Online Piracy Has Doubled In Two Years, As Every Video Streaming Website Starts Charging Money

Torrent usage has declined in the past few years, in part thanks to how accessible streaming services have become.

Now, the same reason that drove users away from clients like BitTorrent is giving it a new lease on life, improving its popularity once more.

According to a recent report, 58 percent of all downlink traffic on the Internet is video streaming, and 15 percent of that entire slice is just Netflix. However, that report also indicated BitTorrent usage is on the rise again, leading upstream traffic across the world with a 22 percent market share. The reason for that is simple.

We may have a lot of paid streaming services to choose from, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Go, not to mention free YouTube. Now, while you¡¯d think this would mean we have more choice, that¡¯s not the case.

Most people would opt for one or two of those services at most. However, the company behind each of those is always looking to draw people to their platform. And the best way to do that is to purchase exclusive content, that people can¡¯t get anywhere else. It¡¯s not wrong at all, or unethical in any way. It¡¯s just that most people would instead prefer to just go and torrent movies or TV shows that appear on services they¡¯re not subscribed to, as opposed to paying for another one.

The rise of online piracy

That¡¯s why file sharing is now 22 percent of all upstream and 3 percent of all downstream traffic across the globe, and 97 percent of that is from BitTorrent. Back in 2011, BitTorrent was 52 percent of upstream traffic in North America, but by 2015 it had dipped to 26.83 percent, mostly because services like Netflix had become incredibly cheap. In 2016, it hit a new low of just 18.3 percent of upstream traffic. Now that trend is reversing again, especially in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where the torrent upstream traffic is 32 percent, higher than the global ratio.

Think about it. If you have Netflix and Amazon Prime, how likely are you to sign up for HBO Go just for Game of Thrones? Or if you only have a Prime account, would you really want to pay for Netflix just to watch the Narcos show everyone is talking about? That gets really expensive really fast. Instead, people just prefer to pick one or two options and pirate the rest.

It might even get worse now, as more companies jump into the streaming game. Disney, for instance, will be pulling its content from Netflix when they launch their own service by 2022. That means no Marvel movies and TV shows, no Star Wars, and more. Netflix saves money on licensing, Disney drives people to its own platform, but everyone loses in the process except you, because you¡¯re going to torrent what you need anyway.

Indeed, the piracy number might be higher than the report indicates. After all, there are no China or India traffic numbers, the latter where piracy never really died in the first place, not to mention that lots of people hide their torrenting behind VPNs and the like to dodge ISP scrutiny and copyright lawsuits.

If the guys making their money off video streaming aren¡¯t careful, they may lose the vast audience they¡¯ve stolen away from theatres, when they go back to piracy instead.