The never ending pursuit of the powerful entertainment industry and their hordes of legal teams against the many piracy sources online. YIFY, aXXo, ThePirateBay, KickAssTorrents, MegaFile and lots more have succumbed to the gauntlet.
What’s interesting about this topic is that neither side will truly ever win. That’s because, no matter the approach, both sides have to adapt to a change. Consider it, if you like, a change in “settings”. The fight remains the same but the way this illegal trade occurs does.
Back in the naughties we had programs called WinMX, Bear Share, and most notably, LimeWire. These programs connected us to a network in which other users would share their files. We could simply browse for Sandstorm and find thousands of this network’s users who all possessed the same file. We then proceeded to download the files willy-nilly and everything was hunky-dory. Simple.
That was until governments came along – most notably the US government’s joint FBI and Anti-Piracy teams because they do nothing but seek glory and recognition, world-over.
This joint taskforce, if you like, began to bottleneck the developers of this software into either submission or prison sentences and rather hefty fines, besides the expensive court hearings. Thus, the era of P2P piracy file sharing ended.
It still does live on, however, only on lesser used and less secure networks.
Then we got the warez communities. These were simple websites using forum software like Invision PB or PHPBB. In order to reach these communities, one needed only register to the website giving an email address and username.
There were some attempts at creating more private communities. One such one achieved near-mythical status by only allowing new users through invitations which were rarely given out, or only opening up registrations for a few days a year. Either way, the warez communities stayed much the same as they do now.
Forum users would convert the files they wished to share with others, be they MP3s or movies, and upload them to popular file sharing websites (or even their own public or private FTP (file transfer) servers. Maybe they would give proof in their posts that the shared files do not contain viruses by providing screenshots of virus scans but the most common way to determine the security of these files were waiting for users who had downloaded them to report any goings-on once they tried to execute them. Obviously, files containing viruses resulted in the user being banned. That was not even the issue though. People saw this as a way of making a name for themselves – resulting in warez communities being the go-to for pirates. It was an auspicious promise for lonely teenagers. They could finally be someone. By establishing themselves as a well known author of pirated materials posts, their online reputation fueled these communities and this approach to piracy and illegal file sharing. However, this approach, while it still does live on, pretty much ended in a sad way. Lots of things happened, mostly all at once, which all contributed to the dawn being pulled over its eyes and made to go into a long slumber.
Amateur and learner hackers used this as a platform to release their viruses. They fully expected to be banned for doing so but not before their viruses infected a small number of people, granting them a glimmer of success in doing so.
Many file hosting websites saw the attempts of their platforms being used in this way. Alongside the repeating need to actively monitor, and at some times upgrade their bandwidth plans with their ISPs, they began to inflict their users with upload limits. It was because of this, once reliable platforms for file sharers began to droop in numbers. What was once an easy-to-create account with a one-gigabyte upload limit became a pesky three-hundred-megabyte-per-file problem. This was still fine for some. Most albums – and some discographies – could easily fit within this limitation. Though it was not so easy for movies unless you wouldn’t mind the low resolution 140p. Remember, these were the days before HD became the next-best-thing. Now, looking through file hosting websites, one can see the effect this has had: some offer only ten-megabytes per file. For scale, the song Blessed by Avicii is 9.5 megabytes. The average sizes of music files are approximately three minutes long and around 3 megabytes.
The file-size limitations were a two-pronged attack. Not only did it reduce the size of the files pirates could share. The resulting smaller sized files were often split files. This mean that a movie could be split into several different files, each with varying times. Think of the movie Pacific Rim. It’s two hours and ten minutes long. Imagine, due to the file sizes, having to download it piece-by-piece, twenty-five minute pieces. Still, the problems didn’t end here.
Because of the nature of the majority of files being hosted by these websites as well as the constant bandwidth upgrades, extra manpower to support monitoring data usage, and much more, developers saw it fit to begin adding adverts to their websites. This was a nuisance, users believed. So they also added a premium account service for users, removing ads for life, provided you maintain steady payments to the website you wanted the premium account on. And money is a pirate’s achilles heal, ever since the age of piracy on the seven seas.
The last thing to bring down the crumbling wall of warez: the very nature of these websites were the same as any other website. They worked over the HTTP protocol. HTTP file transfers are still far more slower than most others, even these days over HTML5. This meant that website downloads such as these were slower than the next-best-thing to come soon after warez began to lose their cool.
Eventually a lot of file hosting websites were shutdown or changed their business models to more professional uses. MegaFile was probably the largest of them to be shutdown by the authorities.
