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As crackdown on torrent sites continues around the world, people who are pirating TV shows and movies are having to get a little more creative. Cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Kim Dotcom's Mega are some of the popular ones that are being used to distribute copyrighted content, according to DMCA takedown requests reviewed by Gadgets 360.
These Google Drive links, as well as links to those of other cloud storage services, are then shared by people on select subreddits, forums, and Facebook groups. Over the past two weeks, Gadgets 360 located over a dozen Facebook groups where people openly share such files and request more movies and TV shows.
[...] Jon, who didn't share his last name, said people are moving to Google Drive and other services because authorities worldwide continue to crackdown on torrent websites and other file sharing services. In the last two years, KickassTorrents, ExtraTorrent, Shaanig, Yify Torrents and other websites, which together heydays used to garner over 500 million unique visitors (according to web analytics firm SimilarWeb), have all shut down.
Moreover, Internet service providers are increasingly making it difficult to access the few torrent websites that are still in operation, Jon said. "You've got to be part of a private tracker, public torrenting is over," he told Gadgets 360. Private torrent tracking websites usually require users to be invited — which in itself is a difficult process.
There are several publicly accessible torrent websites that continue to exist, but "torrenting" is getting more difficult by day, multiple people told Gadgets 360. Public sites are mired with pop-up windows filled with ads trying to sell them malware, which makes it a poor experience.
Torrents are dying as savvy pirates come to their senses and abandon antiquated torrent tech, uploading their wares to cloud hosting sites like Google Drive instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @04:02AM (8 children)
About 15 years ago, people would upload stuff to freedrive, xoom and geoshitties, possibly in stripes across them, possibly disguised to look like legitimate content.
Google seems to be immune to copyright enforcement, viz. Youtube, so it is a good choice to host stuff there.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 11 2017, @04:25AM (4 children)
As long as you obey DMCA requests and make a half-assed attempt not to be a piracy haven, your service can be a piracy haven.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 11 2017, @04:34AM (3 children)
You don't even have to halfway make an attempt. You're in fact legally in a better position if you don't curate user content at all. It is important to refrain from actually promoting copyright infringement though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by lx on Monday September 11 2017, @06:08AM (2 children)
Tell that to a certain fat German with a silly name and a big mouth.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:18AM (1 child)
Come on now, there is no need for insults. Let's leave Angela Merkel out of this, okay?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:11PM
It's sad when we have to look to Germany for leadership to get AWAY from the Nazis :)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by qzm on Monday September 11 2017, @05:59AM (2 children)
Not to mention the logic of:
'Torrents are dying as savvy pirates come to their senses and abandon antiquated torrent tech, uploading their wares to cloud hosting sites like Google Drive instead.'
Combined with:
'These Google Drive links, as well as links to those of other cloud storage services, are then shared by people on select subreddits, forums, and Facebook groups'
So, somehow these 1337 pirates think Farcebook and Reddit are sneaky places to hide links to content?
Yes, so very smart, I'm sure those will never be found.. so very cunning.
(Score: 2) by lx on Monday September 11 2017, @06:11AM
If nobody can find your files you're not really sharing them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Monday September 11 2017, @07:30AM
sudo mod me up