RapidVideo is a popular file-hosting service that specializes in hosting videos.
Similar to other file-hosting services, it can be used for good and bad. The bad, in this case, is people uploading pirated videos.
Whether the site’s operators want it or not, that’s what many of RapidVideo’s users are indeed doing. Two weeks ago this resulted in yet another scathing report from movie industry group MPA, which branded the site as a “notorious” piracy haven.
Behind the scenes, the website’s operator faces mounting pressure as well. RapidVideo has been targeted by lawyers from the MPA and ACE, two of the most powerful anti-piracy forces, which are demanding far-reaching copyright enforcement measures from the site.
To back up their pressure, two MPA/ACE members, Warner Bros. Entertainment and Netflix, filed a lawsuit in Germany to stop the alleged copyright infringements the site enables. While this case remains ongoing, the site’s operator decided not to await the verdict and has shut the site down effective immediately.
The millions of users who regularly visit the site currently see nothing more than a 404 error.
RapidVideo not accessible
TorrentFreak spoke to “Alex Bytes,” the operator of RapidVideo, who informed us that the shutdown is permanent. The site’s operator already considered throwing the towel after the adoption of the new EU Copyright Directive earlier this year, which may make upload filters semi-mandatory for some sites.
“It was high time to quit, because of the upcoming law changes within the EU, due to Article 13/17, where it is a more challenging situation for service providers,” RapidVideo’s Alex tells us.
By shutting the service down, RapidVideo also hopes to get the lawsuit from Warner Bros. and Netflix off its back. In addition, Alex points out that advertising revenues were dropping significantly, so it was hardly worth continuing anyway.
According to RapidVideo’s operator, ACE and the MPA previously demanded far-reaching measures to prevent piracy. The rightsholders requested a thorough “take down, stay down” policy, that would go further than hash or filename filtering.
Instead, rightsholders wanted the site to implement a system similar to YouTube’s Content-ID where more advanced fingerprinting techniques are used to match file uploads to potentially infringing content.
This wasn’t an option for RapidVideo, likely because it would require substantial investments. The other option, shutting the entire site down, became more and more attractive instead, especially in light of the pending lawsuit.
“By shutting down, the lawyers have no more reason to fight in the court against me,” Alex tells us.
For now, however, the court case remains ongoing. TorrentFreak reached out to the lawyer of Warner Bros. and Netflix for a comment on RapidVideo’s decision and the future of their legal claims, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/wiredmessfeat.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-24 10:14:332019-10-24 10:14:33RapidVideo Shuts Down Following Legal Pressure from Warner Bros and Netflix
In May, new legislation was tabled in the U.S. House and Senate that introduces the creation of a “small claims” process for copyright disputes.
The CASE Act, short for “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement,” proposes to establish a copyright claim tribunal within the United States Copyright Office.
If adopted, the new board will provide an option to resolve copyright disputes outside the federal courts, which significantly reduces the associated costs. As such, it aims to make it easier for smaller creators, such as photographers, to address copyright infringements.
The bill is widely supported by copyright-heavy industry groups as well as many individual creators. However, as is often the case with new copyright legislation, there’s also plenty of opposition from digital rights groups and Internet users who fear that the bill will do more harm than good.
Supporters of the CASE Act point out that the new bill is the ‘missing piece’ in the present copyright enforcement toolbox. They believe that many creators are not taking action against copyright infringers at the moment, because filing federal lawsuits is too expensive. The new small claims tribunal will fix that, they claim.
Opponents, for their part, fear that the new tribunal will trigger an avalanche of claims against ordinary Internet users, with potential damages of up to $30,000 per case. While targeted people have the choice to opt-out, many simply have no clue what to do, they argue.
Thus far legislators have shown massive support for the new plan. Yesterday the bill was up for a vote at the U.S. House of Representatives where it was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. With a 410-6 vote, the passage of the CASE Act went smoothly.
The news was welcomed by proponents of the bill, including the Recording Academy. In recent weeks the group actively rallied support from nearly 2,000 creators, who helped to lobby legislators.
The Copyright Alliance was equally delighted with the favorable vote. CEO Keith Kupferschmid notes that it further attests to the tremendous support the bill has gained so far. At the same time, it shows that legislators were not swayed by the CASE Act’s opponents.
