Barely a year after its arrival, Darkino is getting a facelift by adopting a completely new interface. But despite its success, the large French illegal downloading and streaming platform is still forced to regularly change its address.
With all due respect to Arcom and all the organizations that relentlessly track them, pirate sites are doing well. After a small decline, piracy of works protected by copyright, and in particular films and series, even seems to be on the rise again in Europe, as the European Union Intellectual Property Office points out. (EUIPO) in its report for the year 2023. It must be said that the recent and multiple increases in the prices of streaming services such as Netflix or Disney+ do not encourage remaining legal in a period of generalized inflation which reduces the purchasing power of many consumers.
Darkino: the new reference for pirated content sites
This situation also seems particularly conducive to the development of Darkino, which has become one of the new references in the field in France alongside the famous Wawacity, which is still in operation. Appearing without warning at the end of 2022, this pirate site “officially” took over from the famous Tirexo and its short-lived successors – PapaFlix and Palixi –, retaining the recipes that made their success – notably an incredible catalog of films, TV series, software, games, music, magazines and other ebooks, all pirated – with a neat interface and functions, worthy of the best legal content distribution platforms. No wonder it enjoyed rapid success with enthusiasts, despite fierce competition with other similar platforms (see our article on direct download sites).
Like Tirexo and Palixi, which it succeeded, Darkino is an illegal download and streaming site providing access to pirated content. As soon as it went online in January 2023, Darkino already offered a wealth of content, undoubtedly from the old Tirexo and Palixi databases. In September 2023, there were more than 38,000 films – old but also recent –, more than 13,000 series – classics as well as trendy new releases –, nearly 9,000 anime, 11,000 documentaries, shows and television shows , around 8,000 games, 2,000 pieces of software, 13,000 ebooks and some 23,000 pieces of music. A huge base, elegantly highlighted thanks to a neat interface, which benefits from a sophisticated classification system and an effective search engine with numerous filters.
And the creators of Darkino clearly have no shortage of ideas for their platform to continue to stand out in the landscape. And if the site still has to regularly change its address (URL) to escape blocking measures (see below), it has already undergone several functional developments since its launch. Thus, after having developed its own online storage service, to compensate for the sudden disappearance of the legendary Uptobox, it has once again offered itself a completely new interface to better showcase its vast catalog.
Darkino: a new look for 2024
Since mid-December 2023, Darkino has completely revised its presentation and organization, a structural and aesthetic operation which led to bugs for a few days before stabilization. Completely revised, the home page offers several accesses to its catalog, through a horizontal menu and a side pane which present its different sections (Films, Series, Anime, Software, etc.), immediately supplemented by various filters (Quality, Gender, Year…). In addition to the visual reorganization, a Trendz category has appeared to highlight major trends, and therefore the most sought-after content. In addition, by default it is the updates that are offered and you have to go through a menu to access the new features. Small changes that should not disorient regulars.
The presentation pages for films and series have also had a makeover, adopting a presentation worthy of cinema sites like AlloCiné, with thumbnail photos of the actors. Impressive ! And the list of available versions is still as plethoric, with the size and quality of each file offered. It feels like a store! Note that Darkino systematically offers several sources for downloads, highlighting its own file hosting service.
Darkino: a homemade file hosting service
In fact, and this is the other recent novelty that sets it apart even more from its competitors, Darkino now has its own hosting and file sharing service. A service that was set up quickly after the sudden disappearance of Uptobox in September. Well known to fans of illegal downloading, this online storage service abruptly closed its doors in mid-September 2023 (see our article) after being banned from ISP DNS (see our article), depriving pirate sites of a precious reservoir of contents. Users and administrators must therefore rely on other platforms such as 1fichier.
Because as always on this type of platform, the pirated content is not directly hosted on the sites, but on online storage services like 1fichier, via links pointing more or less directly to the files. A classic technique to circumvent the laws which prohibit this type of more or less direct “sharing” (see our article on direct download sites).
