Downloadhub has been one of the most popular websites in India to download pirated movies and TV shows since it launched. It provides links for downloading favorite TV shows and movies in most of the languages like Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and other regional Indian languages. It also provides the old classics in every language to download, and that is what sets it apart from other such websites. It began with offering only Hindi content, but as its popularity has increased, it has started providing content in other languages.
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Why Is Downloadhub Popular?
Downloadhub is a neatly designed website with an easy to use UX and all the content adequately arranged in groups which makes it easier to find or discover movies and TV shows on the website. The homepage contains all the trending, most downloaded, or newly released movies and shows. Those looking for new releases do not have to go beyond the homepage, usually to get what they are looking for. For other movies and shows, the website makes sure that they can be discovered easily by sorting and arranging them in various categories based on their genres, dates of release, language, popularity, or in alphabetical order.
This ease of use is one of the reasons behind the sudden increase in its popularity. The website has, over the years, made a massive base of users across the globe who are looking for predominantly Indian content to watch for free. It also keeps in mind the fact that those who decide to pirate a movie don’t necessarily have a good internet connection or a massive data plan. Hence it provides movies and shows in different qualities like 360p, 480p, 720p, and also in HD.
With such features, it has been successful in attracting the audience, which is not able to buy movie tickets every week or don’t have the financial resources to buy a subscription to streaming services every month. This is the audience Downloadhub is catering to and has smartly designed their website such that even the poorest of people will be able to watch movies and shows as and when they want.
How Does Downloadhub Work?
Before learning about why it stopped working, we should see how Downloadhub works in the first place. Downloadhub does not maintain any of its servers as it adds to the cost, and the download speeds reduce drastically. Some legal implications are also involved in distributing pirated content on owned servers. To avoid it, they use third-party servers to upload all the pirated content and provide links on their website.
This increases the download speeds tremendously. This also acts as a legal loophole as they are only providing the links and are not storing any data themselves. When the links on the websites are clicked, the user gets redirected to another server on which the file is available. Using this method, they provide movies and TV shows to download as well as to stream online. They use advertisement-supported link shortening services and host advertisements on the website to generate revenues and keep the website running. They also use that money to pay for the hosting cost of various servers they use.
Even though they do not use their servers, producers and content owners regularly use copyright laws to put copy strikes on the website. When it receives a copyright complaint, Google takes down the website from their SERP ( Search Engine Results Page). This is one of the reasons why the domain extension of the website keeps on changing continuously. This makes the website difficult to find on the internet. To solve this problem, Downloadhub is now also available on Telegram in the form of telegram groups. They have changed multiple TDLs until now to make sure that the website is up and running.
Effects of Downloadhub On Movie Industry
With the hunger for consuming new content amongst the internet users increasing continuously, websites such as Downloadhub became more than ever popular, with some estimates pegging these websites amongst the most visited websites in the country. Websites like Downloadhub have been responsible for leaking many movies in the past, many times even before their official launch.
This has been affecting the revenue generated at the box office by movies severely with some reports saying that the number of actual people going to watch movies in theaters has been continuously falling since the 2000s, which coincides with the time Internet started gaining traction in the country. Estimates peg the losses to the entertainment industry because of such websites leaking movies before or after its release at billions of dollars every year.
Many prominent film producers, directors, and actors have been vocal about the effects these websites have on the collection of the movies and all the livelihoods related to film making. A recent report pegs the loss to the movie producers worldwide because of piracy at a staggering $ 2.8 billion.
Is Download Hub Legal and Why Was It Banned?
Since 2015, the government of India has been acting to put curbs on such piracy websites, and many such websites have been shut down in recent years, and their creators took in custody. This has been the reason many production houses sent copyright notices to Downloadhub for copying their content and Intellectual property without permission and distributing it. We do not support any form of piracy and would like to suggest Netflix and Amazon prime to our readers for streaming or downloading content legally and without any hassle.
Indian copyright laws have been a work in progress with amendments done to them regularly. According to these laws, it is illegal to distribute a movie or TV show to a broader audience without the permission of producers or those who hold the rights to distribute the content to a mass audience. Recent amendments to the laws have made it difficult to find loopholes in the laws and continue distributing content for free.
Recently, a new law called The Cinematograph Act was approved by the government in 2019, which increased the punishment for people found guilty of pirating content. According to the new law, any individual found guilty of recording a movie without the written consent of the producers can be jailed for a term of up to 3 years with a fine of Rs.10 lakhs being imposed on the culprit.
Other than recording, circulating a pirated copy is also included in the law and is considered a punishable offense. The law also amended to state that if someone has knowingly infringed or helped someone, in any way, to infringe the copyright law, and to download a movie which was copyrighted, then it will be considered as a criminal activity. If the content being pirated has any watermark mentioning that it is a copyrighted work, then the court will assume that the person knew about it being a case of knowingly breaking the law. The punishment in such cases has been set. The punishment also includes a jail term from six months to three years, and a fine between Rs 50,000 and Rs.200,000 can be levied on the person.
Using these laws, the Downloadhub network responsible for leaking such movies has been consistently attacked by the authorities, and many arrests have been made in piracy-related cases all over the country. The government of India has also banned Downloadhub and similar websites in the country, including their known domain extensions in the country.
Downloadhub has been responsible for the leak of many high budget movies in the country like Chapaak, War, Good Newzz, Gully Boy, Baahubali, Avengers Endgame, Saaho, Adithya Varma, etc. being the latest ones. Bhoot Part One: The Haunted Ship, Bird of Prey, Joker, Kabir Singh, Dear Comrade, Arjun Patiala, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Lion King, John Wick 3, Dabangg 3 are also some of the most awaited movies which were leaked by the website. Because of these leaks and illegal hosting and distribution of pirated content, Downloadhub is violating many laws worldwide. This has led to governments all over the world to take action against Downloadhub and other such services. Many services like Rainierland, Worldfree4u, Movierulz, etc. also have faced the brunt of the authorities.
This co-ordinated action taken by the governments worldwide has been the reason for the website not working anymore, but even then, there are ways through which such websites can be easily accessed. Many people use VPN services or other forms of proxies to access the website even if it is banned. The website is also available to use in the Dark web, but not many people know how to access it. That is one of the reasons why the website has to keep changing domain extensions of the location of their servers to prevent governments from blocking them and to continue providing the services.
Conclusion
Even though Downloadhub is one of the most popular websites to download or view movies and tv shows, it is not entirely legal. Such websites have caused billions of dollars in lost revenue to the production houses. Governments also lose their income earned in the forms of taxes on the sales of tickets or from profits earned by streaming websites.
Because of this reason, many governments are making their copyright laws stricter and closing the legal loopholes available for such websites to exploit. With the new laws in place, law enforcement authorities have been working very hard to make sure that the websites which are pirating movies and shows do not function easily. Governments have also banned many websites known from spreading pirated copies of such content. This is the reason why Downloadhub does not work in India anymore.