“Today’s vote by the House demonstrates not only the tremendous support for the bill but also the fact that members of Congress could not be bamboozled into believing the numerous falsehoods about the CASE Act,” Kupferschmid comments.
According to the Copyright Alliance CEO, these alleged falsehoods are shared by people who “philosophically oppose any copyright legislation that will help the creative community and who will use any means to achieve their illicit goals.”
These comments illustrate that the tensions between supporters and opponents of the CASE Act are high. In recent months, both sides have accused each other of misrepresenting the bill.
Meredith Rose, Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge, is in the opposing camp. She’s not happy with the vote at all and hopes that the Senate will slam on the brakes to prevent it from progressing in its current form.
“The CASE Act was rammed through on suspension with no hearings, no opportunity for amendment, and no opportunity for meaningful comment from public interest and consumer groups. We urge the Senate not to take up this bill as written, but to instead open the dialogue to all affected parties to craft meaningful, functional solutions,” Rose says.
Public Knowledge and other groups, such as EFF and Re:Create, fear that the bill will lead to more copyright complaints against regular Internet users. Re:Create’s Executive Director Joshua Lamel hopes that the Senate will properly address these concerns.
“The CASE Act will expose ordinary Americans to tens of thousands of dollars in damages for things most of us do everyday. We are extremely disappointed that Congress passed the CASE Act as currently written, and we hope that the Senate will do its due diligence to make much-needed amendments to this bill to protect American consumers and remove any constitutional concerns,” Lamel notes.
The 410-6 House vote shows that, thus far, there is not much interest from lawmakers to change the proposal. However, with several weeks of lobbying ahead from both supporters and opponents of the CASE Act, the battle is not over yet.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/coins-featured.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-24 00:13:332019-10-24 00:13:33U.S. House Passes Copyright “Small Claims” Bill with Overwhelming Majority
While ‘pirate’ sites still exist as regular web-based streaming or torrent portals accessible through a browser, recent years have seen a shift.
Software applications, or apps as they’re more commonly known, are now seen as a more convenient option.
Installable on phones, tablets, and a multitude of set-top devices, they often provide access to huge libraries of instantly-streamable movie and TV shows, presented in a Netflix-style interface.
While Popcorn Time was the first to hit the mainstream, plenty of alternatives now exist. One of those is TeaTV, a popular app for Android, Windows and macOS. According to SimilarWeb stats, its download portal has been pulling in around 1.5 million visits per month a few days ago a considerable irritant presented itself.
News outlet CNBC – which is owned by media giant NBCUniversal – ran a piece claiming that TeaTV was being “bankrolled” by advertising, some of it being placed by Pandora, TikTok, Hulu, Yahoo Mail, and Amazon, among others.
There was no suggestion in the CNBC piece that any of the companies placed ads directly with Teat-TV. Instead, a network of hard-to-control resellers was handed the blame, some of which are no longer doing business with TeaTV due to the CNBC investigation. Other advertising companies approached declined to comment.
TeaTV for Android
Interestingly, the publication also revealed that during a “recent meeting of major industry players in New York” on the topic of ad-supported piracy, TeaTV came up as a discussion point.
Who those players are is open to debate but ad-supported piracy is a hot topic and there can be little doubt that familiar names, including those involved in the ACE anti-piracy coalition (CNBC owner NBCUniversal is an ACE member), would’ve been privy to the conversations.
Perhaps coincidentally but more likely not, in the hours following the publication of the CNBC piece, TeaTV began to purge itself from the web. Its main webpage, previously located at TeaTV.net, no longer exists, meaning that downloads of the app from that portal have come to a halt.
Furthermore, TeaTV’s social media has been blacked out too. Both its Twitter and Facebook pages have been removed or deleted, leading some to speculate that the popular software has been consigned to history following the investigation.
After receiving unconfirmed information that TeaTV won’t ever be coming back, TorrentFreak spoke directly with a source very close to the app. That person declined to comment on the CNBC investigation specifically or whether TeaTV’s disappearance is directly connected to it.
However, we were assured that TeaTV will be returning sometime in the future. No timescale was given for the full resurrection but at least some changes are planned, including a potential rebranding of the app.
