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Based on this table there's been a 1100% increase over the last 7 years, with a 60% increase between 2020 and 2021. I'd be interested to see WHY this is the ca

Based on this table there's been a 1100% increase over the last 7 years, with a 60% increase between 2020 and 2021. I'd be interested to see WHY this is the case. Is it attributable to a larger share of data that cannot be compressed vs more compressible data (e.g., Warez/Movies)? It just seems highly unlikely this is driven by a growing user base; but, without more details other than this data table, I am at a loss for the reasons why.

joecool1029 2y ago
It is a growing user base. Streaming services were convenient, now they are not (ads, increased cost, reduced content availability, fragmentation). > It just seems highly unlikely this is driven by a growing user base; If you are old enough, there was a time when everyone pirated stuff due to the alternative being rather expensive or unavailable (physical media). Then a golden age of streaming services that were cheap and had high availability basically killed torrenting for the general public. Now people are returning to piracy as the streaming services got worse for reasons I stated above.
mapontosevenths 2y ago
One of the most popular types of content is now remuxed (not reencoded or recompressed) 4k blu-ray rips that can be anywhere from 50-150Gb per disc. In the DVD/Blu-ray era movies were often reencoded to lower bitrates the way streaming services now do and had tiny original sources. Those files were orders of magnitude smaller (600Mb-1.5Gb typically). The people who still care enough to pirate in the era of ubiquitous streaming are often doing it explicitly to get the best possible quality, because no streaming service now offers anything of comparable fidelity for any price.
- alickz 2y ago
  some (most?) streaming services don't even allow you to manually set the quality anymore gotta hope they decide your connection is capable of 4k (and they decide they want to spare you the bandwidth)

joecool1029 2y ago

It is a growing user base. Streaming services were convenient, now they are not (ads, increased cost, reduced content availability, fragmentation). > It just seems highly unlikely this is driven by a growing user base; If you are old enough, there was a time when everyone pirated stuff due to the alternative being rather expensive or unavailable (physical media). Then a golden age of streaming services that were cheap and had high availability basically killed torrenting for the general public. Now people are returning to piracy as the streaming services got worse for reasons I stated above.

mapontosevenths 2y ago

One of the most popular types of content is now remuxed (not reencoded or recompressed) 4k blu-ray rips that can be anywhere from 50-150Gb per disc. In the DVD/Blu-ray era movies were often reencoded to lower bitrates the way streaming services now do and had tiny original sources. Those files were orders of magnitude smaller (600Mb-1.5Gb typically). The people who still care enough to pirate in the era of ubiquitous streaming are often doing it explicitly to get the best possible quality, because no streaming service now offers anything of comparable fidelity for any price.

alickz 2y ago
some (most?) streaming services don't even allow you to manually set the quality anymore gotta hope they decide your connection is capable of 4k (and they decide they want to spare you the bandwidth)