Coronavirus: Piracy sites register huge spike in traffic as people look for free entertainment during quarantine
Coronavirus is putting a lot of things to the test - healthcare systems around the world, people's abilities to take pandemics seriously and government response to emergencies. As people are staying in, be it precautionary or a government-mandated lockdown, what's really being put to the test is just how much the internet can keep people stuck at home entertained - and from the spike in visits to piracy sites, legal streaming services just aren't cutting it.
In Italy, where the government has declared a country-wide lockdown over the past week, traffic online has gone up by 30%, a significant increase. People trapped at home are forced to turn to the news and entertainment, which has been responsible for the uptick in traffic. Interest in streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime have also increased.
Legal streaming services, however, aren't the only ones attracting new traffic. According to TorrentFreak, local Italian torrent websites such as Guardaserie, Filmpertutti, Altadefinizione, CB01, and Eurostreaming have all seen a major increase in traffic over the past few days. The websites are preferred in Italy over international ones and as such, top international pirate sites have not seen a lot of increased activity from Italy, but they never really have before.
YTS, a top provider of movie torrents, has released a pirated version of 'Contagion' and it's quickly garnered enough downloads to put it in TorrentFreak's Top 10 downloaded movies list - an unprecedented occurrence, given that 'Contagion' is nearly a decade old. People are apparently obsessed with stories of fast-spreading diseases, despite the influx of constant news updates for COVID-19 already appearing everywhere.
File sharing is also seeing a rise in users. Read-Debrid, a download and streaming service, recently had to add a new server after receiving a record amount of traffic - only for that record to be broken once again as the site received a 20% increase in usage after a new server was added.
Also notable is that Italian residents have been given free access to PornHub's premium content. The international pornographic website has also announced that it will be donating money to Italy to help it combat the virus.