“Just a matter of time. We will get back to you when there is an update,” we were told.
With a full return (in some shape or form) penciled in for a future date, it appears that TeaTV as an application is still working for many of its users. Numerous reports online suggest that despite the app’s homepage and social media going dark, the software is still providing access to content.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/warning-1.jpg2911200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-23 14:12:352019-10-23 14:12:35‘Pirate’ App TeaTV Gets Featured on CNBC, Disappears, But Will Be Back
VPN service provider NordVPN was the victim of a server breach early last year, the provider has confirmed.
The news was made public following a series of tweets from hacker / web developer ‘undefined.’ These were picked up by Ars Technica and TechCrunch, among others.
The hack in question targeted a single server at a third-party datacenter. The attacker reportedly compromised the server by exploiting an insecure remote management system, which NordVPN wasn’t aware existed at the time.
By compromising the server the attacker gained access to three TLS keys that would allow this person to operate a fake NordVPN.com site or VPN server, using a man-in-the-middle attack. NordVPN stresses that it doesn’t keep user logs and that it wasn’t possible to use the keys to decrypt regular VPN traffic or previously recorded VPN sessions.
The server in question was compromised early 2018 but NordVPN didn’t disclose it at the time. The company now says that it chose not to do so because it had to make sure that none of its other infrastructure was prone to similar issues.
Following the news reports, NordVPN published its own account of what happened and how this affected its users. The company stresses that the breached keys have since expired (they were initially active) and could never be used to decrypt VPN traffic of users.
While the compromised TLS keys couldn’t decrypt VPN traffic, a server breach is of course always a big event of course. Especially in the VPN industry, where trust in a company is extremely important. That the effect appears to be limited here is a good thing, but that doesn’ change the fact that the server was hacked.
While NordVPN stresses that the hack only had a minimal impact, it recognizes that security is a vital issue, and that it should do better going forward.
“Even though only 1 of more than 3000 servers we had at the time was affected, we are not trying to undermine the severity of the issue. We failed by contracting an unreliable server provider and should have done better to ensure the security of our customers,” NordVPN says.
“We are taking all the necessary means to enhance our security,” the company adds.
NordVPN further informs TorrentFreak that it always treats VPN servers as the least secure part of their infrastructure, since breaches are always possible. This means that VPN endpoints do not contain any “vulnerable information,” nor do they provide access to the rest of the infrastructure or a user database.
If anything, this episode shows that 100% security is nearly impossible. In addition to the NordVPN hack, competing services TorGuard and VikingVPN also suffered breaches, according to reports. TorGuard previously confirmed this a few months ago.
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Disclaimer: NordVPN is one of our sponsors. This article was written independently, as all of our articles are.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1571796696_worldfea.png2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-23 04:11:342019-10-23 04:11:34NordVPN Had Private Keys Stolen after Server Breach
Once upon a time, telecoms companies, Internet service providers, and content creation companies trod their own path.
Increasingly, however, they are becoming more reliant on each other, with the latter using the formers’ distribution capabilities to present and deliver content to the public. As a result, they are forging mutually beneficial business relationships, ones that will hopefully prove profitable for all.
On Monday, Fox Corporation and Charter Communications announced what they describe as a long-term renewal of a distribution agreement. It will see Charter maintaining access to Fox’s “full portfolio” of news, entertainment, and sports networks. Interestingly, Fox will also get a couple of things in return.
Password sharing has appeared in the news on several occasions in the past couple of years, with some content organizations framing the activity as a type of piracy. The new deal will see Charter, which operates under the Spectrum brand, collaborate with Fox to reduce it.
Additionally, Charter has also signed up to cooperate with Fox to mitigate piracy in general. The information released thus far is lacking in detail but the companies have reportedly agreed to implement “business rules” to address unauthorized access to content.
“This agreement allows continued access to all of the FOX programming for our customers and FOX viewers, but it will also amplify our mutual efforts to address piracy and abusive password sharing issues,” says Tom Montemagno, Executive Vice President, Programming Acquisition for Charter.
“We appreciate FOX’s desire to further collaborate as the video landscape continues to evolve.”
In August, Charter announced a similar-sounding deal with another entertainment industry giant.
