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The Pirate Bay Tops 10 Million Users

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-word-it's-a-convoy dept.

An anonymous reader suggests we go over to Slyck for news that The Pirate Bay has cracked 10 million users. The publicity from the upcoming court case probably helped. "Today, The Pirate Bay asserts itself as the self-proclaimed 'World's Largest Tracker' by topping over 10 million peers, while managing over 1 million torrents. Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay told Slyck, 'We're very happy to be part of all of this and we hope our users keep sharing those files!... And we're looking to break 20 million as well.'"

4 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. It all comes down to $$$ by ihaveamo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't believe they do it for the love, (or some damn-fool idealistic crusade, for that matter). Anyone know how much money a site like the pir8 bay makes?? (Just banner revinue, or something more insidious)

    1. Re:It all comes down to $$$ by CSMatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All the Pirate Bay administrators are doing is providing a tracker, which can very well (and does) link to legal content as well as illegal. The fact that they are generating income from ads placed on search results is irreverent. You might as well say that Google is guilty of infringement as well, since they index both legal and illegal material with a similar business model and are constantly defending their ability to do so.

    2. Re:It all comes down to $$$ by Damon+Tog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You might as well say that Google is guilty of infringement as well, since they index both legal and illegal material with a similar business model and are constantly defending their ability to do so.


      A couple of other companies have used a similar argument, shortly before getting shut down. Napster and Grokster were basically search engines that could be used for both legal or illegal purposes, but the courts didn't buy it.

      Google, or an ISP, can reasonably argue that they provide services that are mostly used for lawful purposes, even though some illegal activity takes place. The difficult argument that the pirate trackers are faced with is that when you are providing a service that is being used primarily to infringe copyrights, even if the service can be used to share Linux distributions, you're potentially liable.
  2. Re:But remember kids - piracy actually *helps* peo by Mike89 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    because they only download movies they wouldn't watch otherwise.
    I download movies I wouldn't pay to see at the cinema. If I like it, I buy the DVD.

    And shows they watch anyways. For "backup" purposes.
    Half of the shows I like aren't broadcast in my country, and if they are, in no particular order.

    And computer programs and games they are thinking about getting. For evaluation purposes.
    I can't argue with you on this one, but a lot of the community here uses all freeware/open source and has no need to pirate shitty overpriced software.

    Maybe if the Pirate Bay is able to make so much money off this, the RIAA/MPAA should get smart and do the same. I'd happily buy the TV shows and movies I download now if there was a legitimate way to pay for them and get them in a format that I actually wanted (Xvid, please). If DVDs didn't have 10 minutes of forced watching at the start, they'd get more sales out of them too. Do you really think the multi-million (billion?) dollar corporations need you here to stand up for them?