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

31–40 of 207 posts

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#31

Post by benologist »

tedks wrote: post #29
adamnemecek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 client…

You missed the affiliate links - they also peddle crapware for $$$, in addition to the ads and popups that might be blocked.

Even if 1/2 their traffic is using adblockers that still leaves billions of ad impressions a month. There is no reason to believe their lies about how much servers cost, especially on a site like HN where many people have first hand experience of more elaborate hosting costs and advertising.

2009 = 1b pageviews/month https://gigaom.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-th...

2014 = 90th most popular website on the entire internet, which itself grew massively in that 5 years

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#32

Post by vacri »

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.

Religion is voluntary, reading books is voluntary, using exercise equipment is voluntary, using a phone or room to talk to your family is voluntary. A prisoner doesn't have to do any of those things, and plenty of prisoners get by without doing each one of those. Do you have a problem with these voluntary activities as well?

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#33

Post by achamayou »

johansch wrote: post #30
achamayou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would have thought that court might have looked into this, and possibly added to the charges in consequence, but the coverage I can find doesn't mention it at all.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#34

Post by johansch »

achamayou wrote: post #33
johansch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would have thought that court might have looked into this, and possibly added to the charges in consequence, but the coverage I can find doesn't mention it at all.

It was (rightfully) a pretty large part of the reasoning behind the ruling. But 99% of the internet fanboys/fangirls have no idea of this.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#35

Post by benologist »

achamayou wrote: post #33
johansch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would have thought that court might have looked into this, and possibly added to the charges in consequence, but the coverage I can find doesn't mention it at all.

They've always covered their money trail, it's been a critical part of the illusion they portray where they're good people doing good things for nothing.

Given that the rest of the internet at their popularity level manages to generate enough $$$ to cover thousands of employees, produce their own whatever etc, it's ludicrous to expect TPB's traffic to 'cover hosting' as is the popular rumor.

A similar site, SurfTheChannel, was found to be generating ~$78,000 per month with order(s) of magnitude less traffic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfthechannel

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#36

Post by sp332 »

johansch wrote: post #27
dwild wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, they have a higher Alexa ranking than the Pirate Bay, so it's probably easier for them to get advertisers. Also they're a near-monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek On top of that, while porn may be objectionable to some advertisers' brands, it's still worlds better than the straight-up illegal content on the Pirate Bay.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#37

Post by angersock »

paulhauggis wrote: post #25
r00fus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It would help all of us, I imagine, were we to actually use separate institutions for those purposes.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#38

Post by jackvalentine »

paulhauggis wrote: post #25
r00fus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And why so you think that is? (I'm withholding my opinion/explanation until I feel I understand yours and can provide a more valuable response)

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#39

Post by crazypyro »

angersock wrote: post #37
paulhauggis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on HN, it depends. a greedy corporate fat cat that cheated people? punishment. Drug or copyright infringement related crimes? rehab.

It would help all of us, I imagine, were we to actually use separate institutions for those purposes.

Are you implying that the distinction the grandparent poster made is correct?

(I'm almost positive it was sarcastic)

All prisons should be about rehabilitation. Anything else is simply a multiplier to an already existent drain on society.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#40

Post by baddox »

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.

Why does it depend on that?
Post reply on HN