“Disney and Charter have also agreed to work together on piracy mitigation,” the statement read. “The two companies will work together to implement business rules and techniques to address such issues as unauthorized access and password sharing.”
Just last week, Comcast became the first Internet service provider to join ACE, the global anti-piracy alliance comprising dozens of the world’s largest entertainment and distribution companies. The way things are moving, it probably won’t be the last.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/handshake-feat.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-22 18:10:352019-10-22 18:10:35Fox & Charter/Spectrum Agree to Clamp Down on Piracy
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.
RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/threater-feat.png2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-22 08:09:402019-10-22 08:09:40Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 10/21/19
Earlier this year, cyber-security company Group-IB shared an interesting report with TorrentFreak.
The company told us that “large monopolists” were supplying huge amounts of content to thousands of websites via dedicated ‘pirate’ Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
Group-IB provided specific details on a CDN called ‘Moonwalk’ which reportedly began operating in 2013. According to the company, at the time the system carried 33,490 movies and TV shows, paying out $0.60 per 1000 views.
Group-IB complained that since most of Moonwalk’s servers were outside Russia, the Netherlands in particular, enforcement by local rightsholders was proving difficult. Several months later, it now transpires that Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has stepped up in an effort to deal with the problem.
BREIN chief Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak that on Friday, bailiffs acting on its behalf served ex parte court orders on five hosting providers requiring them to disconnect streaming servers and preserve evidence in relation to Moonwalk.
Three court orders targeted Dutch companies and two “ostensibly foreign companies” whose servers are located in the Netherlands. While the action is being headed up by BREIN, the anti-piracy group is working with both the Motion Picture Association and the global Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.
BREIN describes Moonwalk as a “video load balancer” which provides both the back-end and also huge volumes of pirated content to around 80% of known Russian streaming sites.
“The top 50 of these websites entertain 395 million visits from 89.9 million unique visitors per month causing hundreds of millions of euros/dollars in losses,” BREIN says.
BREIN’s estimates of the amount of content being provided by Moonwalk exceed the figures provided by Group-IB earlier this year. Overall, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit says that the system was recently providing more than 26,000 movies and 10,000 TV shows. That’s around 2,500 additional pieces of video entertainment which suggests growth over recent months.
The ex parte court orders were obtained by BREIN following a joint investigation with ACE, which counts almost three dozen of the world’s leading content and broadcasting companies as members. It’s clear the orders were intended to cause the shutdown of Moonwalk while providing evidence on its operations and presumably, its operators.
“The fight against piracy is global and we are going after operators of these services and their hosting infrastructure as well as other intermediaries supporting these illegal services”, says BREIN chief Tim Kuik.
Jan Van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection at the Motion Picture Association, stressed that cooperating internationally is crucial to dealing with today’s piracy issues.
“Effectively fighting piracy today requires strong partnerships at global and local level,” he says.
“This action coordinated between BREIN, ACE and the MPA is a significant win and another step towards preserving a healthy and vibrant ecosystem in which the creative community can produce, distribute and protect their content so that audiences can enjoy them.”
What happens next in the investigation isn’t clear but a website associated with Moonwalk currently states that due to this action, the service is not only down, but down for good.
At TorrentFreak, we have covered the latest news surrounding piracy, file-sharing, and copyright, for almost fourteen years.
As a news site, we strive to write as any other professional journalists would. We highlight the latest copyright enforcement efforts and press releases, but also the counteractions that pirates take, as balanced reporting prescribes.
While we understand that some of the topics we cover are controversial, as is often the case with news, we never expected it to be risky. Apparently, however, some companies believe otherwise.
A few months ago we moved our newsletter to Mailchimp, which is widely regarded as one of the best services of its kind. And indeed, setting up the account and configuring our daily mailing was a breeze. As such, we were more than happy to pay the monthly fee.
Although we were pleased with Mailchimp, Mailchimp wasn’t too happy with us. Out of the blue, the company decided to stop sending out the daily email campaign a few days ago. As it turned out, our account had been suspended as the result of an “acceptable use” violation.
Apparently, one of our recent articles triggered MailChimp’s abuse prevention system, Omnivore. Since we’re a legitimate news site we asked for clarification, but we were swiftly informed that it wasn’t a false positive.
