What.CD torrent website shuts down

[Murdoch]

 

Quote

 

What.cd, an invite-only music torrent website first launched in 2007, has been shut down after a raid by French authorities. The private tracker offered free (and often illegal) access to a massive, deeply thorough collection of music and was popular among audiophiles for its strict rules around quality and file formats. The site was created after the shutdown of another well-known torrent website, Oink, which operated between 2004 and 2007. Though its primary focus was music sharing, What.cd also permitted torrents of computer software, ebooks, and other content.

What.cd somehow lasted years longer than Oink, even as law agencies around the globe ramped up efforts to uncover people unlawfully sharing copyrighted content. It persisted as subscription music services like Spotify were born and skyrocketed into the mainstream, changing the way most people obtain music. That shift to streaming proved the ultimate counter to music piracy. Today, the way many of us quickly hunt for music is opening YouTube in a web browser — not opening a torrent app.

What.cd staked its name on staggering choice and helpful tools for discovering new music. You could download the latest hot releases in MP3, or pull up an obscure, rare album from a lesser-known artist and probably find it available in lossless FLAC. The artists and albums absent from this or that streaming service were always present on What — again, so long as you didn’t mind stealing music.
 

 

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13669832/what-cd-music-torrent-website-shut-down?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 

The verge sums it up quite nicely,

Of course this would happen in 2016

My thoughts: I know it's a cat and mouse game torrent sites play with the authorities, they operate on borrowed time. But sometimes a community forms around a common passion that despite the questionable legality, creates something really quite special. That's not secondary, to ya know the stealing part.

 

[samcool55]

1 down, 10 to go.

No, 15.

Hang on, 20 now.

 

Never heard of them, but what i do know is that there will more than 1 new one because of this.

Oh well, the community will just emigrate to somewhere else and this whole thing would be "inconvenient" for a while at best.

[elfensky]

2 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

1 down, 10 to go.

No, 15.

Hang on, 20 now.

 

Never heard of them, but what i do know is that there will more than 1 new one because of this.

Oh well, the community will just emigrate to somewhere else and this whole thing would be "inconvenient" for a while at best.

Kind of sad, yet true and pragmatic way of looking at things. I still can't believe Kat got shut down, where am I supposed to go now _{(don't answer that, I know it's against TOS)}

[samcool55]

Just now, ElfenSky said:

Kind of sad, yet true and pragmatic way of looking at things. I still can't believe Kat got shut down, where am I supposed to go now

What most people do(probably not but still), go to torrentfreak, find their top-10 most populair torrent sites and go to them

Problem solved. One goes down? No problem there are plenty to pick from.

[noisebomb44]

1 minute ago, ElfenSky said:

Kind of sad, yet true and pragmatic way of looking at things. I still can't believe Kat got shut down, where am I supposed to go now _{(don't answer that, I know it's against TOS)}

Yes, RIP kat, i havn't found a replacement for kat yet since it had so much stuff that doesn't excist anymore like forgotten TV shows, forgotten games, etc

[vorticalbox]

2 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

What most people do(probably not but still), go to torrentfreak, find their top-10 most populair torrent sites and go to them

Problem solved. One goes down? No problem there are plenty to pick from.

I think the industry needs to fo us on changes people habits of getting music rather than trying to force them to stop. Look at things like Netflix or Amazon video. I'm sire the amount of movies pirated dropped pretty steeply after they gained traction.

[Arty]

smh, government has better things to worry about then piracy. 

[Tricklix]

2 minutes ago, Arty said:

smh, government has better things to worry about then piracy. 

Money for them is all, money buys law

[Murdoch]

Just now, vorticalbox said:

I think the industry needs to fo us on changes people habits of getting music rather than trying to force them to stop. Look at things like Netflix or Amazon video. I'm sire the amount of movies pirated dropped pretty steeply after they gained traction.

That's the thing, I use Spotify Premium for 95% of all my music needs nowadays, but the illegal services really did help innovate new distribution models, without Napster, OiNK etc, we'd never have a legal service like Spotify.

 

 

 

[noisebomb44]

2 minutes ago, Arty said:

smh, government has better things to worry about then piracy. 

Like China pirating military secrets and blueprints

[goodtofufriday]

10 minutes ago, ElfenSky said:

Kind of sad, yet true and pragmatic way of looking at things. I still can't believe Kat got shut down, where am I supposed to go now _{(don't answer that, I know it's against TOS)}

Just informing you that it is back under a new .xx name. You shouodnt be torrenting though ;(

[vorticalbox]

3 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

Just informing you that it is back under a new .xx name. You shouodnt be torrenting though ;(

torrents are not inheritably bad, I download a number of operating systems and programs via torrent.

[Bananasplit_00]

well im not really for stealing music but its sad that a big comunity died seeing as this will do basically nothing, cut one head and two pop up, but more like shut down one site, a comunity dies and another 20 pop up which are all slightly more shit

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, vorticalbox said:

I think the industry needs to fo us on changes people habits of getting music rather than trying to force them to stop. Look at things like Netflix or Amazon video. I'm sire the amount of movies pirated dropped pretty steeply after they gained traction.

I agree, partially.

 

The problem is that music is MUCH easier to consume.

I'll explain:

 

Let's say you want to watch GoT. You have only a couple of very limited options.

Watch it on the channels that broadcast it (not possible for most people), watch it on an on-demand platform like netflix (becoming an option for more and more people, finally) or, pirate it (possible for almost everyone with an internet connection)

 

With music, you can 99% of the time find it on youtube, spotify or whatever, legally and free, with ads, BUT it gets to almost the same public piracy can reach.

