The writings been on the all for a long time. Public trackers are as good as dead. People have held on to a cocky attitude that there will always be somebody to take up the mantle but that hasn't been true in so long. Anti-piracy has been winning by war of attrition.
The interest in bittorrent usage has been on a gradual decline for good decade at least. Try looking for some recent shows these days and you'll be hard pressed to find many seeders for even popular ones. You'll still be able to download it eventually but it's a long way down from the heyday when obscure content was highly available.
These days everyone has streaming subscriptions or is logging in with someones account. The dwindling number of torrenters will download and watch relatively soon after release. Then the torrent dies real quick.
I'm pretty sure to much of the younger generations piracy means getting content from pirate streaming sites more than anything. The decline of PC usage has got to be a big factor too. There just isn't anymore nerd culture of your PC being your main device much less leaving it running 24/7 with a torrent client. I bet soon enough as gen alpha comes of age, bittorrent will be a forgotten technology of the ancients.
Pirate traffic did decline dramatically because of fair and convenient streaming options. But now the streaming options aren't fair or convenient anymore and piracy is on the rise again. The studios got greedy again, feeling that they hold all the power over a helpless and captive audience, and they miscalculated. Yo ho ho!
Same for "lost media" kinda stuff. I would usually find Torrents with seeds for obscure bands from my dad's old country, that he loves listening to, but nowadays, all that stuff is gone, and no way to purchase the bootleg of a concert in Eastern Europe, in 1992.
Hell, even official albums are hard to get, with being out of press, the rights being lost to the ages and stuff like that. Even with music from when I was young, and I'm not even 40.
Last time I ranted about it, people told me to just find the stuff on YouTube and download it from there, it was atrocious.
For real. My server always finds media within minutes of being posted. Granted I primarily use Usenet, and only BitTorrent as a fall back, but even still, piracy has never been easier for me.
The interest in bittorrent usage has been on a gradual decline for good decade at least. Try looking for some recent shows these days and you'll be hard pressed to find many seeders for even popular ones. You'll still be able to download it eventually but it's a long way down from the heyday when obscure content was highly available.
I'm living in a country of an obscure language, and this is not really a problem here, so I'm a bit surprised to read this.
I believe the low seed counts are due to the absolute trash out there. Actual good shows and movies are still strong. Niche items have always been hard to find. But we're saturated with garbage entertainment these days. No one really cares to seed what they watch once and then never think about again.