“Our automated abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, detected account content that violates our Acceptable Use Policy,” a MailChimp employee replied.
“We have nothing personal against you or your business, but in order to protect all of our users and ensure the deliverability of everyone’s campaigns, we have to ask that you seek a new vendor for your email marketing needs.”
This explanation still didn’t say much about the reason for the suspension, so we asked for further clarification and the possibility of a human review. Specifically, we wanted to know what part of the acceptable use policy was violated and why.
Although MailChimp replied, our questions remained unanswered. What we did learn, however, is that our articles are too risky for a company like MailChimp.
“Unfortunately, the risk associated with your account is too great for us to continue to support,” MailChimp replied.
“To give you some background, internet service providers (ISPs) and spam filters strictly monitor the content and keywords used in bulk email, and can block all mail sent through our servers if they detect a problem,” the email added.
Unsatisfied with this answer, we decided to try again and asked whether the topics we write about are a problem, but that request remained unanswered.
While we are baffled by the entire experience and MailChimp’s lack of specificity, we have some sympathy for their actions. They obviously don’t want to kick out a paying subscriber, unless it indeed poses some kind of threat.
What’s really to blame here are the automated filters from ISPs and anti-spam outfits that wrongly tag certain content as problematic. Too many piracy-related keywords, which is what you would find on a piracy-related news site like ours, can apparently get entire servers blocked.
This is the same reason why many automated filters have our site blocked under the ‘piracy’ category, or even hacking and criminal skills.
Unfortunately, this means that we’re now looking for a good newsletter service, ideally, one that works with RSS feeds. If anybody has a suggestion, feel free to drop us a line. Meanwhile, MailChimp subscribers can use our Feedburner newsletter for now, which is still operational.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/chimpanz.png7211413Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-21 12:08:102019-10-21 12:08:10Mailchimp Kicks Out TorrentFreak Because We’re ‘Too Risky’
In 2012, Microsoft first released its operating system Windows 8, Apple came out with the iPhone 5, and Google’s Sergey Brin showed off a Google Glass prototype in the wild.
It was also the year when armed police officers swarmed Kim Dotcom’s mansion in a military-style-raid while his hosting service Megaupload was being taken down.
It was the beginning of the largest copyright infringement case the U.S. Government had ever launched and one that was far from straightforward.
While the earlier mentioned technology continued to progress, the Megaupload case has barely moved. In New Zealand, lawyers have been very busy with the extradition proceedings against Dotcom, but it could be years before that battle ends. This means that the criminal case against Megaupload and several former employees is in limbo.
The same is true for the civil cases the RIAA and MPAA filed back in 2014. Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and last week they requested another extension.
In line with other recent requests, the RIAA and MPAA didn’t object to the request. As a result, the court swiftly agreed to issue yet another extension, putting the cases on hold until the spring of next year. However, it would be no surprise if more delays followed in the future.
Earlier this year Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom predicted that he will lose his extradition battle at the Supreme Court. That’s not going to be the end of the line though. Using all legal options available, it might take more than five years before the extradition saga ends.
Meanwhile, copies of Megaupload’s servers, containing vast amounts of data from millions of users, remain locked up as evidence. Initially, there were some attempts to reunite former users with their personal files, but these appeared to have died off.
Interestingly, the most recent mention of any Megaupload ‘data’ came from Kim Dotcom himself. “Still waiting to get access to your Megaupload files?” he wrote, adding that he will email 30 million former US Megaupload users a video link in 2020 explaining how Joe Biden destroyed the site.
Apparently, Dotcom still has access to email and IP-addresses of Megaupload users, which he might put to use.
In recent weeks, the New Zealand entrepreneur shifted his focus to a service that was once billed as Megaupload 2. This project, now known as K.im, will, in fact, be quite different from its predecessor. While Dotcom is the founder, he no longer has an official position, but acts as its evangelist, helping to raise money through a token sale.
When we last covered the project its expected release date was around 2018, but there have been some delays here as well. The latest roadmap indicates that the platform will launch in the third quarter of 2020. By then, we expect that the RIAA and MPAA lawsuits will still be pending.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/kim2-featured.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-21 02:07:342019-10-21 02:07:34MPAA and RIAA’s Megaupload Lawsuits Remain on Hold, Perhaps For Years
For those old enough to remember, the early days of what would become mainstream Internet piracy were an enlightening time to be around.
