Pirate Site Visits Dip To 216 Billion a Year, But Manga Piracy Is Booming (torrentfreak.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Fresh data released by piracy tracking outfit MUSO shows that pirate sites remain popular. In a report released today, MUSO reveals that there were 216 billion pirate site visits globally in 2024, a slight decrease compared to the 229 billion visits recorded a year earlier. TV piracy remains by far the most popular category, representing over 44.6% of all website visits. This is followed by the publishing category with 30.7%, with film, software and music all at a respectable distance. Pirate site visitors originate from all over the world, but one country stands tall above all the rest: America. The United States remains the top driver of pirate site traffic accounting for more than 12% of all traffic globally, good for 26.7 billion visits in 2024. India has been steadily climbing the ranks for years and currently sits in second place with 17.6 billion annual visits, with Russia, Indonesia, and Vietnam completing the top five. As a country with one of the largest populations worldwide, it's not a complete surprise that the U.S. tops the list. If we counted visits per internet user, Canada and Ukraine would top the list.
While pirate site visits dipped by more than 5% in 2024, one category saw substantial growth. Visits to publishing-related pirate sites increased 4.3% from 63.6 to 66.4 billion. The increase is largely driven by the popularity of manga, which accounts for more than 70% of all publishing piracy. Traditional book piracy, meanwhile, is stuck at 5%. The publishing piracy boom is relatively new. Over the past five years, the category grew by more than 100% while the overall number of global pirate site visits remained relatively flat. Looking at the global demand, we see that the U.S. also leads the charge here, followed by Indonesia and Russia. Notably, Japan, the home of manga, ranks fifth in the publishing category. This stands out because Japan is not listed in the global top 15 in terms of total pirate site visits.
In the other content categories, MUSO's data shows a dip in pirate site visits. The changes are relatively modest for TV (-6.8%) and software (-2.1%) but the same isn't true for the music and film categories. In 2024, there were 18% fewer visits for pirated movies compared to a year earlier. MUSO notes that this is due to a "lighter blockbuster calendar" which reduced piracy peaks. "The drop in demand is as much about what wasn't released as it is about access," the report explains. The music category saw a 19% decline in piracy visits year over year, with a more uplifting explanation for rightsholders. According to MUSO, the drop can be partly attributed to "secure app ecosystems" and the "wide adoption of licensed platforms like Spotify and Apple Music."
While pirate site visits dipped by more than 5% in 2024, one category saw substantial growth. Visits to publishing-related pirate sites increased 4.3% from 63.6 to 66.4 billion. The increase is largely driven by the popularity of manga, which accounts for more than 70% of all publishing piracy. Traditional book piracy, meanwhile, is stuck at 5%. The publishing piracy boom is relatively new. Over the past five years, the category grew by more than 100% while the overall number of global pirate site visits remained relatively flat. Looking at the global demand, we see that the U.S. also leads the charge here, followed by Indonesia and Russia. Notably, Japan, the home of manga, ranks fifth in the publishing category. This stands out because Japan is not listed in the global top 15 in terms of total pirate site visits.
In the other content categories, MUSO's data shows a dip in pirate site visits. The changes are relatively modest for TV (-6.8%) and software (-2.1%) but the same isn't true for the music and film categories. In 2024, there were 18% fewer visits for pirated movies compared to a year earlier. MUSO notes that this is due to a "lighter blockbuster calendar" which reduced piracy peaks. "The drop in demand is as much about what wasn't released as it is about access," the report explains. The music category saw a 19% decline in piracy visits year over year, with a more uplifting explanation for rightsholders. According to MUSO, the drop can be partly attributed to "secure app ecosystems" and the "wide adoption of licensed platforms like Spotify and Apple Music."
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The Greek epic poems were fine. Everything else is derivative.
I wonder if.... (Score:3)
I wonder if part of this decline is being driven by qbitorrent's search function. With all the streaming services doing their best to worsen their services by jacking up prices while cutting back on content I find it hard to believe less people are pirating media nowadays.
I'm not entirely sure how they're getting their numbers so I don't know.
Re:I wonder if.... (Score:4, Informative)
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That's exactly it. If you're sailing the high seas then you're not going to a public 'pirate bay' type search site, you're using the built in torrent app search or you're on a private torrent site. The only people going to public torrent sites are kids who don't know better. The public ones are pretty much out of date anyway.
