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Swedish Court Finalizes Jail Sentence For Pirate Bay Co-Founder
Mightee sends in this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"The Stockholm District Court sentence against Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm was finalized today after he failed to appear at the Court of Appeal. Svartholm, also known as Anakata online, did not appear at the appeal trial last year because he was hospitalized in Cambodia and later went missing. The Court of Appeal has now decided to finalize the initial verdict of one year jail time and a fine of $1.1 million."
I don't think they got rich off of TPB.
"In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in 1.2 million SEK (US$168,885.60) per year from advertisements."
"In the 2009 trial, the defense estimated the site's yearly expenses to be 800,000 SEK (US$112,590.40)"
There's DHT. Tracker sites are nothing more than a convenience nowadays.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Pirate Bay was a lot smaller in 2006 and they had mostly adult ads, not the type of ads they have now. They also didn't employ as good shell company structure with their Seychelles company as they do now.
The income with torrent sites is currently around $50 per 1000 unique visitors, mostly from toolbar (those "download from fast server now"), usenet and vpn provider ads. TPB currently has global Alexa rank #84. Quantcast currently estimates TPB gets 200k unique visitors per day, and that is only US traffic. They get huge amount of traffic everywhere from the world. But just from that US traffic alone, TPB probably makes around 200000*(50/1000) = $10 000 per day.
That translates to $3 650 000 per year, almost four million dollars. And then you also have to add traffic and income from all the other countries apart from US, which probably brings the income close to ten million dollars a year.
Posted anonymously because I have also ran a torrent site. That means, I also know the kind of income such get from ads.
I'd heard they were more like upscale college dorms than prison cells.
forcing someone to live in a college dorm would be inhuman.
It's very nearly almost four million dollars, though.
I ran those numbers by my Hollywood based accountant, and his calculations resulted in a net loss of about $3000 a day.
Yep, Cambodia isn't really that safe. It's much safer in Thailand for example. However, I go to Cambodia 3-4 times a year to renew my Thai visa and stay there a couple a weeks, but it always feels kind of unsafe. And last time I was there hundreds of people died on that Phnom Penhs bridge when it got too crowded. If you have to go to hospital, you really don't want to go to Cambodian hospital anyway - every foreigner should try to get to either to Thailand or Singapore in that case, and it's touted everywhere on the web. This is also why I don't think the TPB admin really had to go to hospital.
It is most definitely not quite four million.
As a Swedish resident I disagree. While I would certainly not want to go to jail, I wouldn't fear the time there, and I'm a 60kg geek that probably couldn't hold my own against a 12 year old girl.
A prison sentence is far from a luxury resort, but in general in prison violence is low here. Lacking a decent net connection (and being disconnected would be a terrible thing indeed) I'd spend my time in the library, reading up on what I'm curious about, or simply ploughing through the classics I've missed. I doubt I'd have much trouble with other inmates.
A million dollar debt though - that would destroy my life.
I suspect the same is true for Anakata.
May we live long and die out
If the founder in question here was making huge numbers off TPB a few years ago (2008, maybe), it didn't show in his wardrobe, hairstyle or choice of place to crash or his mode of transportation.
I saw him staying with friends in one of the socio-economically crappiest suburbs of Stockholm and taking the subway wherever he was going.
I'm not saying he wasn't a millionaire, but if he was, it was like some character said in some (iirc) Tzingiz Aitmatov story:
"I'm just a poor person with lots of money".
I think this person is a principled person. I might be wrong, but this is the vibe I got from happening to pass him by on the street a few years ago.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
So where is the best combination of fast internet backbones, moderate cost of living, and no extradition treaty? I would look there.