[anaphor]

"Together sentenced Pirate Bay founders in addition to prison to pay damages of around 46 million."

Yeah, that's never going to happen. The prosecutor in their case came up with some fantastical amount of money TPB is supposed to have made, but it's complete nonsense (see the documentary TPB: AFK for details).

[bjourne]

That's in SEK so about 5m € or 7m $. Nobody knows how much money they made or even has an estimate. But they did have lots of advertising for years on one of the worlds most popular sites and their costs for running it were minimal. They are bound to have made something from it.

[fredsted]

>costs for running it were minimal

What makes you say that?

[tptacek]

One possible stab towards a response is to observe that the cost for most popular sites is dominated by headcount costs, and TPB didn't have a large headcount.

[belorn]

Looking at the budget for Wikipedia, I can not see a headcount cost. There is hardware and bandwidth costs, which should be very similar to the running costs TPB had when the trio ran it.

[tjmc]

Wikipedia has no ads though. Big difference.

[belorn]

What has ads to do with costs?

The question here is what the running costs of TPB is. My point is that those should mirror quite nicely the running costs of Wikipedia, since neither has "headcount cost" attached to each visitor. Both are mostly just serving static text on a website, and neither are paying royalty or click-throughs to third-parties based on visitor count.

In revenue, Wikipedia has donations and TPB has ads. Asking which revenue is bigger is very different from calculating costs. TPB might earn more revenue, but to figure that out one has to calculate the competitive price of advertise space for infamous websites. My guess is that the competitive price is quite low, sine few companies are willing to send untraceable money in order to advertise on a website that many companies and governments consider criminal.

So for revenue, I would look into what botnet spam and hijacked webservers brings in per eyeball. Multiply that with the visitor count of TPB, minus the running cost, and you should get a rather realistic number for the sites total income.

[zz1]

They also had to buy new servers a few times.

[XorNot]

That's still 10-20k tops.

[ericd]

I think you mean 10k each, times a potentially large number.

[bjourne]

There's a quote from 2006 saying that their monthly hosting costs where 15k SEK (2k USD). But also, one of the owners of the hosting company was also the one running the tpb site.

[thefreeman]

They were not even at the height of their popularity in 2006. And that (very new) hosting company was raided and all 190 of their machines were confiscated, even though only 11 were being used by TPB.

They scaled up a lot from that point too, so that is not an accurate picture of their costs at all.

[funkyy]

I think you need to do your research. Those guys are pretty packed. Their DC alone is money making like crazy. I know few folks that actually used their hosting services ~2 years ago - their pricing is among highest in industry. Also they have dozens of small projects running. TPB is running ads etc - what would be cost of running, 10 dedicated servers? And what would be the income? Around few hundred thousands?

[belorn]

I assume you got tax records to support that PRQ is earning money like crazy? I am going to assume that the tax collectors know their job and is not letting a crazy revenue source continue going untaxed.

For TPB advertisement, do you have numbers on how competitive advertisement space is for a website like the pirate bay? Would startups here forexample be willing to pay top dollars for ads there? Willing to use untraceable methods to pay for it?

I personally have a hard time seeing either PRQ or TPB as massive revenue sources at this point in time.

[thaumasiotes]

What's the point of using untraceable methods to pay for advertising? Won't your name be right there in the ad?

[dewey]

The companies advertising in places like this are usually not exactly the ones with a legit business address and a great track record of being transparent.

The money made from ads is probably a lot less than the ad revenue you know from other places, there are a lot of middlemen, ad networks, and money services involved and everyones takes their cut.

[belorn]

The advertiser might be willing to put down his name, but what about the person/persons on the other end. No one knows who is running TPB at this time, nor where the servers are. If that information would leak through paper-trails, you can be sure legal actions would be sent their way by a number of anti-piracy groups. Questions about taxes and damages could also pop up depending on whom is running TPB and from where.

[zz1]

If running TPB was such a lucrative activity as you assume, why would they hand TPB over to the Pirate Party to run? If you watch the movie (TPB AFK), you'll surely get that they weren't in it for the money, and that they don't even know if they made some money out of it.

[sleepyhead]

The verdict is clear and has been passed. Whether you think it is complete nonsense is irrelevant.