I have no problem finding almost anything I want on the Bay, Popular TV (eg The Last of Us) is up in the next day after airing. I don't do cams but movies also follow pretty quick after the streaming release, . 4K is common enough almost everything is available, and thousands of seeders make for very fast downloads. I've played with Sonarr/Radarr/etc. and various other public trackers (eg the former Kickass), and I keep coming back to TPB. Use a VPN, stick to trusted seeders, life is good.
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Using an app search to search virtually all the sites at once I frequently dont get the results I'm looking for from the Bay. If it's working for you that's great but what you describe definitely wouldnt work for me. At least not anywhere near as well.
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Fewer visits (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe because the quality of the content has also lessened lately?
Haven't heard of anything interesting enough to download for a peek in the last year or so.
Here's one reason for manga piracy (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't read any manga, but I know enough to know that any older content almost never gets translated and the quality of what does is not very well done. Buying rights isn't enough and having "a" translation isn't enough. It has to be good and it has to be complete.
As far as TV and movie piracy, the "shut up and take my money" effect is gaining traction. Piracy is an awful lot of work. I am not subscribing to 10 services, but I usually binge one or two shows at a time anyway. If I want to catch up on w
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Piracy is an awful lot of work
No it really isnt if you know how to do it. It's actually absurdly easy for most major stuff at least.
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As compared to just paying for it. I wouldn't expose my bare connection to a copyright strike, so that means a VPN to somewhere who doesn't care at the very least.
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Ah, right. Good point on the VPN, I wasnt thnking about that.
Still though, once everything is set up it's awfully easy.
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If you only want 4K HDR releases. But you may also have to pay for more hardware to store the data unless you consume it all instantly and then delete it.
Between VPN and storage the cost is not equal to an additional rotating streaming service every month, but it's not zero. And that's ignoring the mental cost of having to find things in advance and research overseas VPN companies' security and safety records.
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I think we're talking about 2 different things now. Originally I at least felt like we were talking about effort and ease of process, not associated costs.
Re: Here's one reason for manga piracy (Score:2)
Effort and ease is always a cost benefit analysis compared with just paying a nominal fee for legit access.
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Between VPN and storage the cost is not equal to an additional rotating streaming service every month, but it's not zero.
My VPN is $60USD/yr. It is probably one of the best values of all the things I spend money on.
research overseas VPN companies' security and safety records.
I only need to protect myself from the RIAA, not the CIA. That lowers the bar considerably.
Re: Here's one reason for manga piracy (Score:2)
You also need to protect yourself from the VPN. It seems to be a shady business sometimes.
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You also need to protect yourself from the VPN.
I guess they could tell Warner Bros I downloaded Sinners but I still don't lose any sleep.
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Because them knowing your download history is more of a risk than handing them all of your web traffic to look through...
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Because them knowing your download history is more of a risk than handing them all of your web traffic to look through...
I don't use it for that (apart from searching for movies and music), it's just on the VM I use strictly for torrenting. I have not killed anyone lately so my web traffic is probably of little interest to anyone other than advertisers, but f I was more concerned I'd combine Tor with the VPN.
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there is also the case where a story starts being translated to other languages but, due to a multitude of reasons, see the official translations end without giving non-japanese readers a way to read those stories other than via unofficial translations.
one of my favorite series, Full Metal Panic, was never fully translated to english or portuguese (my language), despite the story being concluded in 2013. Lone Wolf and the Cub is another example of a story that took decades to be fully translated to portugus
How would one measure this? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do they measure this? Did all the pirates magically agree to put Google Analytics on their web pages and share reporting with Muso? Or, in accordance with The Pirate Code (?!) do all pirate pages request the browser load http://muso.com/arr-trackme-1x... [muso.com] and (again, in accordance with The Pirate Code, I guess) the visitors configure their browsers to whitelist and load it? I am skeptical of any third parties who claim they "track" pirate site visits.
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215 billion reasons to fix awful copyright lengths (Score:3)
95 years is an abomination that discourages creativity and only fills the coffers of the copyright cartels.
Every person in the world agrees 30 times a year(*) !
(*) on average.
Re: 215 billion reasons to fix awful copyright len (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, so 7 years after you wrote a novel on WattPad that had a little following a major studio can step in, make a movie out of your novel, earn billions and if you ask for a penny they can shit on your face? Just a hypothetic scenario of course, you couldn't form a sentence to save your life.
