this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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... How would you even measure that?
/edit: ah, popular downloads from one particular torrent provider. Not the wider picture.
Add on pirate streams, usenet, and the other half a billion torrent sites and those numbers muddy a bit...
I don't think it said just 1 specific torrent provider. But even then, as long as it was a decently sized generic torrent provider, what makes you think it would not be representative of the bigger picture?
They explicitly state these are Torrent Freaks numbers. Along with:
These numbers only reflect piracy of one type and among that type only one, very public, provider. (and not even their entire community, just those that download episodes one by one) That's quite a limited scope. Lots of pirates don't like such public services and/or use other protocols/methods of acquiring media.
Personally, I don't even use Torrents at all anymore, let alone Torrent Freak, yet I pirate hundreds of hours of media every month. I've also been hearing far more commonly in the last few years about people using pirate streaming services instead of downloads.
If you want the full picture, you've gotta expand your demographics. When you only ask the straight white men, all you get is what straight white men think, instead of the whole community's opinion.
Torrent Freak is not a piracy website. They are a news publication that talks about torrenting and piracy. They describe themselves as follows:
For this specific article, they mention that they
The source article in question:
https://torrentfreak.com/the-last-of-us-is-the-most-pirated-tv-show-of-2023-231225/
Ah, my bad. Could have sworn they were an indexer; but it's been a while since I've used torrents.
"several sources" is rather... 'trust us'. Not a fan of that kind of reporting. But I know what you download is something at least.
That expands the scope to several public indexer sites instead of just one, but it's still only public peer-to-peer (torrent) traffic being measured. Usenet, direct download, private/pirate streaming, and private peer-to-peer are still left out.
So, back to the original question: what makes you think that using public torrent trackers are not representative of the bigger picture?
Yes, obviously not being able to use private stats from private sources narrows the scope, but what makes you think it cannot be extrapolated? Personally, I think that private trackers or usenet would paint the same picture, and niche providers would be too small to make a dent in the stats.
Because I'm more interested in data than opinion. Maybe they're the same, maybe they aren't; without any data to back it up, that's all it is, opinions.
When I said the numbers muddy, I'm not saying they're wrong necessarily; just that they become quite unclear. You can't be sure they're accurate because you're making assumptions to reach them.
Part of this stems from an opinion of my own however: that public torrents are a shrinking market share of piracy. More and more I see conversations dominated by streams, private torrent trackers, and usenet. That's not to say they've disappeared or ever will, but other means seem more common lately. Though that's admittedly hard to gauge.
A small slice can give you an idea of what the bigger picture may be, but the smaller the slice the less chance that idea will be accurate. Take a jigsaw puzzle for example: if I only look at 10% of the pieces I may get enough detail to figure out what the image is supposed to be, or maybe I'll only get pieces of the empty blue sky... (or is that water... I can't tell)
"This actual data isn't data. My personal anecdotes are data"
..... No? Did you even read my comments?
This actual data is not necessarily representative of the entire situation, just a specific demographic.
Numbers are great, but they're meaningless without context.
My anecdotes are examples of why that may be, as looking at the same or similar problems from different perspectives can help you gain a better understanding.
You keep saying that, but never back it up with any reason.
Everyone here agrees the data is incomplete, but that it's the best data we have. Only you keep implying that it's incorrect because [ever less verifiable, unspecified reasons]. Holy hypocrisy, batman.
I have not said the data is incorrect, I have said it is only representative of one type of piracy, exactly as the authors of the linked article as well as the original source of the data have.
I've simply made a point of highlighting this fact as the tiles don't make it very obvious.
Once again:
law of large numbers: it's probably fairly representative