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."
(Score: 2, Informative) by wjwlsn on Friday February 21 2014, @11:47PM
The following article claims (and presents some evidence) that "Digital Citizens Alliance" is a Microsoft-funded astroturfing organization.
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20131007_filtering_t he_internet_is_still_bad_idea_dca_abc_steroid_sear ches/ [circleid.com]
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.