[forgotpwtomain]

I'm not a fan of US copyright law to say the least, but it's hard to feel any sympathy for these sites or their creators. Mostly they have derived multi-million dollar incomes from selling very shaddy adware or otherwise space for virus infested adds which they show to the users, 95% of who are there to download pirated content. This is probably an unpopular opinion here.

[ericjang]

I downvoted you for saying "This is probably an unpopular opinion here". Your opinion is valid enough, no need to qualify it or generalize the moral values of the HN community.

[Meegul]

Agreed. That's one of the things I love about HN in comparison with places like Reddit. The 'hivemind' is not nearly as strong here. There's certainly a general bias to what gets upvoted and what doesn't, but it's luckily not uncommon to see opposing opinions here. The empty echo-chamber that is Reddit gets tiring for someone who wants to actually think.

[daurnimator]

I recall seeing figures for other sites and they weren't making millions. Infact they were barely scraping by.

These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a profit making enterprise.

[forgotpwtomain]

> These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a profit making enterprise.

You really think people advertising adaware 'Improve PC performance now' and 'watch XXX live with donkeys' are idealistic individuals fighting draconian copyright laws?

Also I don't know about kickass - but for example the /scrape endpoint is blocked on the piratebay tracker (and most other 'commercial' trackers) -- meaning that you can't get basic statistics (like leechers/seeders) about a torrent which is tracked by them without going through their advertisements.

[icebraining]

The common ad networks usually have TOSs banning torrent sites and such, so unless you can bankroll the site yourself, you'll have to resort to shadier networks.

By the way, TPB hasn't had a tracker for seven years now.

[rhino369]

I think that's true of smalltime private trackers, but kickass is huge. It has to be making a lot of money.

[DarkLinkXXXX]

>but kickass is huge. It has to be making a lot of money.

That seems like a pretty fallacious leap to me. It may have a lot of users, but all those users add expense, and most of them are savvy enough to use an ad-blocker.

Quite frankly, thousands of users does not a millionaire make. I'm sure we'll see more details in the upcoming suit though.

[ryanlol]

>thousands of users

You're seriously underestimating KATs size.

There's no chance they weren't making millions off of the site (and various other similar sites they operate).

[supergreg]

The worst are the sites that sell the ads and don't even have the torrents, they look like torrent or direct download sites and only have shady links that lead to more ads and no content so they don't even incur in facilitating piracy.