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The surprise shutdown of the RARBG torrent site and its tracker shocked millions of users, and the fallout is already being felt in other parts of the piracy ecosystem. Other torrent sites are seeing a slowdown in new content, auto-download apps are starting to throw errors, and many of the biggest streaming sites are losing a key source of content.
Pirate sites come and go, often unnoticed by the general public. That was certainly not the case when RARBG said goodbye yesterday.
The popular torrent site had millions of daily users spread across various domain names. This included the flagship .to domain which currently displays a goodbye message.
After a short interval, many users simply began looking for alternatives, perhaps unaware that the effects of the RARBG shutdown go beyond the site itself, leading to a much broader impact, even on popular "alternatives."
RARBG Releases and Tracker
On the surface, RARBG looked like any other torrent site, but it was one of the few platforms that released a constant stream of new content. All pirated movies and TV shows come from somewhere and RARBG acted as a key bridge between scene sources and the general public.
RARBG bots collected this content from external sources before publishing it on the site itself. Internal ExtraTorrent launch groups job similarly, even under the 'ETTV' label, before closing last year due to a lack of funds.
The absence of new releases is likely to make the broader hacking ecosystem more vulnerable. The same can be said for RARBG's dedicated tracker, which also went offline yesterday, abruptly dropping millions of connections. And it doesn't end there.
Streaming and Torrent Sites Feel the Pain
With another popular source of pirated movie and TV show releases gone, the supply side of piracy is shrinking. The vast majority of public torrent sites do not have their own publishing channels. Instead, they relied on external parties like the RARBG.
This applies equally to direct download sites and streaming portals. While pirated streaming sites have gotten much bigger than their torrent peers in recent years, their movie and TV show libraries can often be traced back to torrent sources.
There are still alternative fonts available, for now, but with RARBG gone, the options are more limited. This means that there will be considerable pressure on the remaining providers, to say the least.
In addition to typical pirate sites, RARBG links also appeared on dedicated pirate channels on platforms like Telegram. These no longer work. The same is true for users of software like Sonarr, for whom RARBG was also a popular font.
From the ashes?
The above may sound grim, but it illustrates the important position RARBG occupies in the hacking scene. That being said, pirates have proven resilient in the past, so there are likely others willing to take the risk and fill the void.
Those will include copycats trying to take over the RARBG brand. The same has happened in the past with EZTV, YTS, KickassTorrents, and Torrentz, with various levels of success.
However, things are not getting any easier. In his farewell message, RARBG outlined several reasons for shutting up. In addition to the tragic personal problems, they included rising accommodation costs and a decline in income. That too is becoming a trend.
Inflationโฆ
While inflation has never been mentioned as a reason to shut down a pirate site before, financial struggles prevail. As mentioned above, ETTV cited the same reason to close the shop last year and others went ahead of them.
So what about the remaining sites? Speaking with TorrentFreak, the operator of LimeTorrents mentions that the site has no plans to stop, but they did confirm that rising hosting costs and low ad revenue are a real concern.
That said, inflation and other cost-related issues also work in pirate sites' favor, the site's operator said. After all, legitimate platforms like Netflix and Disney+ cost money, while torrent sites are free and offer more content.
All in all, we can conclude that the broader piracy ecosystem has lost a key player that was much more than just another torrent site. While others could take their place, if they are willing to take the risk, the loss of RARBG is undoubtedly a considerable setback.
