[AnotherUnixGeek]

Bwahaha, a “storage service.” Are you shocked — shocked — to find that pirating was going on there? Just because a criminal organization has a legitimate “front” operation doesn’t mean it’s not a criminal organization.

Just because a business offers a service which can be abused by criminals doesn't mean it is a criminal organization. By the definition of "criminal organization that you're implying, airlines are "criminal organizations" because drug smugglers can purchase seats on flights with drugs packed in their bowels. Nikon and Canon are "criminal organizations" because they sell cameras which can be used to produce child porn. Telephone services are fronts for "criminal organizations" because callers can make lewd or threatening calls which violate clearly stated laws.

A lot of these other “storage” services have now changed their policy to only allow downloading of content by the same users who uploaded it. I’d be curious to see how much traffic has decreased on their sites since that change.

Well, I'd imagine traffic has gone down, since the usefulness of these sites for perfectly legitimate applications has been ruined. Yup, let's destroy any technology which might conceivably be used for nefarious purposes. Makes perfect sense for those who believe that anything that can be abused shouldn't exist at all. Oh, and screw having to prove any criminal wrong-doing in a court of law - someone who can afford powerful Congressional lobbyists said so, and that should be good enough.

[packrat35]

Another reason the sites traffic has gone down is many people are fleeing the sites. They are downloading all their files and cancelling their service cause they don’t know if that site will be shut down next.