- Joined
- Jul 13, 2022
Last time I discussed file hosting sites I talked about how zippyshare essentially faded into the ether. It was sad but not groundbreaking. Yes a couple of archived indie albums may have been lost but it wasn't monumental. Ulozto.net, however, is a completely different thing. Unless you may not be aware ulozto.net could be considered a more unregulated version of the Internet archive. If there was a crack that had not been seeded in over 10 years you probably would be able to find it uploaded around that period. And it wasn't just your average crack of illustrator cs4, there was tons of obscure files too. This includes but is not limited to; bootleg films (e.g. 2001 younggary), art films, j2me applications, licensed fonts, ios ipa collections, etc. Now in regards to what happened. I was a bit worried about this earlier around the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 when they got rid of their on-site search and began to query searches on google, yandex, and what I guess what you could consider their loophole gozo which is essentially a neutered version of their original search engine (but perhaps sufficient enough to pass the eyes of EU regulators). Nevertheless it seems as if getting rid of their search engine was not enough as abruptly without warning on December 1st they announced "Uloz.to Disk fundamentally changed the way it operates in response to European DSA legislation". If you go to the site now you will notice that the search is no longer available and instead there is a pop up on the top discussing how you should read their FAQ. I linked a screenshot to this post from the beginning of the FAQ.
Scrolling down, there is a section discussing how if you log into their site you can access the search function but as of December 1st you can no longer access others files EVEN IF YOU ARE LOGGED IN. This is why if you use a search engine like yandex and search for a ulozto link it will say "file not found" if a query from the site pops up. What does this mean? Options are shrinking quickly, and fast, for ways to have direct link archives. The only service I know that has little to no regulation these days and has a search query now is 4shared. And even now they havent updated their ui in over 10 years, so I have a feeling it'll be any day before they just shut down out of nowhere. I'm sure you can include the Internet archive as well, but their track record does not instill trust in my heart that they'll be around forever as they seem to bend their knees really quick to pressure from third parties (e.g. taking away kiwifarms from the Internet archive)...I have a feeling all it will take is a very angry nintendo lawyer and they'll be gone. So what option is left? I guess you just have to hope to god someone seeds a torrent for enough time and that when they don't feel like it anymore someone else will pick up their slack. I don't know though...whats everyones thoughts on this?