[sleepyhead]

Getting downvoted... Interesting to see that HN readers think their views is more more important than the rule of law. I'm not saying the verdict is correct. But debunking it as complete nonsense and "that's never going to happen" is a clear misconception how the world and the legal system works.

[anaphor]

(FYI I didn't downvote you)

The reason I said that it's never going to happen is because they are simply unable to pay that amount back. They can't just pull millions out of thin air correct? So I think it's reasonable to conclude it will probably never get paid, at least not in full.

[ArcticCelt]

Can he just fill for bankruptcy to clear the damages?

[oliwary]

Not bankruptcy, but "skuldsanering", which resembles "debt relief order" in English.

It is a system for heavily indebted people to free themselves of their debt after living on a minimum for five years. It also includes damages due to crimes. [1] It is pretty rare however (5357 in 2013)[2].

There are two requirements: The person has to be indebted enough to not be able to pay off the debt in the foreseeable future, and the procedure has to be reasonable with regards to the personal and economical circumstances of the person.[3] This includes the age of the debt, why they came up and if the person has worked to pay them off.

[1] https://lagen.nu/dom/rh/1996:33 [2] http://www.kronofogden.se/20136.html [3] https://lagen.nu/2006:548 [4] http://www.kronofogden.se/Vemkanfaskuldsanering.html

[Tombone5]

From my reading of the fastställda tingsrättsdomen I note that they mention this excpetion being granted on a case by case basis, and considering Sunde is not a reformed alcoholic with a debth from a accident caused by his addiction it seems unlikely the case you refer to proves more than the existence of the exception.

[oliwary]

Indeed. My point was only that skuldsanering would free him from the damages, not that it is necessarily applicable in this case.

[Tomte]

Without knowing Swedish law, I'm rather certain he cannot.

Personal bankruptcy is usually out of the question for debts arising from unlawful behaviour. You cannot evade damages or a penalty imposed by a court just by filing bankruptcy.

Imagine a legal system where you could. Preposterous.

[sergiosgc]

In my country you can. There is also a 20 year limit to prison sentences, no matter the crime. The objective of the judicial system is not to punish but to recover dysfunctional society members. As such, it makes no sense to punish anyone with a life sentence, no matter the type (prison or fiduciary).

[Crito]

> There is also a 20 year limit to prison sentences, no matter the crime.

That seems mildly misleading. Sentences can be extended beyond 20 years as long as the person is still believed to be dangerous to society.

[sergiosgc]

Not in Portugal. They may extend to 25 by accumulation, but other than that, the limit is absolute.

You may conclude that someone is insane and force them to be institutionalized, but that is not prison, and the decision is not ever final.

[zanny]

I don't think I'd be really comfortable with convicted serial murderers walking around. Hell, any murderer. Manslaughter can be a mistake or an accident, but if you intentionally aggressively killed someone I'd rather not be walking past you on a street or participating with you in an open market...

I don't believe in the death penalty, but I also believe an essential function of prison is to remove the irredeemable from society so they aren't a threat anymore. I'm not sure you can classify anyone insane just for wanting to kill people, but I'm also not a psychologist. I also would not want to be the psychologist who released a serial murder considering him safe to return to society only for him to on another murder spree...

[yashosky]

@sergiosgc: Which country is that?

[arfliw]

Sounds like Norway.

[sergiosgc]

Portugal

[thinkpad20]

Preposterous, perhaps, but it also creates a class of people who can afford to break laws.

[kybernetyk]

If swedish bankruptcy law is anything similar to the German then he possibly can not. (Liabilities resulting from criminal action are not covered by bankruptcy laws.)

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

We have something like that here in the United States... bankruptcy won't clear student loans.

[belorn]

One can not file for personal bankruptcy or "skuldsanering" for this situation. Both of those are for non-criminal situation, and has also additional requirements attached to them.

The damages from a criminal case expire once Statute of limitations hits in, which is in this case 5 years (based on copyright infringement maximum jail time). I do not know when the timer starts to tick, but I would assume it starts once he is serving his sentence.

http://lawline.se/answers/9089

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preskription

[kaugesaar]

He probably can. 5 years with living wage and he would be debt free. If he has filled for bankruptcy before (which I don't know) he might be denied the chance again.

// Swedish

[yuhong]

They will most likely appeal I think.