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posted by
Dopefish
on Friday February 21 2014, @01:30PM
from the mpaa-and-riaa-can't-touch-this dept.
from the mpaa-and-riaa-can't-touch-this dept.
Fluffeh writes:
"The Digital Citizens Alliance has posted a new report estimating that the 'top warez/pirate sites' generate $227 million dollars in ad revenue each year in which a portion of the cash comes from businesses such as Amazon, McDonalds and Xfinity.
TorrentFreak has an interesting write-up on the report going through the numbers nicely and breaking it down. Based on an estimate of the operating costs, torrent sites are also believed to be the most profitable, with profit margins up to 94.1%. It has to be noted, however, that ad revenue is often the only source of income for torrent sites, where direct download hubs and streaming sites have secondary revenue streams through subscriptions and affiliate deals."
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Warez Sites Generate $227 Million in Ad Revenue
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by frink on Friday February 21 2014, @03:48PM
So I really don't get their point.. Good money gone bad?
So they have some kind of estimate about pirate sites (whatever they are as somebody else pointed out). Now if there is one thing we know about these kinds of estimates, it's that they are more often that not complete bollocks.
And so what if those sites get advertising revenue? They are just sites usually doing a little indexing and linking and not much more. It's no worse then any other similar site, like, say, the googles or bings or such like. They make way more revenue, so how come they have now been picked up? Hell, the only way most people even know about 'pirate sites' is because they googled for them.
As for the Digital Citizens whatever it is, take a look at the "meet the team", a finer collection of knobs would be hard to assemble. No wonder the whole site is a asp.net mashup, they likely hired some nifty marketing company to whip it all up. I'll give them another six months before their website experiences some, errm, external improvements.
Sheesh.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frink on Friday February 21 2014, @03:55PM
And then there is this in the article:
"Since these piracy sites rely entirely on other people's work, their profit margins range from 80 percent to 94 percent."
And in what way is that different to any other search engine? Or SN? This very site, if you use their reasoning, relies entirely on other people's work too (overlooking all the engineering that goes into actually making the site work).
“We hope this report pushes the online advertising community to take additional steps to protect brand value and stop ads from appearing on content theft sites that are undermining the vibrancy and safety of the digital marketplace.â€
Yes, because all the porn ads on piratebay mirrors most assuredly have a brand to protect.
So their goal is "The Digital Citizens Alliance will be an active voice in promoting a better and safer Internet...." I don't quite get what they mean by that aside from THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
(Score: 1) by Foobar Bazbot on Saturday February 22 2014, @04:46AM
Yes, but since SN doesn't (yet) have any ads, subscriptions, or other revenue source, it's more like: "profit margin ranges from NaN percent to NaN percent."