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Online Piracy Is More Popular Than Ever, Research Suggests (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the never-ending-quest dept.

An anonymous user writes: A broad and detailed report from piracy tracking outfit MUSO shows that visits to pirate sites went up last year. The company recorded more than 300 billion visits in 2017, which suggests that "piracy is more popular than ever." TV remained the most popular category and most pirates prefer streaming over torrents or direct downloading.

2 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Well, duh by Voyager529 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The reason the streaming options are popular is because it's entirely possible for nontechnical people to call up their technical friend (and by "technical" I mean "can follow a Youtube tutorial"), hand them a Fire Stick, and add streaming plugins. These people aren't doing anything terribly different than what they do with Netflix or Hulu, just a different icon.

    Moreover, the experience involves "having all the things in one place". No going to Netflix for this show (except that one episode where there's a license discrepancy over a song's usage so it's unavailable), then Hulu for that one, Crackle for the next, then CBS All Access for yet another one, HBO Go for still another...it doesn't matter what show someone wants to see, all the episodes are available, on demand.

    Netflix mostly-had this situation under control, then everyone wanted their pound of flesh, which turned Netflix into half original content, and half "the refrigerator the night before grocery shopping". Even if the content producers wanted to charge a premium for their section of content, but still allow Netflix to handle the streaming, I think that model would make everyone happy..but alas, it does not.

    Finally, I've always kinda wondered what's in it for the sites who serve the streaming files. At least torrent sites can say "community" and "advertising/donation revenue", but the sites that serve the streams can claim none of the above, have to pay the bandwidth and server bills, and have a bullseye painted on them from the *AA...so, all of the liability, none of the perks. I don't get it :/.

    P.S. in case anyone was wondering, I don't own one of these devices, nor have I ever modded such a device for anyone.

    1. Re:Well, duh by AlanBDee · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Moreover, the experience involves "having all the things in one place". No going to Netflix for this show (except that one episode where there's a license discrepancy over a song's usage so it's unavailable), then Hulu for that one, Crackle for the next, then CBS All Access for yet another one, HBO Go for still another...it doesn't matter what show someone wants to see, all the episodes are available, on demand.

      I've found this website very useful as a single place to go to see what the different services have: https://www.justwatch.com/us

      Finally, I've always kinda wondered what's in it for the sites who serve the streaming files. At least torrent sites can say "community" and "advertising/donation revenue", but the sites that serve the streams can claim none of the above, have to pay the bandwidth and server bills, and have a bullseye painted on them from the *AA...so, all of the liability, none of the perks. I don't get it :/.

      Where's the money to pay for all the infrastructure required to stream? My guess is that it comes from ad revenue that's provided from state sponsored ads that contain zero-day exploits that most reputable ad services wouldn't show. It makes sense to me that these state sponsors or criminal organizations would be willing to pay higher premiums to serve these ads.