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This project has been funded with support
from the European Commision.
"Saddest day of the year for music. Even Bowie and L. Cohen death can't beat
that."
"Mate, I can't take it, lost Prince this year, Trump got elected, Brexit and my
dad died - but this is by far the worst fucking thing, I can't even compute."
"This is the worst event of 2016. End of discussion. The library of Alexandria
for digital music has been burnt to the ground."
"Unprecedented loss to the Internet community itself. This truly might be one
of the saddest things happening online since the inception of Internet itself."
"An incredibly emotional sense of loss right now, as irrational as that sounds.
So fucking sad, and it has nothing to do with losing pirated music."
"I'm in shock still. I knew it would happen one day, but never wanted it to. 10
years of my life. My family, my community, and my passion."
"I'm speechless. I'm losing a best friend. Five years I was a part of it, and
it changed my life."
"I'm so sad man. I never realized it until now but that website shaped a large
part of who I am."
"This is honestly one of the saddest days of my life -- so proud to have been
part of this community while it lasted, hope one day we might see another."
"It was the most important thing on the internet for me for the last few
years. I cannot express how heartbroken I am."
"I can't believe it, I'm genuinely heartbroken. There was so much old and
unknown music and alternate releases that I feel like there's a lot of music
that will never be heard ever again."
"Undoubtedly the largest repository of music ever built and also, in my
opinion, the most decent, professional, kind and just generally well-run entity
to come out the pirate/torrent scene. This is a very, very sad day for us all."
"I feel like I've lost my best friend today. What.cd was one of the greatest
discoveries of my life and I will always be grateful for the time I spent
there. It wasn't a tracker for pirates, it was a tracker for music lovers."
"A real tragedy. More than a torrent tracker, What.cd was a beautiful, vibrant,
and positive community. Knowing someone in real-life who was a fellow
What.cd'er was enough to form an immediate friendship."
"I will never forget what.cd. I was lucky enough to spend almost two years
there, learned the benefits of seedboxing and got a much more intimate
knowledge base of trackers, ratios and digital music formats.
The sadness I feel for this loss is physical. Not just a lighthearted 'RIP in
peace' to another website lost, as was the case with the initial Pirate Bay
seizure. This is a loss the entire music and art community will suffer from."
"A really big part of who I am was destroyed. It was my everyday, my anonymous
friendships, my discoveries and sentimental hopes.
This fucking police didnt understand the enormous importance to artists too. I
went to so many concerts because of all the discoveries, I gladly donated and
bought special edition records, cassettes. My money was going directly to the
artists and not the abusive managers and lawyers that constantly prioritize
profit to creativity."
"Goddamn barbarians. The commercial music industry dumps old music like we do
old clothes. There was no greater archive of old and obscure music than
What.CD, it's a serious loss for all of humanity really. It wasn't simply a
piracy site, it was the greatest music history site on Earth. I don't even know
what to do now, it feels like I've just been cut off from decades if not
centuries of music."
"This is the face of contemporary barbarism. It is heinous, philistine
vandalism. The French are the absolute worst. They equate culture with
property, turn it into a weapon of class warfare. What.cd is dead. Every
musician, producer, peformer, member of the music community should condemn this
and publicly express their outrage."
"FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. NO.
Literally the worst. What.CD had become one of my very favourite websites ever
in the time since I joined. The uploads, the organisation, the conversation,
the forums, the charts, the collages... everything was SO fucking good. The
biggest library of music ever. Destroyed.
Yes, it was illegal. But I believe in the future, this will be seen as stupid
as fuck. I never stopped buying music because I started pirating it. I doubt
there was any decrease at all. I'm not going to START buying more music because
What is down... what has doing this (taking down What) really achieved? I doubt
music sales will go up at all. All it's done is destroyed a great community and
a fantastic archive.
Man. I'm going to miss What so much. I hope on a new music tracker, I can meet
the people that really, I wasn't 'friends' with, but I knew by their name and
their avatar, and I listened to their recommendations and what they had to say
about music, listened to their posts about which version of an album to
download... listened to them discussing the Presidential Election..."
"What.CD achieved something that the magical efficient market never did. So it
smashed it. In capitalism, it's perfectly legal to destroy an archive full of
art and culture because of the loss of profit. Can't have the dangerous
resistance of a vibrant, positive community being intrinsically motivated to
gather knowledge and make an archive of culture without the exchange of money!