With few, if any, legal alternatives available, sharing music and later movies online offered an early and exciting glimpse into the future of media consumption.
The entertainment industries hated all kinds of piracy back then and they still hate it now, that’s not up for debate. But today, almost 20 years after peer-to-peer burst onto the scene, there’s mixed opinion even among pirates as to whether things have changed for the better.
TorrentFreak recently caught up with the former operator of a BitTorrent tracker that launched to the public in 2005. The site itself shut down before 2010, ostensibly after its operators decided family life was more important. Its founder tells us that was only part of the story – money was the real issue.
“When we got into this we started a quiet private club where people could share (and I do mean SHARE) stuff with each other,” he explains.
“The staff and members were squirrels gathering up nuts and whatnot and sharing them on the tracker. All of us could snatch what we wanted and didn’t even feel obliged to return the favor but we all did because we knew each other already and it just worked. Guess giving felt good as getting.”
With a few thousand members at its peak, the site was intentionally never big. Hosted on a free shared server with two other sites thanks to a friendly website designer, the limitations were in place right from the start. Unfortunately, the site’s users became restless. Other trackers were bigger, faster, easier to seed on, but more crucially had a wider range of content.
“Can’t tell you when precisely (a few years later) but we started to tear ourselves apart. Some of the best uploaders found other sites and drifted off which had a big effect on the rest of the site. We managed to find a couple of people who were willing to upload but they wanted new stuff in return and we didn’t have it.
“Someone with access to a pay dump offered to help but they wanted paying as well and I noped right out of paying for warez. Most of our rivals did and it hurt us.”
Even when the site got fresh content, that didn’t really help things either, the former admin says. Users with access to other sites uploaded the content on those immediately and some members didn’t like it and wanted it stopped. That didn’t sit right with the admin because behind the scenes his people were doing exactly the same. What they really needed was money to improve the site to get more people in, who would hopefully bring content with them.
“We stuck out for years not asking for donations but at the end of the day we were in limbo. You build this thing and you’re watching it die. There’s still no question in my mind that we should’ve let it die gracefully in its sleep but hindsight and all that.”
The donations helped for a while but the former admin says that things were never the same. He says that most of the time the amount coming in exceeded the running costs of the site which then made it “morally hard” to keep asking for money. However, he said donations were still requested regularly because when people got out of the habit of giving, they were hard to get back, especially when other sites were offering bang for their buck.
“Pay to leech. That was the beginning of the end for me and I still get emotional about it now. To keep up with [site names redacted] we had to boost [sharing] ratios. It was wrong. We’d gone from a family affair to barely more than a pay site. The older members felt they didn’t know us anymore but the newer ones seemed to want it and cultures clashed and I got the blame.”
So-called ‘pay-to-leech’ is a term most often used to explain how a torrent site can raise revenue by manipulating sharing ratios. If a site has enough seeders and excess upload bandwidth, users can pay to be exempted from strict sharing rules. While rules on various sites differ, in general terms it means that members can download content with relative impunity without giving back, i.e not sharing.
The former admin didn’t want to go into detail about what happened in the wake of the decision to start accepting donations but things didn’t go well. What he did reveal is that it changed the mood on the site. In exchange for their money, people flat-out demanded better service and became more and more vocal when they didn’t get it. They felt they’d paid for a service.
“We had angry posts in the forums with people pasting details of their donations and even private conversations about them with the moderators. I had my wee baby crying downstairs, a pissed-off girlfriend who I never saw and man babies crying on the site over a pittance. I took it and took it and took it and then one day a five minute chat on IRC later with another admin and i’d gone. ‘Here’s the keys to the frontdoor.’ Best thing i’d ever done.”
The striking thing about our discussion with the former admin is that he says that while arguments are commonplace on the Internet these days, they were the exception when his site was first launched. He says there was a sense of belonging to something special and people didn’t want to spoil it because they were not only part of it, they’d helped to create and maintain it too. These days, he complains, things are different because ‘sharing and caring’ have been forgotten.