Also just music on the radio is enough for most people and is doing relatively well compared to TV channels.

 

Doesn't mean we are heading in a decent-ish direction tho.

 

Also i think it's safe to say music piracy is even tho probably more common, less damaging for an economy.

I'm not saying music piracy is fine, but movies and video's are more expensive to create than a song, so the amount of money that you can get from a movie pirate is relatively bigger than a music pirate because what they steal is more valuable.

 

At this point my post is so long i forgot where i was going so i'll leave it for now.

[Bananasplit_00]

5 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

Just informing you that it is back under a new .xx name. You shouodnt be torrenting though ;(

torrenting is a good thing IMO, just not ileagal stuff

[elfensky]

15 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

I think the industry needs to fo us on changes people habits of getting music rather than trying to force them to stop. Look at things like Netflix or Amazon video. I'm sire the amount of movies pirated dropped pretty steeply after they gained traction.

The buying on a per-song basis is already a very good idea, but 99c a song is imho way to much, some go as high as 1,29.

I might buy a few songs to support some of my favorite artist, but there's no way I'm spending thousands to get all the songs in my offline library.

10-25c per song sounds way more reasonable.

 

Or, perhaps, a subscription not unlike Spotify, only you get to choose a set number of (example 50) songs a month, but you get to download and keep them.

[elfensky]

14 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

You shouldn't be torrenting though ;(

Sure, you find me a way to legally watch (old) anime with English subs in Belgium without spending thousands on discs/blurays.
Netflix has some, but quite a bit of it is dubbed over in Dutch of all things, as well as Crunchy-roll, but quite a bit of things are not available on our version of those platforms, and they mostly keep to the more recent stuff.

 

That's just one example.

 

There's a multitude of US-only things that are only available through torrenting them. PlayStation's PS+ Show Powers is a good example of that.

[Space Reptile]

27 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

1 down, 10 to go.

No, 15.

Hang on, 20 now.

i mean how often did good ol pirate bay "shut down" ? theres a BILLION proxies for every torrent site 

[Murdoch]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

torrenting is a good thing IMO, just not ileagal stuff

I'm going to sum up why I think What.CD while not a legal thing, was an inherently good thing.

 

It's because it cannot exist in any other form.

 

What.CD was the best catalogue of music anywhere in the world, of perfect quality and perfectly curated, it was like the ultimate library for digital music. It had literally everything you could think of, the most obscure artists, the rarest vinyl rips in 24bit Flac. And it was exclusively used by Music lovers, which anecdotally I can safely say supported Music with their wallets too.

 

While we've gotten quite close, something like that just cannot exist legally, unfortunately.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, Murdoch said:

I'm going to sum up why I think What.CD while not a legal thing, was an inherently good thing.

 

It's because it cannot exist in any other form.

 

What.CD was the best catalogue of music anywhere in the world, of perfect quality and perfectly curated, it was like the ultimate library for digital music. It had literally everything you could think of, the most obscure artists, the rarest vinyl rips in 24bit Flac. And it was exclusively used by Music lovers, which anecdotally I can safely say supported Music with their wallets too.

 

While we've gotten quite close, something like that just cannot exist legally, unfortunately.

look at my first comment man, its sad because it dosent help for anything, a comunity dies and 20 more sites try to do the same thing but they do it worse and it keeps going like that, more and more sites shut down and more clones that are ultimatly shit

[Tricklix]

1 minute ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

look at my first comment man, its sad because it dosent help for anything, a comunity dies and 20 more sites try to do the same thing but they do it worse and it keeps going like that, more and more sites shut down and more clones that are ultimatly shit

I know some coding, maybe I will do a torrenting site called Ricos Torrents

[Tricklix]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

look at my first comment man, its sad because it dosent help for anything, a comunity dies and 20 more sites try to do the same thing but they do it worse and it keeps going like that, more and more sites shut down and more clones that are ultimatly shit

Kickass and what.cd will be remembered

[Jovidah]

4 minutes ago, ElfenSky said:

Sure, you find me a way to legally watch (old) anime with English subs in Belgium without spending thousands on discs/blurays.
Netflix has some, but quite a bit of it is dubbed over in Dutch of all things, as well as Crunchy-roll, but quite a bit of things are not available on our version of those platforms, and they mostly keep to the more recent stuff.

 

That's just one example.

 

There's a multitude of US-only things that are only available through torrenting them. PlayStation's PS+ Show Powers is a good example of that.

I agree here. The anal-ness on rights management is really preventing a broad breakthrough of things like Netflix around these parts. It's really stupid because it's only holding back technological development. 

It's idiotic the industries are all so slow to catch up with technological development and realize that a lot of the piracy

is because it is simply more convenient. In the same vein, a lot of people are downloading movies & tv-series simply because our 'own'  television is often months, years or seasons behind on what's already released elsewhere.

 

At least you have to give Valve credit for realizing this early on and bringing us Steam. It finally brought the convenience that illegal downloads had brought all along; the ability to 'buy' stuff from your chair, instant access, not having lots of physical media gathering dust, etc. I bet that really cut down on piracy a lot. I know it did for me.

[Sauron]

Expect it back in 42

[The Gentoomen]

I was on the site earlier today, I did not see this coming. What.cd was one of the greatest sources of music on the internet, there were digital copies of music there that did not exist anywhere else on the internet. Usually rips from old vinyl music and such. It was all high quality too, there were rarely any songs or albums without a flac version. RIP what.cd. With waffles.fm down as well I don't know what I'll do for my music needs.