Percentage change in visits to music piracy websites in Italy 2019, by website
Between July 2018 and January 2019, Italian authorities blocked several websites that enabled users to download or stream music illegally. A research published in July 2019 analyzed the year-on-year percentage change in number of total combined visits recorded by five of the blocked websites. The study reveal that the number of visits to all considered websites decreased remarkably. Especially, visits to the website Freedsound.com, blocked in July 2018, dropped by 98 percent in March 2019, compared to the previous year. Similarly, visits to Conver2mp3.net, a stream ripping website, went down by 78 percent. Stream ripping refers to the act of converting files of streaming platforms to illegally download them.