Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium • Hacker News Board

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#41

Post by randomchars » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 10:53 AM UTC

gordonguthrie wrote: post #36

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your reaction fascinating. You find the topic of porn so disturbing that a mere (very dry) discussion of its business side ruins the entire experience of HN for you? On a side note, you may be naif about hacker culture. On one hand, a lot of hackers consume porn (by virtue of the fact that a large percentage of the general population does). On the other, we tend to be curious about stuff, even stuff that is co…

> even stuff that is considered a "poor subject" by conventional social norms. We're not that big on conventional social norms Hmm, if you want to avoid conventional social norms, then NOT talking about porn on the internet is the way to go, I would say. The world is awash with people talking about porn.

Yeah the Internet is full of porn, but where do you find meta discussion about porn sites? You know business opportunities, history and stuff life that.

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#42

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:25 AM UTC

melvinmt wrote: post #37

brianchu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one note: 45% is the top marginal tax rate. No one is actually taxed such that they lose 45% of their income through personal income taxes. The effective (average) tax rate will be much, much less. EDIT: not to mention lower taxes due to deductions, capital gains, legal tax shelters.

At 100 million, it'll be closer to 45% than any other bracket.

Taxes on that would probably be about 44,850,000.

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#43

Post by dutchbrit » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:37 AM UTC

I sometimes don't understand how American Porn Tubes can survive with 18 USC § 2257: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#44

Post by yaix » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:43 AM UTC

melvinmt wrote: post #37

brianchu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one note: 45% is the top marginal tax rate. No one is actually taxed such that they lose 45% of their income through personal income taxes. The effective (average) tax rate will be much, much less. EDIT: not to mention lower taxes due to deductions, capital gains, legal tax shelters.

At 100 million, it'll be closer to 45% than any other bracket.

At 100m you will have a good tax advisor who sets up a network of companies and foundations across Europe and gets your tax rate down to less than half of that rate. If not, get a different tax guy.

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#45

Post by randomchars » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:46 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #42

melvinmt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 100 million, it'll be closer to 45% than any other bracket.

Taxes on that would probably be about 44,850,000.

Do you pay taxes after the whole income or just (income -expenses)?

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#46

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:49 AM UTC

randomchars wrote: post #45

StavrosK wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes on that would probably be about 44,850,000.

Do you pay taxes after the whole income or just (income -expenses)?

It depends, corporations pay on just profits, so income - expenses. The original poster was talking as if the 100m was pure profit, though. Also, I'm not German, but this is how the tax system works in Greece, the UK and many other countries.

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#47

Post by indiecore » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:56 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #21

revelation wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As megaupload shows, it doesn't even matter if you are protected from DMCA safe harbor. If a prosecutor thinks you are not, they will destroy your business without recourse.

In terms of risk, I think its far less likely that a prosecutor will go after an adult site than say a music sharing site. The adult market has no one with the clout of the RIAA to lobby congress.

Porn is a multi-tens of billion dollar business, to think they don't have people in government is silly.

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#48

Post by PanMan » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 11:59 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #2

I've always mused with the idea of creating a user-submitted-content based porn website. The base code can be whipped out in a few days, and getting traffic for that kind of thing seems to be super easy. The goal would then be to make minor money through smart advertising (most porn websites today are usability hell, with every single white space covered in ads; i'm sure one could do some smart conversion optimizatio…

I'm not so sure about that. I just worked on a website that contained some video (for a children's show TV format), and we did some calculations on what hosting the video would cost.

With 50 Mb/video, you can do 20 video's for 1 Gb of traffic. Which, at AWS cost 12 cents. Let's say you'd pay half that at a cheaper CDN, 6 cents. You would, just for transporting the video, need to make 6/20=0.3 cents/page. That's $3 CPM, which seems high. And this is only for transporting the video, not the other infrastructure needed. Not so sure that's a winning business-model.

To be fair, we also looked into setting up our own servers, some places have a few TB traffic with a $50 VPS, but than you need a lot more sysadmin work.

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#49

Post by true_religion » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 12:09 PM UTC

indiecore wrote: post #47

true_religion wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of risk, I think its far less likely that a prosecutor will go after an adult site than say a music sharing site. The adult market has no one with the clout of the RIAA to lobby congress.

Porn is a multi-tens of billion dollar business, to think they don't have people in government is silly.

Please don't stretch my words to the point of hyberbole.

I said the adult industry doesn't have an organization with clout comparative to the RIAA. That's true as far as I know.

Do you know of such a broad-based lobbying group for the adult market?

Re: Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium

#50

Post by true_religion » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 12:13 PM UTC

PanMan wrote: post #48

GuiA wrote: post #2

I've always mused with the idea of creating a user-submitted-content based porn website. The base code can be whipped out in a few days, and getting traffic for that kind of thing seems to be super easy. The goal would then be to make minor money through smart advertising (most porn websites today are usability hell, with every single white space covered in ads; i'm sure one could do some smart conversion optimizatio…

I'm not so sure about that. I just worked on a website that contained some video (for a children's show TV format), and we did some calculations on what hosting the video would cost. With 50 Mb/video, you can do 20 video's for 1 Gb of traffic. Which, at AWS cost 12 cents. Let's say you'd pay half that at a cheaper CDN, 6 cents. You would, just for transporting the video, need to make 6/20=0.3 cents/page. That's $3 CP…

AWS is the most expensive "CDN" that I've ever seen in my life. Their prices rival Akamai and their service certainly doesn't.

With volume, you can get CDN pricing to 1 cent/page. The adult market, if nothing else, is a place where even mid-range sites can have massive volume and cut special deals.