Nopy is dead :(

[7thCloud]

Damn. It was the only site which IDM could actually max out my download speed from. Hope they're able to get the stuff with payment processors sorted out, I can't stand having to restart my router every time Mega hits it's available quota for my IP to continue downloading

use a VPN lmao, nordvpn give a decent speed.

 

[Deleted member 4289331]

use a VPN lmao, nordvpn give a decent speed.

The whole reason I'm pirating in the first place is to avoid paying money. However cheap Nord may be, still isn't free

 

[blyatmccyka]

Well the money wouldn't be the biggest issue
The issue is that their PayPal was blocked and other options of obtaining money went bad.
If you remember Onlyfans had issue with Mastercard as they wanted to block the money transfer for them because of explicit and other issues. Imagine how big needle in boot for them was free open sharing site.

i guess you are correct. but man still, if they got the money, they just buy anew domain or some roundabout with this problem.

 

[Blaisdale]

They were the best at least to me any way.
Sad to see them go

 

[lemonfreak]

The whole reason I'm pirating in the first place is to avoid paying money. However cheap Nord may be, still isn't free

Opera comes with a free VPN built in

Thing is, if they don't charge you for it then they're paying for it by selling your data

 

[F-Zairo]

Like, c'mon guys, really? Creating a legal entity or a LLC in order to get access to credit card processors (while, of course, start paying your taxes) is not 'realistically viable' for people who were able to cover a $6,000 monthly bill via Patreon donations? Oh boy, the nerve of these people. It was a great service, though.

Managing a company/association/foundation is a PITA due to all the legal obligations attached (mandatory publication, meetings, accounts reporting, etc.).

When you run a side project, you want it to be pleasurable, not a chore on top of your regular day job.

 

[moskyx]

Managing a company/association/foundation is a PITA due to all the legal obligations attached (mandatory publication, meetings, accounts reporting, etc.).

When you run a side project, you want it to be pleasurable, not a chore on top of your regular day job.

Which is legit. But it's viable too (and not so complicated as you make It sound), they just didn't want to go through all that jazz. And most of all they don't want the scrutiny that comes with a legally established company in this business.

That's what bothers me about the decission, the fact that in their communication they aren't addressing the real reason behind their legit choice to shut it down. People are being mislead into thinking it's a conspiracy from payment proccessors against a potential competitor to some big guys, instead of realizing that nopy was just as dark as possible and you can't keep doing real business (and moving more than 6k monthly is something which starts to be serious) while staying in that opacity. They make it sound as if creating a proper company i.e. in the EU was a huge obstacle, when it's not: they just didn't want to do it for whatever reason, but of course it was a viable solution. Of course, if they just wanted to be a ghost owned site and still keep operating with ordinary companies while moving that amount of money, that's an impossible task.

 

[F-Zairo]

Frankly the only solution I see to this is either someone creating an alternative to the current banks/payment processors and simply allowing everything not straight up illegal, with as little moral arbitration as possible. Though, unless said moral arbitration is straight up illegalized there is simply no way to be sure.

The only other alternative to that is violence applied directly to these moral busybodies. Can't force your morals on people if your head ain't on your shoulders.

Actually there's another good alternative, although not quite as convenient for the majority of people : cryptocurrencies.

When you swap legal (fiat) currency for crypto tokens, the payment processors don't benefit (*) : it's the crypto exchanges that do.
Then, once you've gotten hold of your tokens and transferred them to your crypto wallet, nobody can tell you how you can or can't use your money.

So there is a legal (in most countries) way to indeed compltely bypass the payment processors, and get the donors' money where it's needed.

(*) Assuming you've wired the money directlyto the exchange, as opposed to buying tokens with your credit card.
Which you shouldn't do anyway, since it incurs more costs.

 

[F-Zairo]

Which is legit. But it's viable too (and not so complicated as you make It sound), they just didn't want to go through all that jazz. And most of all they don't want the scrutiny that comes with a legally established company in this business.

That's what bothers me about the decission, the fact that in their communication they aren't addressing the real reason behind their legit choice to shut it down. People are being mislead into thinking it's a conspiracy from payment proccessors against a potential competitor to some big guys, instead of realizing that nopy was just as dark as possible and you can't keep doing real business (and moving more than 6k monthly is something which starts to be serious) while staying in that opacity. They make it sound as if creating a proper company i.e. in the EU was a huge obstacle, when it's not: they just didn't want to do it for whatever reason, but of course it was a viable solution. Of course, if they just wanted to be a ghost owned site and still keep operating with ordinary companies while moving that amount of money, that's an impossible task.

It depends on one's definition of viability. Viable as in legally possible, yes, it was. Viable as in practically desirable, not so much.

Why they closed down instead of transforming their activity is likely due to a mix of reasons :

• Establishing any sort of legal entity is a PITA (at least compared to doing everything informally) ;
• Operating under an official entity means doxxing yourself (not so desirable when it entails hosting adult content) ;
• Payment processors are objectively veering towards prude policies ;
• Moving 6k€ monthly without operating under an official entity can indeed be problematic with payment processors due to their anti-money laundering obligations ;
• Perhaps fatigue with maintaining the project altogether.

Switching to crypto could have alleviated (though not completely solved) the majority of these pain points.

 

[moskyx]

It depends on one's definition of viability. Viable as in legally possible, yes, it was. Viable as in practically desirable, not so much.

Why they closed down instead of transforming their activity is likely due to a mix of reasons :

• Establishing any sort of legal entity is a PITA (at least compared to doing everything informally) ;
• Operating under an official entity means doxxing yourself (not so desirable when it entails hosting adult content) ;
• Payment processors are objectively veering towards prude policies ;
• Moving 6k€ monthly without operating under an official entity can indeed be problematic with payment processors due to their anti-money laundering obligations ;
• Perhaps fatigue with maintaining the project altogether.

