Piracy is the biggest problem streaming services face. For anyone who streams on legit services, it should come as great news that there has been a crackdown on illegal sites throughout 2019.
The latest crackdown saw two coders from Las Vegas plead guilty in federal court. Putting that good news aside, taking one look at older articles show reactions supporting piracy — this streaming war has countless battles ahead.
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Size of the problem
Breaking down the latest crackdown:
- The latest piracy streaming sites shut down are Jetflicks and iStreamitAll.
- Those piracy operations involved subscriptions and deprived copyright holders of millions of dollars.
- 36-year-old Darryl Julius Polo pleaded guilty to copyright infringement and money laundering.
- 40-year-old Luis Angel Villarino pleaded guilty to copyright infringement.
- One of the sites had 120,000 television episodes and 11,000 movies.
There was another crackdown in October 2019. ACE, which is a coalition of Hollywood studios and content companies (including Netflix), shut down Openload and Streamango.
To highlight the scale of operations, Openload generated more traffic than Hulu and HBO Go; it was also in the top ten of global streaming sites.
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Reactions supporting piracy
Freedom of speech is the most important thing of all, but supporting piracy is an issue. What’s shocking is that the majority of comments on Deadline reflect an audience supporting piracy. Here are some of the reactions:
When things like this happen I want do destroy this world. Nobody cares about our rights. They just pretend to us so we are quiet. I really hope once there will be something similar for series and films like is Tor for free independent internet.
Anonymous comment on Deadline, Nov 16, 2019
Reaction: Irony, when someone talks about their rights by demanding something that would infringe upon someone else’s. Don’t companies have a right to protect their work?
In attempt to make a few bucks, they forget that most owe their popularity to streaming. You thought GOT or TWD would be this popular if only paying customers would watch?
Anonymous comment on Deadline, Nov 8, 2019
Reaction: I always thought Game of Thrones was popular because HBO spent a fortune making a brilliant show based on an amazing book series, yet it seems like I was wrong.
Effen pathetic *ssholes. I will find another way to watch pirated movies and what ever else I want. I can not see paying 9.95 to watch a movie that is 10 years old, that’s just a bunch of money hungry overpaid Hollywood *ssholes
Anonymous comment on Deadline, Nov 2, 2019
Reaction: Shock, companies like money. I’m certain whoever wrote this is above money. They don’t need it and would give every dime to charity.
People need educating
There are hundreds of reactions supporting piracy, and in my opinion, these people need re-educating or prosecution. Everyone knows it’s illegal, so why else would they be justifying their actions in such idiotic ways? Piracy doesn’t stick it to the man. It stops streaming services from making money, which means we go from great content to trash.
If you’re after old movies and old series, there’s plenty of services available that are legal, including The Roku Channel, IMDb TV, Pluto TV, and more. If convenience is the problem, just connect all those free services to Reelgood and unify the content into one interface.
Simply put, there is no excuse to illegally stream or download anymore. If you do, you’re cheap and don’t deserve the content. It really is that simple.