Ask HN: Is Torrent a Dying Protocol?

Nothing recent appears on https://torrentfreak.com/?s=piratebay , site appears fine. I'm not sure where this mysterious shade-casting comes from?

BitTorrent has proven itself quite robust & resilient since the DHT & magnet links were introduced. Projects like Tribler[1][2] have been the leading edge of technology, working to create better fairness, to beget p2p search technologies, to allow p2p live streaming, all based around BitTorrent fundamentals. There's still very little technology like it, that could conceivably replace it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=tribler.org

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26206105

Again, wording matters. The protocol is declining. Sure. It is certainly not dying, which implies 5 - 10 years from now it will disappear entirely.

We have similar discussion only a few days ago [1], copying my answer here.

>Bandwidth is also getting cheaper. May be there is a floor somewhere, but we dont seems to have that in sight.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436367

Also not all countries prosecute or allow for lawsuits against downloaders.

Nope, lots of Linux distros use it for their disk image downloads.

Probably not. The technology still exists, and nothing beats it on P2P file transfer.

From the economic point, the fragmentation of streaming services will probably give it a resurgence.