Here in Sweden the launch of Spotify was the step that basically killed music piracy overnight. They even had the creator of uTorrent working on building the service, interestingly enough. I believe I downloaded my last song the day before I got a closed beta account.
BartyDeCanter@piefed.social 4 days ago
The Piracy Eras:
- Pre-DMCA: The golden age of piracy, no one worried about anything.
- Post-DMCA: Possible prosecution from big copyright, but also hard to track individuals down, so not a lot of worry.
- iTunes Music Store: Did more to end music piracy than any legal action. Cheap enough and easy enough that a lot of people stopped bothering. Pirate Bay for the rest.
- Torrent tracking/poisoning and ISP consolidation: More prosecutions against small pirates put more of a damper on it.
- Cheap Streaming: Did to everything what iTMS did to music piracy
- Expensive Streaming: Now. Bringing back pirates, but people are more cautious due to 4.
VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 4 days ago
SarahFromOz@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Nice summary! Thanks for explaining!
BartyDeCanter@piefed.social 4 days ago
Thanks! I figure all this grey in my beard should be good for something.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
One thing I think is worth mentioning (US specific), there was a period in the 2000s with a lot of prosecutions, but then industry groups switched tactics to pushing ISPs to do enforcement with mass copyright letters, and ceased actually bringing lawsuits against small pirates for the most part. People are normally more worried than they need to be.
BartyDeCanter@piefed.social 4 days ago
Oh definitely. And it really depends on your ISP. Before the ISP consolidation it took enough work that sending out those letters to every small local ISP that they wouldn’t bother for Jane Rando who downloaded a few episodes here and there. Now that (in the US at least) most people use one of two or three ISPs who all have a cozy corporate relationship, it’s harder to fly under the radar. But if you have a good privacy-forward ISP it’s not a worry.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
It basically means you need a VPN to torrent because if you rack up enough letters they might shut off your internet, but there’s a big distinction between those letters and a lawsuit, they are way closer to just a scare tactic. Their text suggests a lawsuit might be a followup possibility, but that isn’t really true.