all.
If i remember correctly the justification was pretty much “trust me, bro”.
[In 2024] More than 80% of global online piracy can be attributed to illegal streaming services.
I think this is the main reason. Pirate streaming services are now directly competing with Netflix, Disney+, and other streaming platforms (aka the media industrial complex, or MIC), and they offer more content for a more affordable price (or for free). Pirate streaming is also very accessible to a mainstream audience, who are already used to the concept. So, the MIC regards them as the biggest threat preventing them from jacking up prices even more, because people will naturally move to a more afforable option, if one exists.
So the main focus of the MIC is on killing off pirate streaming right now. Usenet and torrents have proven to be more robust piracy options but they also have a higher barrier to entry for mainstream audiences, so are always going to be more niche than streaming. But no doubt they are still tring to kill off usenet and torrent piracy - it’s just a lower threat to corporate profits, so wont get as much attention.
Interest rates are up. The free money tap got turned off so now every normal citizen is gonna get the broomstick up the ass to make funny big number go up.
They are trying to send a message but the thing about it… As long as we have fitgirl and other artistès, and bittorrent is a thing, Jack shit they can do about it.
These people are our opressors, don’t fund them.
Sail, teaches other to sail and if product is good, cut the corpo out and pay the people who provide the labour. Most musicians have other options to support them. Hollycreeps can get fucked, disgusting regime whores deserve no money.
Either way, they all colluding to fuck us but nice thing about media is that we can effectively fight back. Maybe we can learn some lessons for the other markets while at it.
Clearly lobbying the government as w2 peasant ain’t a real thing anyway
I see people say to support the creators, but how many people actually do?
There have been numerous studies over 20 years that consistently show that pirates actually spend more money on media than the average person.
There are people in private trackers I have seen who literally advertise how all their rips are Blu-Rays they purchased. With how prolific some of those uploaders are, that’s literally thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of media they have bought.
I started caring about it as an issue when I found out that all the money Sony made from suing people for music piracy never made it to the artists. Artists had to sue Sony for any cut of that money. It is never about helping the artist.
Bandcamp is dying but they still have Bandcamp Fridays where the artists get 100% of the sale.
Bandcamp has so much vinyl that I want from artists that I want to support, but shipping it overseas double or triples the cost (even if you buy 10 different LPs at a time, shipping is seperate for many of them) and I can’t afford it. AFAIK, there is nothing like band camp on this side of the ocean
There are lots of barriers to this. Artists are firewalled to make sure everyone else gets a cut first. I general pirates tend to seek out direct support routes and undercut gatekeepers. Make it easy enough for people to access media directly and cheaply without ads with minimal middlemen and the majority will take this route. These opportunities are rarer and rarer though.
Nebula/curiosity stream maybe? Patreon is interesting for this too, and is helping a lot of podcasters and video creators (more) directly.
The Olympics.
Anti-piracy operations always pick up when big sporting events happen because the networks that pay for broadcast rights don’t want to have to compete with unlicensed streams.
My first pirate foray came in 5 1/4" floppy disk format and all I can say it that the high seas have always had heavy casualties. During the adoption of streaming services, the waters calmed for a bit. Now that those services have enshittified, pirate providers have seen a rise in demand which in turn has heated the battles once more.
Desperation and hunger for control. The streaming model - as well as digital stores - are based on controlling media; companies can dictate what products are sold, when, to who. At any point they can pull them away effortlessly, edit, raise or lower prices. The ongoing war against piracy begins first as a war against physical media and any kind of independence the customer might have when picking their products.
Now, aside from that control, the biggest corporation in the planet have also centralized their offers and distributing systems. The latest wave against anime & manga is most likely caused by the buyout of both Crunchyroll and Funimation by Sony, and the other big names in the game have also been solidifying themselves in major buyouts, except the profits aren’t coming. They need to justify their expenses, maintain their control, and make an example, so the last isles of independence must be attacked.
It may just be coincidental. Chasing hosters and legal battles takes time.
Random instances can group, that’s soll random.
Fucking ACE
We’ve lost some big ones this year alone, hadn’t we? I recall the early half of the year, that we lost some huge names or names that just shut down. Uloz flipped, still around but not what it once was. There was a lot of big names just gone all in this year alone.
But I see all of this as multi-pronged.
Aside from what everyone else has said. I will add that there could be people slipping into pirate ranks as a shill for these corps, gathering all that they can, slipping out to report.
There also could be loud-mouthed pirates, ruining it for everyone because they’re loud-mouths, gotta spread the shit all the way around. That gets the attention of the corps that just hover over and count the days at that point.
The spooks will do shutdowns in waves so they can destroy the files before more copies pop up
Shortest answer: Agenda2030
You won’t even recognize the internet in a few years
Is there actually an Agenda2030 or is it just late stage enshittification?
I thought agenda 2030 was the un’s 2030 sustainability plan, apparently not.
edit: apparently yes, most criticism of the 2030 sustainability plan I saw came from conspiracy theorists (eg: the “ADN” party in portugal), but that’s the only thing that came up when I looked up “agenda 2030”
I couldn’t find what you meant. Can you expand a bit?
Sounds sus.