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>little following
>earn billions
pick one
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They shouldn't be able to shit on his face, but they ought to easily be able to tell him "no thanks." It's would be their movie, not his. And he would have already had 7 years of monopoly on the book, so he got his chance to make back his investment. The movie was never part of that investment, unless he also made a movie of his own within that 7 year period.
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Here is a better idea:
1. First 7 years. Application fee: Cost to register the copyright with the appropriate government agency.
2. Second 7 year renewal term government application fee: $1 million in 2025 USD indexed for inflation
3. Third 7 year renewal term government application fee: $10 million in 2025 USD indexed for inflation.
4. Fourth 7 year renewal term government application fee: $100 million in 2025 USD indexed for inflation.
5. Works enter public domain after 28 years.
Of course, this will never happ
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On top of the renewal costs, it should be mandatory to keep the work available at the same cost or lower (which is trivial with digital distribution since you don't need to maintain physical stock). No more taking stuff off sale so noone can get hold of it.
Also should make stuff available worldwide under the same terms.
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How does that help copyright to fulfill its purpose of encouraging creativity ?
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This. Most people have no respect for copyright anymore because of the ludicrous terms. The bargain that is copyright was protection for a relatively short time. If something really sparked my imagination as a child, I could write a derivative work as a young adult. Now it would be more like my great grand children.
If you can't buy it (Score:2)
If I can't buy it, sometimes piracy is the only way to read something.
I buy books on a regular basis, I routinely go to comic shops and book stores. If the manga I'm looking for literally does not exist piracy is the only option. Very often it's out of print, and I'm only just now hearing about it, and there's nothing 2nd hand.
Sure if it's like, One Piece, I can find it. If it's something more obscure that isn't always the case. Even stuff that used to be more mainstream, like Chobits, or Sailor Moon are
As streaming providers jack up rates (Score:2)
As streaming providers jack up rates and introduce ads, it looks like piracy isn't going to go away anytime soon. And Canada & Ukraine topping visits per user, who would have guessed?
Could it be anything to do with Canada's vile Cancon regulations?
I wonder if it's because 'sites' are less popular (Score:2)
So, I know a few non-technical people, who have had someone set up one of those pirated-TV-stream appliances for them. These services tend to include basically every stream of basically every broadcast channel, combined with a library of on-demand TV shows and still-in-theater movies. No searching, no downloading...just one interface to rule them all, and they pay in bitcoin once or twice a year for the privilege.
So, if these things are gaining some popularity...is it possible that the numbers have dipped b
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...5 different rips from different release groups in h264 or x265 1080 or 2160p webrip , bluray multi etc. They aren't gonna worry about maintaining ratios or seeking invites to quality trackers.
To be fair I don't think most people would care about anything you list outside of resolution and consumers are pretty aware of how that works. I know I'm aware of the difference and I don't really care about most of what you list. With the right tools you can also find good rips of almost anything you want on public trackers so I've also never understood the need to join groups with all their burdensome demands for membership just to get on their private trackers.
I think a lot of the people who are hyper
Re: I wonder if it's because 'sites' are less popu (Score:2)
No one is "buying" pirated manga... (Score:2)
Here is my problem with "manga piracy".
No one is buying pirated manga. What people are doing are reading manga online that has been translated by 3rd party translaters, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HAS TRANSLATED THEM.
When it's a no-name manga that the western world doesn't know about, no one gives a shit about copyright for that manga, because no one is really reading it except. But when hundreds of thousands of people are suddenly interested in that manga, because it's been translated into english by 3rd p
Survivor Bias (Score:2)
Pirate sites get fewer visits? Says who? Google Analytics?
Maybe there are pirate sites, who respect user privacy and don't send their visits to some company that counts how many visitors a pirate site has.
Actually selling stuff would help (Score:2)
So much stuff is just unobtainable... (Score:2)
There is a lot of content where the only way to obtain it is to pirate.
Good luck finding someone who has original media for the exact obsolete version of Visual Studio you need for a project and even if you do find someone selling a copy that isn't charging insane prices for it, its probably still illegal to resell it under the EULA.
And if you need something more obscure (say, software for a Bendix G-15 or an IBM 1401) you can forget about it.
Or if you want to watch the old obscure animated TV show "Twins o
Message to content owners (Score:2)