“Is there a file-sharing family anymore because if there is I don’t know where to find them. People still share alright but it’s pictures of them or their food on Facebook and Instagram. You can’t find people sharing files for fun as we did back in the day because the cat’s out of the bag and it’s an earner and you can’t turn back the clock. Why do you think all the kids dumped torrents for upload sites unless it was about the payback?
“I don’t know if it’s me that’s stuck in the past and this had to happen for piracy to exist as it does now but it’s a shame because all I see now is greed. You tell me, but is sharing out of kindness almost dead?” he asked.
With an entirely different experience, millions of users and uploaders to The Pirate Bay and similar sites would probably beg to differ.
After more than 15 years online, people are still uploading content as they did in the early days, each with their own reason for doing so. The site is still widely accessible and people can take whatever they like for free. The site obviously makes money though, using ads and a crypto-miner, so money remains part of the loop.
More elitist and/or discerning users will always point to professionally organized private trackers as being more community-based, more reliable, much better organized, and with greater emphasis placed on quality control. Old-style sharing can still be found on many but they are certainly not immune to change and the pressures of commerce.
Invites, when they become available, are sometimes handed out for free but in an increasing number of cases, sites charge for the privilege. One can’t make sweeping statements about all of them because there are many and they’re secretive. However, there can be no doubt that a significant number have developed into money-making machines, both for their operators and in some cases their uploaders too.
That raises the question: is there any way to turn back the clock? Is there a way to remove money or other financial incentives out of the equation? With streaming, the most popular form of piracy currently, apparently not.
“You are not realistic,” the operator of a streaming site told TF.
“You write it every day that someone is arrested or blocked or PayPal closed. I can do this for nothing then. Nobody is doing this for nothing. Servers are free so show me where I can buy?”
The owner of a smaller public torrent site (who has operated several other piracy-focused sites in the past) was more talkative.
“My motivation is purely money related. I would not run any piracy related sites if they didn’t earn anything. Just too much risk involved,” he explained.
“Personal issues left me to rely on income from the sites to support my family. I would simply not run the sites if they didn’t make anything. Making money from piracy is so easy so that’s why I think people do it. Rarely you’ll see a site not using any ads. When I was younger things felt a lot different to what they do now. They don’t do it for the love now. But for the money.”
We posed similar questions to a long-standing major site operator – what motivates people to run torrent, hosting and streaming sites these days? He told us that the latter pair make “lots of money” but in respect of torrent sites, he believes there’s no point in running one anymore. The only exception would be for small sites that might still operate for ‘fun’ or on a break-even basis.
“[Some people might run] some small ones [for no profit] – sure – but the user base will be small because the time spent on development will be low,” he said.
For anyone running a bigger site, making nothing or even breaking even isn’t a realistic option, he added. Costs increase every month and if you don’t keep balancing the books, “it won’t work out.”
Ultimately, the operator insisted that going completely back to old-style “sharing is caring” won’t be possible. There’s a new type of demanding consumer out there that is very difficult and increasingly expensive to keep happy.
“That’s never going to happen. The Netflix generation is used to content ready to use, they don’t think about what’s involved in the process of reaching them.”
Tim Kuik of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN says that he hasn’t seen platforms that aren’t in it for the money for a long time.
“Even if there are uploaders or subtitlers who do it for the kudos, the platforms they post on are making money out of it. We see illegal link aggregators that are supported by platforms that make money off downloaders or streamers by selling them higher download speed,” he says.
But for anti-piracy groups like BREIN, motivation probably doesn’t make much difference to the end result. Piracy is piracy and whatever drives it, it still means illegal content ends up online for free.
“Even if it were for a hobby, would that make it alright to cause damage with it?” Kuik asks.
But ultimately, in the final reckoning, do today’s consumers of pirated content even care what goes on behind the scenes financially, as long as they get it free or at least on the cheap?
One can’t put words into the mouths of millions of individuals but given the popularity of online piracy, especially the astronomic growth of premium IPTV, the suggestion is that largely, people don’t. In fact, for newer entrants to the piracy scene, the fact that people make money is probably the accepted standard.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/love-piracy.jpg2451200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-20 16:06:352019-10-20 16:06:35‘Sharing is Caring’ Once Described Piracy But Things Have Probably Changed
This week we have one newcomer in our chart.
