Piracy sites have uncertain future

For the past week, one of the world's most popular destinations for pirating movies and music has been down.

This is not uncommon. The Pirate Bay often doesn't work as corporations and governments move to thwart its creators and those that keep it running.

But this time the outage is ongoing and affecting a key functionality - the ability for people to upload content. What use is an illegal content site without any content?

Websites like The Pirate Bay allow people to search and download files using file-sharing technology.

Those who love them say they should be able to get access to whatever content they like easily. Those who hate them (movie studios and music labels) say they eat away at their profits.

The groups have been fighting for the past 15 years but neither will actually "win".

That's because everyone has started streaming, making both groups' actions increasingly irrelevant.

One core argument from those who use downloading sites is that they think it's unfair that content is hard to access.

But now streaming services make it easy to watch movies, TV shows or listen to music. It's also more affordable, with $15 a month giving you access to millions of songs, while another $15 gets you access to hundreds of movies and TV shows.

So what's the future for downloading sites?

It's not looking good. While fewer people use them, corporations have not let up in getting them shut down permanently. This is despite failures such as the copyright law change in New Zealand that aimed to fine illegal downloaders.

However, there have been successes, such as the closure of KickassTorrents, a competitor of The Pirate Bay, in 2016.

The latest move was getting Sweden (the home of The Pirate Bay) to get internet providers to block the site.

This already happens in several countries around the world including Australia, Germany and England (but not New Zealand).

However, despite large fines and jail time for the founders, The Pirate Bay fights on.

It will probably keep going for a while but more as a niche destination rather than the powerhouse it once was.

It's likely to be a place to go for hard-to-get content and is likely to be remembered alongside Napster and MySpace as a pioneering website that was overtaken by progress.