What if Marx was right?
Let me link to an ode to KG, a tracker specialised in obscure movies - you can
easily replace movies with music.
> The myth that Netflix and iTunes offer a frontier where 'everything' is
available to watch instantly is a bad joke to anyone with a serious interest in
movies. That crowd is forced, by the market itself, to fend for itself. Many of
us would indeed buy an Out 1 Blu-ray or cue up Out 1 on Netflix if such a thing
were possible. But in the meantime KG will be cherished for the rare and valued
access it affords."
"I feel like there should be similar outrage over availability of film. Bluray
will likely be the last physical media for things like this. Then we will have
to deal with companies like Netflix or Amazon for streaming if we want to do it
legally. This art form is being, and will continue to be, lost in time because
there is no way to see them.
Can you imagine if libraries and book stores were forced to no longer provide
Darwin's Origin of Species because they couldn't afford the licensing cost from
the copyright owner? That is assuming the copyright owner is willing to make
that content available at all to libraries.. It would be devastating to all of
humanity to lose that knowledge.
The vast majority of films I watch are not available on any legal platform. The
place I illegally download movies has everything under the sun. There is very
little that I can't find there. I would happily pay for the service I use now
if it would make it legal.. that isn't going to happen though. It obviously
isn't a technical limitation because the service does actually exist. This will
never be a legal alternative because greed and lawyers gets involved.
I encourage everyone to pirate any film they can not find legally. Do it now
because there is no guarantee you'll ever be able to see it again. I'm
legitimately worried for the future of art if this trend continues."
"What.cd being dead is a major loss for music. It was the biggest digital
library / archive to exist. It pooled the resources of people from all around
the world, to preserve music that was once lost, or music that isn't available
on the market. Like a swap meet or convention, people could share things that
no longer exist. Not only share rare things, but provide various formats of it,
and higher quality rips that didn't once exist.
There is this perception that what.cd was just a place to steal the latest
music. And to be fair, what.cd still offered a much better service than
anything you could pay. But it was so much more then that. Even famous
musicians were on OinK and what.cd (they kept their identity hidden) - because
anyone that loves music, what.cd was important. It was something that needed to
exist.
So this is a devastating loss. I was around when OiNk fell. I remember what it
felt like during that time. And I remember migrating over to what.cd thinking
it would never be the same. And to think what.cd grew to be much bigger. That
it lasted so long. Which makes it all the more devastating. I'm at a loss of
words to describe how I feel right now. A part of me wants to cry. This is a
massive loss.
I wish I hadn't taken the site for granted. I had become so used to it being a
part of my life, that I always accepted it as this constant thing. I now feel
out of the loop, like I'll never know when the next site pops up. I really want
to be optimistic. And I hope that if a new site does come around, that the same
what.cd community migrates. Because that is something else some don't know.
What.cd was a big community of really good people. Friends and family, and
music lovers. And it won't be the same without those same people.
It just feels wrong to pull the plug and shut things off without a warning.
It's something we always knew could happen in the back of our minds. But to
have something like this exist and then stop existing without getting any
closure, without getting to say goodbye. Without getting to keep in contact
with some. This is just really shitty."
"Travesty. Biggest trove of classical music lost forever. I found CD's on there
of even local friends bands, EVERYTHING was there. My friends dads bands
discography that they themselves lost was on there!
I made great friends from there and w.cd was a daily topic in my life amongst
me and my friends. Sharing new music, keeping track of each others latest DL's
etc. Top 10's, collages, related artists, bounties. I loved waking up and
browsing a collage like 'House music from the Congo in 1973' or something and
going on a journey. All lost.
It's going to take forever to get out of this depression, that was my last
community, and I've been there for a decade.
I have the WCD community to credit for who I am today as a musician and
developer, as the community exposed me to all sorts of things when I was
15/16ish that I probably otherwise wouldn't have discovered. I'd probably be
working sales right now or cash at some grocery store if it wasn't for WCD.
The internet is now dead to me for anything other than work. Between this and
all the surveillance and social media and fake news and other bullshit, it's
just another tool to me now.
What an absolute shit day."
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