Switching to crypto could have alleviated (though not completely solved) the majority of these pain points.

Except that you'll need to find some server hosting provider willing to accept that crypto as payment, and the higher costs you mean for them, the less likely you'll find a willing partner. Sooner or later someone in the chain will need to convert that crypto into "real" money to pay their ordinary expenses and God knows what will be its exchange value then, which is why cryptocurrencies are still little else than a financial investment and not a broadly accepted payment method.

So yeah. In my opinion, it was perfectly viable to start operating like any other company, while I can understand why they decided not to do that. I just wish they would have explained it in a more straightforward way (expecting a bit more rational understanding of the real situation from fellow f95'ers who have just seen their favourite source of pirated content is maybe asking too much)

 

[F-Zairo]

Except that you'll need to find some server hosting provider willing to accept that crypto as payment, and the higher costs you mean for them, the less likely you'll find a willing partner. Sooner or later someone in the chain will need to convert that crypto into "real" money to pay their ordinary expenses and God knows what will be its exchange value then, which is why cryptocurrencies are still little else than a financial investment and not a broadly accepted payment method.

What I had in mind was a simple scheme where the developers would receive crypto, convert it to fiat at an exchange, and send the fiat to their bank accounts. They could then use that fiat to pay for the server's cost. (And declare their crypto revenues in the meantime, or not, that'd be up to them).

But a hosting provider accepting crypto, as you mention, would make matters much easier to deal with.
A quick googling shows that such a service does exist :

You must be registered to see the links

Note that the hosting provider could demand to be paid with a more stable cryptocurrency, such as USDC or USDT.
These would still offer the benefit of bypassing regular payment processors, whilst offering more reassurance for the provider.

So yeah. In my opinion, it was perfectly viable to start operating like any other company, while I can understand why they decided not to do that. I just wish they would have explained it in a more straightforward way (expecting a bit more rational understanding of the real situation from fellow f95'ers who have just seen their favourite source of pirated content is maybe asking too much)

Agreed. The more transparent they'd be, the lesser the speculation about their move.

 

[Cross Zero]

F-Zairo: That would still require said crypto exchanges to not morally arbitrate. Also, relying on crypto is a terrible idea simply because crypto is pure speculation. Without being tied to something tangible your income is reliant on said speculators not fucking up the stocks.

 

[F-Zairo]

F-Zairo: That would still require said crypto exchanges to not morally arbitrate. Also, relying on crypto is a terrible idea simply because crypto is pure speculation. Without being tied to something tangible your income is reliant on said speculators not fucking up the stocks.

Crypto exchanges could possibly become a failure point as you say, however the risk is incomparably lower than with current payment processors ; given that no exchange enjoys a monopoly over the network (unlike Visa/Mastercard), and more importantly, that exchanges don't know what you're doing with your tokens/fiat money (esp. when using a privacy-oriented token like Monero).

I also disagree that crypto is pure speculation. It is generally a speculative space as of now, yes, but one couldn't reasonaby put in the same bag a worthless maymay token such as Dogecoin to a much more serious one like Ethereum.

Furthermore, as indicated previously, there is the option to transact using stable tokens such as USDC, which are backed with the corresponding amount of US dollars, i.e. tangible assets (if one believes in the credibility of the US monetary system at all, that is...).

 

[LuciusDrake]

I'm still crying waterfalls. There is no comparable with Nopy. Either it's not available everywhere or it's Mega, and we all now how likeable Mega is. Nopy, i miss you. Please recover fast and come back quickly, we need you. And no, it's not because you're for free, it's because you're greate. And next time, i will donate, i swear.

 

[Yngling]

I think it's absolutely ridiculous that a service as great as Nopy disappears over something as trivial as $6000/month server costs.
I mean, given how good it is, there must be ways to make money with it, or even just find investors for whom $6000/month is a joke.

instead of realizing that nopy was just as dark as possible and you can't keep doing real business (and moving more than 6k monthly is something which starts to be serious) while staying in that opacity. They make it sound as if creating a proper company i.e. in the EU was a huge obstacle, when it's not: they just didn't want to do it for whatever reason, but of course it was a viable solution. Of course, if they just wanted to be a ghost owned site and still keep operating with ordinary companies while moving that amount of money, that's an impossible task.

You make some good points but frankly I don't see the reason why Nopy should remain "as dark as possible".

I'm not a lawyer but I think there are ways to get out of liability for any content which you may be hosting.

I mean, if you were to look, I am sure that there is plenty of illegal and/or questionable content stored on OneDrive, Google Drive or whatever kind of cloud service. But I don't see anybody sueing Microsoft / Google over that.

 

[NoNameBrandBestBrand]

F-Zairo: That would still require said crypto exchanges to not morally arbitrate. Also, relying on crypto is a terrible idea simply because crypto is pure speculation. Without being tied to something tangible your income is reliant on said speculators not fucking up the stocks.

Stable coins exist

 

[APSabot]

But I don't see anybody sueing Microsoft / Google over that.

They have the lawyers, and they have the clout with the powers that be.

 

[NoBrainTrust]

Look at mega and how that ended. He made a new poject and then sold it to asia and asia does not care about the world internet economy and that is why it stays online.

 

[nocturne1500]

rip

 

[GATX-105E_Noir]

I always thought Pixeldrain was a good substitute when available. "When available" being the key words, as only a relative handful of games on this site have Pixeldrain links. I've always thought their speeds were actually pretty comparable to Nopy, at least in comparison to most of the other options