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Content preservation is a seriously underrated aspect of piracy. Prior to getting shut down in 2016, what.cd was practically the modern-day Library of Alexandria of music. Literally anything you could ever want to listen to was available in lossless FLAC format, made available by anonymous volunteers purely out of a love of music.

Now it's gone, and who knows how much music has been lost to time as a result.

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I only downloaded a few albums off what.cd since I only had a laptop and bad internet back then and couldn't maintain the ratio their standards demanded.

However I gotta say, their content and organization was better than any music library (legal included) that I've ever seen. It is truly a shame that we lost it so the labels thought they could make more money. I would guess that humanity might have lost some rare lossless records.

Shutting down what.cd should be considered a crime against humanity. I will never forgive copyright holders for that.

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