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.
Piracy is up because crapitalism is also up.
Fucking ACE
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.
[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.
The spooks will do shutdowns in waves so they can destroy the files before more copies pop 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
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”
