ONTD

12:26 pm - 02/16/2012

New Yorkers keep on keepin' on.

100 Person Poll: New Yorkers Are Not Afraid of Illegal File-Sharing
By JOE COSCARELLI

A crackdown on illegal downloading may very well be occurring in a way it hasn't since the fall of Napster. So far in 2012, file-sharing oasis Megaupload was raided and closed by the FBI, while BitTorrent wonderland The Pirate Bay plans to cover its tracks by removing all torrent files as its founder head to jail. Although the law enforcement action is focused on the people behind these sites, like the overblown bad guy Kim Dotcom, and not individual users, the arrests, seizing of websites, and potential legislation like SOPA and PIPA are clearly meant to send a message on behalf of movie studios, record labels, and other copyright holders. According to our admittedly unscientific and unrepresentative (but fascinating) poll, New Yorkers are barely taking notice.

Amid the swirl of bad news for illegal downloading, we sent out two interns, Catie Keck and Timothy Kosinski, to Union Square, Lincoln Center, and Morningside Heights to ask 100 passersby about their file-sharing habits. The most immediate thing we learned is that everyone does it:
Image and video hosting by TinyPic


From young teenagers to much older adults, 92 respondents said they illegally download "always" or "sometimes," and only eight said they never do.*

Next we asked whether recent woes for Megaupload and The Pirate Bay have discouraged their downloading:
Image and video hosting by TinyPic


Only 13 people said they were scared by the recent news and that it made them less likely to break the law, while 42 people said they're just going elsewhere to find what they want. Twenty-five people admitted that downloading is harder now, and eight people hadn't heard anything about it.

And yet overwhelmingly, a majority of people said they also pay for music and movies online via services like iTunes and Netflix:
Image and video hosting by TinyPic


We'll remain value neutral on this one, but the things people most commonly downloaded, according to our poll, were episodes of Game of Thrones and music by Drake. Taste aside, our lawless-leaning bunch included 30 people who said there should be no punishment whatsoever for file-sharing, while another 45 recommended a small fine. "But only if they can catch you," as one person put it, "which at this point seems hard to do."

*This post has been updated because we plugged the wrong number into the graph. 57 people, not 47, responded that they "sometimes" download.

Source.
Do you still dl at the same rate that you did before, ONTD? Or have you become discouraged by the loss of Megaupload (RIP) and other sites? Also, kudos to NY for continuing to have perfect taste i.e. dling Game of Thrones (Except Drake, tho? Really, guys? C'mon now. Even out of 100 people, for the majority to dl Drake... smhc.)
capsfanx10 17th-Feb-2012 04:44 am (UTC)
I know, and you can't google mediafire files anymore. It freaking sucks.
chuk_is_dazzled 17th-Feb-2012 04:47 am (UTC)
you cant?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
capsfanx10 17th-Feb-2012 04:50 am (UTC)
I tried last week and this came up,

"In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org."

or if you click on a link this comes up - http://www.mediafire.com/error.php?errno=378
kamikashi 17th-Feb-2012 05:03 am (UTC)
you can still google mediafire links. that has generally always come up if they decide to remove a link due to a complaint. most people now think mediafire doesnt work with google because they get a "index" error. saying something about indexing. but all you have to do with that is open the link in a new tab/window rather than directly clicking on it through the google search page.
guadalcanal 17th-Feb-2012 04:50 am (UTC)
yeah you can

I just did it like, five seconds ago?
frklphace 17th-Feb-2012 04:51 am (UTC)
lots have been removed though. sometimes it works for me othertimes i get the error
xtinkerbellax 17th-Feb-2012 04:50 am (UTC)
Ahh you can't? WTF.
fwee_prower 17th-Feb-2012 04:50 am (UTC)
and now i die.
jay_oats 17th-Feb-2012 04:56 am (UTC)
you can do some but not nearly as much as before. It really pisses me off.
animalyears 17th-Feb-2012 05:03 am (UTC)
IKR :(!!!!!
harrypotterlvr3 17th-Feb-2012 05:04 am (UTC)
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
redleigh86 17th-Feb-2012 05:05 am (UTC)
what, I just tried like a dozen different random things and they all worked...

Not to mention, you can use filestube or urvx.
alacrities 17th-Feb-2012 05:23 am (UTC)
wait, disregard my last comment. if you type in to google "site:mediafire.com artist name/song/album etc", stuff should come up.
andres01234 17th-Feb-2012 02:07 pm (UTC)
filestube.com bb
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