The new architecture of pirate sites, what I call the Hydra architecture, seems pretty interesting to me. There isn't a single site hosting the content, but a group of mirrors freely exchanging data between one another. In case some of them go down, the other ones still remain and new ones can appear, copying data from the remaining mirrors. This is like a hydra that grows two heads every time you chop one off. It's absolutely unkillable, as there's no single group or server to sue.<p>A more advanced version of this architecture is used by pirate addons for the Kodi media center software. Basically, you have a bunch of completely legal and above board services like Imdb that contain video metadata. They provide the search results, the artworks, the plot descriptions, episode lists for TV shows etc. Impossible to sue and shut down, as they're legal. Then, you have a large number of illegal services that, essentially, map IDs from websites like IMDB to links. Those links lead to websites like Openload, which let you host videos. They're in the gray area, if they comply with DMCA requests and are in a reasonably safe jurisdiction, they're unlikely to be shut down. On the Kodi side, you have a bunch of addons. There are the legitimate ones that access IMDB and give you the IDs, the not that legitimate ones that map IDs to URLs, and the half-legitimate ones that can actually play stuff ron those URLS (not an easy taks, as websites usually try to prevent you from playing something without seeing their ads). Those addons are distributed as libraries, and are used as dependencies by user-friendly frontends. Those frontends usually depend on several addons in each category, so, in case one goes down, all the other ones still remain. It's all so decentralized and ownerless that there's no single point of failure. The best you can do is killing the frontend addon, but it's easy to make a new one, and users are used to switching them every few months.