AfterDawn: News

Ads on Pirate Bay get special attention from prosecutors

According to an article on the Swedish site, The Local, the downfall of The Pirate Bay could lie in advertisement revenue. According to Swedish prosecutors, if the site is earning money from its work, it could face tougher laws. In May, a raid on the site only managed to keep it down for a matter of days and police are still wading through the servers looking for anything they can use against the site.

According to the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, hundreds of thousands of kronor are being made each month from advertisers. Companies are usually unwilling to advertise on BitTorrent Tracker sites but when those sites are extremely popular, one of the Internet's most popular sites in fact, that stance tends to change.



"If there is money left over, it will go to us who work at Pirate Bay as salaries," site founder Fredrik Neij said to Svenska Dagbladet on Wednesday. He added that he plans to invest money in the site to prevent police from taking it down again. Police will be looking at the book keeping and payments made with a focus on advertising revenue and taxes.

"It is going to be an entirely different penalty if it turns out they earn money through their work," prosecutor Håkan Roswall said, according to Svenska Dagbladet. "We could also end up using material from other companies that have had a relationship with them." However, the core question around the Pirate Bay is still whether or not the site is legal.

The site never hosted any copyrighted material or offered it for download, only torrent files could be found. If the site is legal then why should revenue matter? Indeed, other P2P services have been targeted because of money the site gathered, like ShareReactor for example. Once the premier ed2k indexing site, it was shut down in 2004 shortly after the administration received thousands in donations to help keep the site running.

Anti-piracy groups used these donations as a weapon against the site, and through lies forced the Swiss authorities to raid the site. In reality, the site was in debt and the estimates given by the group were very far off. That case is still ongoing. You can read an interview we had with the owner some months after the raid.

Source:
The Local

Written by: James Delahunty @ 9 Jul 2006 10:03

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• 19 comments

• vgaddict8

  PirateBay is retarded anyways..... who cares if that stupid site, which has and gives out adware and spyware, is shut down!!!!!! YEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  9.7.2006 10:22 #1

• Venom5880

  Adware and spyware? Anyone that gets spyware or adware from the things they download have no one to blame but themselves for not keeping themselves properly protected.

  9.7.2006 10:43 #2

• gogochar

  Exactly Venom! Plus, it'll be something new to free P2P groups! Most groups, like LimeWire, have adware built into them. A Torrent site can be better protected due to browser safety. I'd rather have the optional torrent adware and blame my self, then having the mandatory spyware/adware that comes with LimeWire-esque P2P sites!

  9.7.2006 11:44 #3

• Pop_Smith

  Even if they are earning money from the ads, I am sure most if not all of the money is invested back into the site so the site owners can get better and faster computers and bigger hard drives if they need them. I know a while ago they asked for donations so they could get better, faster hardware that made the site run a lot better.

  9.7.2006 12:17 #4

• vgaddict8

  If you wear a condom.... you still have a chance of getting aids..... I have truck loads of spyware and adware protector and I can still get adware and spyware from sites like piratebay.....

  9.7.2006 12:20 #5

• hot_ice

  Where one falls, another arises, and so does the cycle of internet P2P go...

  9.7.2006 12:26 #6

• Venom5880

  Then your protection is lacking. I've frequented The Pirate Bay quite often in the past and never had any issues with it.

  9.7.2006 13:25 #7

• Andrew691

  I to have used The Pirate Bay and never had any problems with spyware adware or viruses and up until a few days ago i had no protection on my computer at all.

  9.7.2006 13:58 #8

• dikdimond

  The Prosecueters are fighting a losing battle...hope the battle against the RIAA can become more to the people's favor because of the Pirate Bay

  9.7.2006 15:19 #9

• Halen5150

  @Venom
  
  I second that. I've been there many times and NEVER got spyware....if you have, you obviously don't read the user comments, because normally someone will comment the fact that the torrent contains some sort of malicious code.

  9.7.2006 15:32 #10

• ZippyDSM

  umm you can get adware and spyware from google alone 0-o
  if you are not protected your goign to get it from anywhere.
  
  DO these morons even know how much it costs to run a server?
  they dont make a profit at least not anyhting you can live off of.
  
  
  BTW how the hell can they sht a site down for gettign donations? donation=gift=tax free....if thats nt the case start raining in the politions that get milloins in "donations"............

  10.7.2006 09:50 #11

• Rendering

  The issue of The Pirate Bay's revenues is just a smokescreen. Going after the small money they might have earned is like the police officer who gave a ticket to a child for operating a lemonade stand without a license (a true story, by the way). Pirate Bay's ads don't encourage users to download torrents from the site. A lot of the ads are personal ads, offering if you want to contact some female somewhere. The real issue is whether it can be proven that hosting links to files is illegal, whether or not the files linked to are copyrighted material. You can google your way to copyrighted material, and google is essentially an indexing service too. This assault one bittorrent sites is really an attack on the technology, which enables you to download files more efficiently and bittorrent sites to operate more economically.

  10.7.2006 10:58 #12

• ZippyDSM

  Much like Iraq if they cant do it the legit way they get out the KY and backdoor it ><

  10.7.2006 15:10 #13

• ofolion

  Saying that they earn money from it makes it more illegal is like say that the MPAA is illegal as its gains money from doing what is does!
  
  They can't work for free and if they earn some money then its like doing something you love and earning money for it at the same time sort of like busking for an example.

  11.7.2006 08:43 #14

• Wild9

  Did the site publicly state that all money received would go towards upkeep?
  
  If you ask for a donation how on earth are you able to even begin to envisage how much revenue you'll raise? So what if they received lots of money - some folks earn shedloads singing on the corner of a street!

  14.7.2006 06:13 #15

• Sontiago

  That's an excellent point. the MPAA and the RIAA get lots of donated money for their "Let's put people in jail or give them expensive fines for sharing on the internet" conquest and I really don't think that their employees work for free so I would think it would make them just as "illegal" at the companies they seek to destroy..........
  
  

  14.7.2006 11:45 #16

• jaysfan

  the pirate bay is a great site- its anot retarded and gives out adware and spyware
  
  have you ever even tried it?
  

  

  14.7.2006 12:47 #17

• malekite

  Malware is cause on the part of the user not the site. Get an antivirus with on demand scanning scan what ya dl before opening it. Has anyone heard whats up with SEEDLER.ORG

  14.7.2006 18:22 #18

• ZippyDSM

  Ya with the net the way it is now adays you need anti virus stuff badly,open ports and unchecked data leaking into the comp can give you no end of grief.

  14.7.2006 18:36 #19