To fill the void left by the disappearance of Uptobox, Darkino created its own “reservoir”, Darkibox. An in-house hosting service that works exactly like other specialized platforms by offering different packages, with free but limited access, and more practical paid subscriptions. An additional way to earn income, on the backs of rights holders, because if Darkibox is officially used to store all kinds of files, it is mainly used to host and distribute pirated content put forward by Darkino. Practices which should soon attract the attention and wrath of Arcom and organizations fighting against the piracy of works.
Especially since this is not the only mercantile aspect of Darkino! Obviously not doubting anything, the site has in fact been offering monthly or annual paid subscription plans for several months offering various privileges, in addition to free access. And the prices are not symbolic: from 3.5 to 10 euros per month for the Pro and Premium plans, and 34.5 and 96 euros for one year, and even 140 and 400 euros for unlimited, “lifetime” subscriptions. . Without mentioning the morality of this type of business, it is not certain that this Lifetime formula will be very popular, given the risks of seeing the platform disappear overnight without warning, as was the case last year. last year for Extreme Download. …
Darkino: an address that changes often
The life of pirate sites like Darkino or Wawacity is indeed far from being a long, quiet river. Targets of Arcom and various international organizations for managing content protected by copyright, they are continually the subject of complaints and lawsuits, which forces them to regularly change their URL address to escape the radars – which Darkino just did again in December. Furthermore, for some time now they have been subject to blocking measures by most Internet service providers (ISPs), which prevent direct access to their URL. Blockages which, however, remain easy to circumvent by those in the know, since all you need to do is use a VPN or change the DNS – the Internet directories – to get past…
As curious as it seems given its insolent success, Darkino is still quite easy to find on the Web. All you have to do is enter your name into a search engine like DuckDuckGo to see it appear in the first results with your address in plain text! A URL which has already changed several times – which has just changed in December 2023 and which will change again – but which is often based on the same recipe, with the word darkino preceded by the famous www with a number and followed by a domain extension . The only differences compared to its beginnings are that Darkino seems to have disappeared from Google results and the site now has to deal with clones that are taking over its name…
The success of Darkino is in fact such that the pirate site is also cloned! In April 2023, we saw the appearance of a site with the exact same name, but with a Belgian domain name (.be) claiming the same “services”, namely free downloading and streaming, still in a completely illegal manner. Fun details, the clone site uses the interface and logo of the first version of the “real” Darkino, and it appears in front of the original in the results of certain search engines.
The intentions of its creators – or rather copiers – remain mysterious to the extent that although it also offers a lot of pirated content, downloading and streaming do not work. Even more surprising, the “fake” Darkino highlights recent films, which have just been released in theaters, and of which no digital copies are currently circulating. Everything suggests that this is a lure to harm the “official” Darkino by taking advantage of its notoriety to attract Internet users – and therefore traffic. Another clone appeared later, but only offering streaming. And if he first appears under the name Darkino, he quickly leads on the Gupi pirate platform. In short, fine examples of the famous clone wars which characterize the world of illegal sites, where pirates hack pirates…
And to stay at the top of its category, Darkino is constantly evolving. Thus, since its launch, the site has changed several times its address but also its interface, while gaining in functions. Over the course of the redesigns, the site administrators updated the database, changed the logo, reorganized the home page and added more powerful search and filtering tools (category, genre, period, quality, language, etc.). by offering the choice between streaming and downloading for audiovisual content. Everything to pamper regulars.
Darkino: random operation and an uncertain future
However, and even if it has some commercial intentions with its paid offers, Darkino is not a professional site – nor a public service! And the team that takes care of it is not intended to ensure quality of service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as on a legal business platform. Since it went online, Darkino has experienced several technical problems, some due to maintenance operations and updates, others to bugs and other malfunctions, problems which resulted in disabled functions or impossible access, sometimes with somewhat cryptic error messages…
Thus, the site has been inaccessible several times since its launch. One would have thought that the platform had been blocked by the authorities, given its insolent success – and its visibility. In fact, as administrators sometimes explain in messages Darkin’s Telegram news feedo – the same, moreover, which was dedicated to the original Tirexo… –, these are most often maintenance operations, to correct bugs or develop the site. Usually everything returns to “normal” within a few hours. But nothing says that this situation of virtual impunity will last: and it is entirely possible that the site will suddenly close, like others before it, if the authorities get angry. Which might not be long…