Right, a workaround because bit torrent is no longer as useful - more work for everyone, change in tech, meanwhile the best trackers get taken out, users need to switch up trackers constantly, content gets fragmented, quality drops, old torrents get lost or everyone is left wondering wtf to do for 6-12 months until the new new thing takes over. Remind me why this is a good thing?
Torrenting has been around for just about forever, and was massively more popular/mainstream one to two decades ago than it is now. Trackers get taken down, but bittorrent endures.
Again, not saying bittorrent is going anywhere - just that going super mainstream isn't making anything better. Ask people who were around during the heyday how much better torrenting has gotten since the likes of OG Demonoid, mininova, supernova, KAT, aXXo, YIFY even Rarbg got shut down or left the scene.
Has it gotten better? I was around during its heyday. I haven’t done much torrenting since streaming became a viable option (because piracy is about convenience, etc.), so I’m out of the loop with bittorrent in practice today. I used to be able to just use TPB back when it was the best public tracker, but it started getting sketchier after the guys got arrested. Simple, had everything. Download with your client, and you’re done. Had to use PeerGuardian for avoidance, then VPNs, but it was always easy. Is it somehow easier now?
Not to the best of my knowledge - which is my point, getting more mainstream the last time attracted attention, good trackers got taken down, everything got harder. Which is why I'm saying BT getting mainstream again isn't a bright side. Looks like I'm in the minority though.
I hear you, you have a point. On the other hand, though, a resurgence in popularity may mean new/better tools and options. I’ve been thinking about getting a Jellyfin/*arr setup going lately because of how splintered the streaming services have gotten, and the new tooling does seem very cool. More popularity means more contributors and more QOL features. Double edged sword.
Now that we're here, it'd be a worthwhile project to resurrect Gopher but route it all over Tor/i2p/Freenet/whatever as a gigantic fuck you to the powers that be. It's light so it could potentially run mobile, r-pis, cloud, whatever.
I get you but it's just the nature of the beast. Short term losses for long term gains maybe?
You need users to make pirating work, more users = better. But with more users (eventually) comes attention from Big Business and LE.
FWIW, I can just load up pretty much any movie from about 100 different websites and stream any movie I can think of, I don't even need to find seeders or trackers or peers these days unless I want my own archival, higher quality copy.
My perspective is BT is probably fine as it is, as you say popular movies are everywhere, that won't change. Rare older stuff is what tends to get lost when trackers disappear (doubly so for private trackers) and they're the thing that benefits from more seeders. Is your average casual going to be seeding a vintage Linux ISO? I doubt it. Popular ISOs are going to be well enough seeded to to saturate just about any connection as it stands and ratio enforcement on privates should take care of people who like 15 year old Ubuntu livecds and the like. I just don't see any upside to BT being more mainstream.
Let the streaming sites and dodgy boxes have all the glory with the casuals and take the hit when the MPAA come knocking, no?