Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 207 posts

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#21

Post by a3_nm »

carlisle_ wrote: post #2

>There was no concern for his vegan diet I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.

I agree with the fact that it is problematic to say that prisons should accommodate any kind of voluntary diets (vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, etc.). I do not say this because prisons should "punish" inmates, but because it would require to draw a line between "common" or "reasonable" voluntary diets, and other diets. (Of course, this does not apply to special diets required for medical reasons.) In fact, I have the same problems with voluntary diets being honored in other State-run facilities such as school canteens.

However, I do not see why, as a general principle, prisoners should not be allowed to buy food and have it shipped to them, using their own money.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#22

Post by jevinskie »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3
carlisle_ wrote: post #2

>There was no concern for his vegan diet I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.

How about his Tuesday lunch with his mother? And his yoga lesson? Prison sucks.

Lunch with family (in the prison) sounds like a great way to improve recidivism rates. I'd bet that yoga or another form of meditation would also be beneficial.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#23

Post by dwild »

adamnemecek wrote: post #13
johansch wrote: post #10

Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years. I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even with the ads.

I can believe they weren't making much but I have an hard time believing they were actually losing money. At that scale, if they were losing any money, it would be way more than they could afford to.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#24

Post by achamayou »

johansch wrote: post #10

Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years. I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

Aren't everyone's taxes and incomes meant to be public in Sweden ? Assuming he did file his taxes properly, this should be verifiable.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#25

Post by paulhauggis »

r00fus wrote: post #11
carlisle_ wrote: post #2

>There was no concern for his vegan diet I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.

> I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this. Well, it all depends on whether you think a prison is meant primarily for rehabilitation or punishment.

on HN, it depends.

a greedy corporate fat cat that cheated people? punishment. Drug or copyright infringement related crimes? rehab.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#26

Post by dwild »

johansch wrote: post #20
adamnemecek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even with the ads.

That's all their claims. They were not able to show that they were losing or making money in court. There were no records, at all. However, they would have to been incredibly incompetent not to make millions off the advertisment, based on their amount of traffic. This was key in the procedings. I mean.. right now thepiratebay.se is at top 90 in the alexa ranking. More traffic than e.g. nytimes.com, ebay.co.uk, redtub…

The issue is the provenance of the ads, there's way more ad publisher interested in nytimes, ebay, etc... it's even worse when you consider that people that surf piratebay probably use an ad blocker or won't be interested to buy any product.

I have an hard time though to believe they would be losing money. How could they afford to keep it online at that scale if they had to use their own money.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#27

Post by johansch »

dwild wrote: post #26
johansch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all their claims. They were not able to show that they were losing or making money in court. There were no records, at all. However, they would have to been incredibly incompetent not to make millions off the advertisment, based on their amount of traffic. This was key in the procedings. I mean.. right now thepiratebay.se is at top 90 in the alexa ranking. More traffic than e.g. nytimes.com, ebay.co.uk, redtub…

The issue is the provenance of the ads, there's way more ad publisher interested in nytimes, ebay, etc... it's even worse when you consider that people that surf piratebay probably use an ad blocker or won't be interested to buy any product. I have an hard time though to believe they would be losing money. How could they afford to keep it online at that scale if they had to use their own money.

How does pornhub.com make money?

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#28

Post by abandonliberty »

Goronmon wrote: post #6
ohyesyodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you are not the only one, but why wouldn't the prison do that?

Why should a prison accommodate a prisoner who is a vegan any more than one who wants to eat filet mignon for every meal?

Or one who refuses to eat pork.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#29

Post by tedks »

adamnemecek wrote: post #13
johansch wrote: post #10

Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years. I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even with the ads.

When did they stop hosting .torrent files? Hosting only magnet links means they have nearly nil bandwidth costs (just some sparse HTML pages, by far the biggest piece of content on a tpb results page are the ads) and require very little infrastructure.

In contrast, they have banners on the results page, pop-ups when you interact on the results pages, and massive banners on the item pages.

A good chunk of their clientèle hopefully runs adblock, and I also can't imagine the ads they're serving are very lucrative since few legitimate companies will want to do business with them, but I can't imagine that it balances out.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#30

Post by johansch »

achamayou wrote: post #24
johansch wrote: post #10

Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years. I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

Aren't everyone's taxes and incomes meant to be public in Sweden ? Assuming he did file his taxes properly, this should be verifiable.

Since they ran a multi-million dollar business for like ten years without "having any idea of how much money the ads brought in" (as stated over and over in the court proceedings) that is a pretty big assumption you made just there.
Post reply on HN