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> What changed was that DMCA acquired political muscle and cross-border reach, wiping out waves of torrent sites and P2P networks.

Half true - that was happening some, but wasn't why music piracy mostly died out. DMCA worked on centralized platforms like YouTube, but the various avenues for downloading music people used back then still exist, they're just not used as much anymore. Spotify was proof that piracy is mostly a service problem: it was suddenly easier for most people to get the music they wanted through official channels than through piracy.



DMCA claims took out huge numbers of public torrent trackers which was how 99% of people accessed contraband media. All the way back in 2008, the loss of TorrentSpy.com probably shifted everybody to private trackers, but it's a whack-a-mole game there too and most people won't bother.

DMCA also led to the development of ContentID and automated copyright strike system on Youtube, but it didn't block you from downloading the stream as a high bitrate MP3, which is possible even now.




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