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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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You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.
-- Ayn Rand
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @04:20PM
Amusing, but like the old saying you're parodying, incorrect. I have a fruit tree in my front yard, free fruit for everyone! Also, the launch of my book site (the site I p1mp my book) had a free launch, and the book itself is free if you prefer electrons to cellulose.
Oh, and "money doesn't grow on trees"? Tell that to someone who earned his millions from his orchards. Money also grows in fields, there are millions of dollars in Illinois fields every summer (mostly corn and soybeans).
Never trust an old saying! What goes up must come down? How about the Voyagers, or the Martian robots or the junk the astronauts left on the moon? They're not coming down!
Never blindly trust old "wisdom". Sometimes foolishnes disguises itself as wisdom.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by naubol on Friday February 21 2014, @05:23PM
John Locke's opening comments about why we should have property begin with "it takes effort to pick fruit".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @06:17PM
Heh, I never held him in much regard. It takes far less effort to reach up and grab a piece of low-hanging fruit from a tree than it does to grab a piece of fruit from the bin at the grocery store and then walk to the register, get out your cash/card, and pay. It takes no more effort for me to reach up and grab that fruit than it does for someone to take it from my hand as a gift.
"Free" means "gratis", a price of zero. If they're giving hamburgers away at McDonalds, it takes gasoline to get there but the burger is free.
What "there's no such thing as a free lunch" refers to accurately is "never trust a salesman". If a salesman offers you a free lunch, you'll wind up as his customer if he's any good.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Funny) by davester666 on Friday February 21 2014, @07:04PM
Or you will wake up the next morning wondering how you wound up in an alley, where your wallet is, and why your ass is sore.
(Score: 1) by naubol on Friday February 21 2014, @09:19PM
You have to find the fruit tree, you have to walk to it, you have to possibly fight other animals (ie other people) for it, you have to inspect it for quality (fruit in the wild can go bad, can be eaten out by worms, etc), and you have to wait for it to be in season. With the grocery store, I am reasonably certain the fruit will be there when I get there, and there is no sense of indecision or insecurity about this. If you know where the fruit tree is because you planted it there, cultivated it, and tended it, it isn't wild and it took effort to put it there.
If this all sounds like so much hair splitting, it isn't. The point is a consistent, quality food supply that is easy to get doesn't grow on trees. The spirit of the argument is still there.
It is kinda specious to point out the environmental downsides of the grocery store but not wild fruit.
I agree with your point about salesmen though.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @09:34PM
No. I'm referring to a tree in my own front yard, a tree I control but did not have to buy. I do not have to fight over the fruit... well, the squirrels did beat me to most of the fruit last year but it didn't cost me anything, not even effort.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @10:00PM
Well that depends; how literal do you want to get with it? What is "cost"? if you are talking about monetary cost, sure there are plenty of free things out there. If you wish to count time as money, then no even the fruit you pick up in your yard isn't free. Do you sell the fruit? if so then you have now LOST money because that was potential profit.
I understand what you are getting at, but you tried to invalidate the idea that there is no "free lunch", which is simply not entirely true.
In this instance (someone "installing an update" to watch GoT) the cost was a lesson learned and cost of a computer repairman to fix their machine. Also, probably some embarrassment.
We just need to define our terms.
(Score: 1) by naubol on Saturday February 22 2014, @05:59PM
Because of property, guess you had to buy the property, eh? Guess you had to work for that money, unless you're in finance.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @05:54PM
Sure that works great if you want to jump from figurative and literal where it suits you.
You side stepped the entire point of the phrase, and then said it was wrong. Your website that you pimp your book out on isn't free, someone has to pay for it somewhere. And if you aren't paying for the hosting yourself, then you are on a shared server; when that shared server gets hacked, you pay for it with a lesson that you should have bought your own host. Those tree that bare fruit used chemicals in the earth to eventually create something, that wasn't free. You likely water that tree, which isn't free. You also have to walk out and collect the fruit, again not free.
Money doesn't grow on trees, things you can sell do. If you let your fields grow vegetables, but never sell them you didn't grow money. The effort you put into yielding those crops and selling them is where you make your money.
So maybe those old adages are more correct then you think.
(My significant other has a degree in philosophy, she would be upset if I didn't chime in here)