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The Pirate Bay Gets a 'Massive' $9 in Donations Per Day (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: When The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites started accepting Bitcoin donations a few years ago, copyright holders voiced concerns about this new 'unseizable' revenue stream. Thus far, this fear seems unwarranted with TPB raking in an average of $9 per day in Bitcoin donations over the past year. While hardly a windfall, it's a fortune compared to the donations received by the leading torrent site KickassTorrents.
I'm surprised about this amount, I guess that most people are afraid to get caught donating to this site (I know that it's hard with bitcoins, but well)
I know it wouldn't be a Slashdot discussion without sarcasm and deliberate misunderstandings, but there is nothing particularly strange about the idea that somebody would find TPB's services valuable enough to want to give money to support them. Yes, Virginia, people sometimes turn to piracy for reasons other than being a cheapskate.
Don't they make money from advertisements?
Nine bucks is how much I pay for a skinny vanilla latte and a breakfast sandwich at Starbucks.
I was about to post the same sentiment. When your entire business model revolves around a crowd of people who don't have the funds and/or desire to actually buy the media they consume - trying to obtain donations from such a crowd is a fool's errand.
Good private trackers rake in hundreds if not thousands a month, if they're so inclined. TPB is the commons. People don't want to pay to maintain the commons when they can enjoy a private country club.
Bitcoin, in it's raw form, is the most traceable currency in existence. Thus if one is planning to engage in clandestine activity it might be unwise to set up a link between pirate bay's public key and your private key. Such a link would exist for all time. So if at any time your key get's linked to a real identity because for example you order a pizza ten years from now or the credit card you used to buy the bit coins from Mt Gox is in Mt. Gox's records under control of the Japanese police, then you are linked to Pirate Bay.
The saving grace I supposed it that in itself is not a crime. But that's not what on your mind if you were hoping nobody finds out.
You could of course use some tumbler to launder the transaction but then you are trusting the tumbler company.
Someday we'll all be able to buy a disposable bitcoin gift card in the super market with cash but until then there's always possible way to trace it back to you (in most cases).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I honestly expected more. Though bitcoin is a pain in the ass. Do they accept donations that are not bitcoin? I'd be willing to toss them some extra money, it's not like the vodka is doing me any favors.
They should ask people to donate to their favorite charity instead of them. No links.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I was about to post the same sentiment. When your entire business model revolves around a crowd of people who don't have the funds and/or desire to actually buy the media they consume - trying to obtain donations from such a crowd is a fool's errand.
I think it's more than that. It's one thing to donate to support a creator whose writing a comic or making show that you love, it's another to donate to someone trying to make money by facilitating media piracy. People might see TPB as useful or necessary, but it's hard to see them as people worthy of donation.
I stole this Sig
Any serious bean counters/market analysts looking for accurate data on how much of piracy actually represents lost sales (situations where the customer actually had money and would have paid for the product if there were an option to do so) well there's your numbers; 9$ a day.
You really got something more out of this story than anyone else here did...
Movie of this rambling when?
I'd pay cash money.
More like what I expected. I mean, when is the last time you saw a pirate give away money?
Their site is plastered with ads, or at least was the last time I looked at it (doesn't load for me so I can't check; I've recently moved countries so maybe it's blocked in the UK).
Given its popularity I'm sure they're making thousands per month simply from ad traffic.
I have to wonder if the low donations is reflective of the fact that people are actually unwilling to donate to people/organisations when they know they're actually doing the "wrong" thing. People have no problems pirating content but they don't actually want anyone to profit off it if it can be avoided.
Although I recall an interview with Bram Cohen (BitTorrent creator) many years ago where he mentioned his father convinced him to put that "please donate" in the original Python client, and he said after that he was making hundreds a day. So maybe not.
How much per day does TPB get from all the pr0n ads?
People probably don't donate because they know none of the revenue would go to any of the content creators.
I still say there has to be a way people can donate each month into a fund pool of their favorite content creators and have the money distributed by weight (according to star rating) among the creators.
In order to facilitate that, a new IDv3 field that contains a unique identifier for each artist/creator needs to exist, which can be tied to their deposit account.
Turns out, people who won't pay for content when they can find a way not to...won't pay for content when they can find a way not to.
1) It's not stealing, as no one is being deprived of property. Stealing is not "getting something for free", but "denying someone the use of their property". I hope you understand the difference.
2) Study after study have shown that "pirates" spend above-average amounts on content consumed. People "pirate" things to see if they're worth buying, or to get a copy of a game they already have without copy protection, etc. Sure, some people don't, but to claim they all don't is being dishonest.
Apart from that, you're spot on.
Of course this got modded into oblivion but the assertion on /. is that people turn to piracy for reasons other than being cheap. The fact that only $9 per day gets donated runs counter to this argument. If it truly were due to other reasons (content not available locally, et cetera), the donations would be much higher. I'm sure there *are* people out there who pirate for non-monetary reasons (there's an exception to every rule) but I surmise that the vast majority simply do it because they want content for free.
What do they expect?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I mean, let's get real. Most of the pirate bay's traffic is piracy. If you're not going to pay for legitimate content, it seems a bit silly to pay people to pirate it. The software pirate community has always been about recognition and not money anyway.
Just like places where you can buy essays online only for you to experience credit card fraud, the robbers don't respect each other or have ideals of any kind.
It's not stealing, as no one is being deprived of property. Stealing is not "getting something for free", but "denying someone the use of their property". I hope you understand the difference.
People are deprived of income that would otherwise be earned from the sale of the content. Call it what you want. I hope you understand the semantics. Yes yes, "but they wouldn't have otherwise purchase it!" ya BS. A non-zero number of people that pirate content would pay for it. But I suppose you are deciding that number is low enough that it's okay to deprive them of that income. If you argue that the number is actually zero, you're an idiot.
Study after study have shown that "pirates" spend above-average amounts on content consumed.
Links? I expect at least 5 from institutions I've heard of before, since there is "study after study" that should not be hard to come up with.