Torrent is defined by Google as a strong and fast-moving stream. Torrents definitely became strong and fast-moving. Why? Because, not only did they allow users to download the entirety of files regardless of size they wanted unlike warez, they also performed better. Download speeds were up and people were encouraged to seed these downloads, granting further speed to downloads. And this was where piracy really became a problem for the entertainment industries. We saw the birth of the meme credit where credit is due. We also saw something else being given light over the dark horizon. The community spirit.
This was also where pirates like aXXo really made a name for themselves. They began to branch out, first from offering files nobody else had made available yet, but also from cinema recordings and early pay-per-view recordings. Some of these guys even managed to get hold of the DVDs before the industries had released them!
Of course people were going to download them. And of course people would start to look for these files early and see that the same guy who gave them the first Transformers a month early had already released the sequel a month early too. But the problems quickly picked up pace. First to go, Isohunt, following a very lengthy legal process and a lot of money spent. Next up, Megafile and individual pirates such as aXXo. Now the anti-piracy teams are swarming the internet, taking down every torrent searching sites they can get their hands on. KickAssTorrents, every rebirthed form ThePirateBay and more.
This was also the reason why courts began to demand more action on ISPs, blocking access to these sites. The numbers of torrent users grew expontentialy within this time.
The problems were not only legal though. The downfall of torrents has been long coming and has been contributed by the pirates themselves. You can no longer be given reliable access to a torrent search engine without being bombarded by streams of anonymously proxied advert engines all over your screen. Every touch or click on a website opening a new tab, every download given some “brand” too. They have also ruined the piracy industry themselves.
Years later, community spirit went out the window, thanks to the pompous I know better than you attitude and the pussy-footing a lot of people do these days. People had access to so much. They eventually grew used to it, started to get bored of it and take it out on each other.
Next up comes a new form of file hosting websites. Online streaming services. Forgetting for the moment about Netflix and Amazon Prime, I focus on the less legal ones. Because up until this segment I have been writing in chronological order. This is not the case for these as some have been around for many years but are only recently picking up.
Watchseries and Putlocker, for instance. With a simple advert blocking browser addon such as NoScript, internet users can now flock to the many websites to watch whatever episode they want of whatever show they want. Movies, TV shows, anything. But it doesn’t end there because this area is huge. There are dedicated websites for just about anything, from specific genres to the full spectrum. Believe it or not, those American anti-piracy forces haven’t yet made significant inroads to preventing these. But are they worth the time and effort?
Probably. The truth is these websites are contributed by yet more people wanting to score internet points for themselves. Good quality uploads rewards these guys and girls with the imaginary reputations they feel they need.
On the other hand, what really sets this method of illegal file sharing apart is the wide access to just about anything users want. Anybody can go and watch every single episode of Pokemon if they really wanted. This franchise has created thousands of episodes and not every one of them are available on any premium service. People prefer to start from the beginning. That one day when Ash first started his Pokemon journey after he woke up late and missed his chance at a squirtle, bulbasaur or charmander. Instead, they can only legally treat themselves to season 17, episodes 10 to 20. This is also the case for on-demand services from Sky or Virgin Media.
So while these premium services are creating incredible TV moments like Narcos or Jezza and Crew’s The Grand Tour, they may also be helping to fuel this illegal file trade. Of course, due to the complex legalities of licenses and the fees associated with them, they would sincerely disagree to this statement. But it’s true.
So what can be done? Not a whole lot.
If a premium service is going to offer them something, offer people what they want in every format. TV show and movie, but all of them. Not just a handful of episodes. Otherwise piracy is here to stay for the long-run.
On the other side of the coin, these illegal file sharing approaches are probably never going to end until there are reasonable and reliable alternatives. Adverts and required signup processes are bringing dusk down onto piracy as a whole, as well as peoples’ pursuit to glory. But they are doing so for good, individual, reasons.
Am I saying it was right for pirates to be imprisoned? Yes, as a matter of fact. They knew what they were getting themselves into from the start. And while I don’t agree prison is a worthwhile punishment – because I believe prison should only be used to keep the dangers away from society – I do still believe something should be done about them.
The fact of the matter is piracy will never truly go away. It will always survive in some form. It just depends how it takes form. If people can’t get the entertainment they want legally, they will look elsewhere. Even though they may not have quick and easy access to these files, they will do it if they have to, no matter the nuisances involved.
Originally posted on my website, written by myself