Just a few months ago i got Netflix and im quite enjoying it so far. Mostly due to having Star Trek series at the press of the button. Im a huge Star Trek fan and id go as far as saying that if i had to pick only one show to watch till the end of time, Star Trek would be it. :)
But thats besides the point. What i noticed after some time is that i almost completely stopped using Bittorent to pirate shows or movies.
Im someone that goes to the cinema quite regularly and dont really wait for the movies to drop on Bittorent nor do i watch the crappy handheld camera footage.
I can simply attribute my change in behavior to convenience. That is the most important word when it comes to any and all services. Its extremely important even in the case of STEEM, something that most people here dont realize.
I found it much easier to simply turn on my TV and click "Netflix" then browse piratebay, looking for top seeds (now that piratebay isnt working well), hoping that i dont catch malware, wait for the download, download the subtitles, hope they dont suck, upload to USB and plug into the TV.
The cost: $12 a month.
12$ is basically nothing for most people to pay for the convenience it offers.
So i was thinking about how this affected the traffic of Bittorent. I first assumed that the traffic would go down significantly but the truth is somewhat different.
Due to streaming service fragmentation and platform exclusive content piracy is increasing.
What this basically means is that due to people having to pay dozens of streaming services to watch their favorite show people simply.... dont.
Amazon, HULU, HBO, Netflix, Disney... etc.
Theres just too damn many streaming services! Are you really going to pay 100$ a month to watch every show you like?
Netflix is ofc number 1 when it comes to these streaming services accounting for about 15% of total download traffic worldwide while Bittorrent ranks at number 5 with 4% of download traffic.
I found that quite interesting. Even though the convenience is there, the fragmentation and content exclusivity is hurting every platform. It seems that the more competitive they are with each other, the more the content streaming industry as a whole loses even though it seems to be a growing industry.
BITTORENT:
Not until i started looking at the craziness that is TRON did i really give Bittorent more of a thought.
As you guys can remember Justin purchased Bittorent and launched BTT.
I was curious to see what the potential for that token was so i did some research.
What i found was that BTT token utility was godawful. It essentially relied on illegal activity, copyright infringement and content theft.
It rewarded it and essentially encouraged it.
I tried hard to find recent stats to see what % of Bittorent traffic was illegal activity that was infringing on copyright.
Unfortunately i could not find anything more recent then a study done in 2010 by the University of Ballarat in Australia:
The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal.
Only 0.3% were found to be legal!
How is BTT a smart investment, again?
The study was done in 2010, to be fair, when Bittorent usage was higher then now but id still assume that more then 99% of torrents today are simply content theft.
CONCLUSION:
So how could bittorent be pushed back into fringes where it undoubtedly belongs?
The only way that could happen is if we see partnerships between the streaming services or one streaming service dominate the market.
Until then i think it will be hard to diminish the influence of torrenting. BTT will ofc, still remain a garbage investment that funds illegal activity but with the massive traffic Bittorent receives BTT will remain relevant in the crypto space among unscrupulous investors looking for a quick buck.