Founder of Oink music piracy site 'had $300,000 in bank'

[dvdasacd]

First off, I am vehemently against making money off piracy. I'm sorry, but don't try and justify it. For most tracker owners it is NOT a 24/7 job, far from it, once it's set up and running.

Profiting from site donations is the no. 1 thing which can corrupt the owner of a large tracker - and the no. 1 hardest thing to truly assure ones innocence in and gain trust with - just "saying" you're legit and having a squeaky clean reputation in everything else, is not enough to prove it. There are ways to do this though, and one way is to have one or two 100% trusted staffers with full access to the paypal account to see that nothing is taken out for personal use, and they can be witness of the proper use of donation money.

[Hombre]

I imagine how much TL and revTT do. Must be crazy. SCT was easy to make accounting: 20€ per invite, plus the huge member rotation...

[Night0wl]

I personally don't care if he made money, but one thing I do know is that not once during my membership there was I nor anyone I know even hinted that we should donate. So unlike those sites asking for donation, every donation was voluntary on OiNK.

[7th]

First off, I am vehemently against making money off piracy. I'm sorry, but don't try and justify it. For most tracker owners it is NOT a 24/7 job, far from it, once it's set up and running.

I respect your opinion but I would never take the risk for nothing... you neither, am I right?

anyway, I'm quite sure they do get money from it whenever they can hehe

I have no profs about that but I've only seen (that I remeber) one tracker (and one time only) leaving a note at the home page saying something like: "hey guys, thanks for the donations, we got what we needed to do what we promissed; you don't need to donate anymore for now". And that doesn't mean they just got what they needed and nothing more

[AdrianPhoto]

Where did he get that?

[WhatMan]

I don't believe it at all. The press and prosecution have been twisting the facts since day one - why do you believe anything from the people who say that members HAD to pay 5 euros to invite a friend?

I, for one, know how much money a site like the size of OiNK brings in, and I know how much one costs. I can tell you - even for a huge site with thousands of donors, it is very difficult to earn operating costs if you don't offer pay-to-leech. OiNK had enormous operating costs - I suspect on the level of 3-4,000 euros per month. I've always been amazed that they were even able to break even.

I think the prosecution is twisting facts here - I'd bet money that the actual number is $300,000 spent over the course of the entire site's existence. This is not a highly unreasonable amount - with four high-powered servers in a leaseweb reseller, as well as peripheral costs such as proxies, over the course of three years, it sounds about as much as he'd take in and spend to me.

[dvdasacd]

Interesting thoughts, whatman. I wonder if the truth can ever be known to us, then. Perhaps not...I wish we did.

First off, I am vehemently against making money off piracy. I'm sorry, but don't try and justify it. For most tracker owners it is NOT a 24/7 job, far from it, once it's set up and running.

I respect your opinion but I would never take the risk for nothing... you neither, am I right?

No. How does making money make it "all ok"? Certainly not for me. But enabling people to share music with each other? Heck yeah. And that combined with taking steps to give myself a certain amount of security that I deem adequate, makes it a worthwhile endeavour for me.

[DonkeyPacker]

Holy shit.

[7th]

No. How does making money make it "all ok"?

it doesn't make it ok at all

And that combined with taking steps to give myself a certain amount of security that I deem adequate, makes it a worthwhile endeavour for me.

what you deem adequate is not always adequate

just kidding (and telling a little bit of truth hehe)

anyway, I'm thankful that there are people like you out there...

[TP635]

I don't believe it at all. The press and prosecution have been twisting the facts since day one - why do you believe anything from the people who say that members HAD to pay 5 euros to invite a friend?

I, for one, know how much money a site like the size of OiNK brings in, and I know how much one costs. I can tell you - even for a huge site with thousands of donors, it is very difficult to earn operating costs if you don't offer pay-to-leech. OiNK had enormous operating costs - I suspect on the level of 3-4,000 euros per month. I've always been amazed that they were even able to break even.

I think the prosecution is twisting facts here - I'd bet money that the actual number is $300,000 spent over the course of the entire site's existence. This is not a highly unreasonable amount - with four high-powered servers in a leaseweb reseller, as well as peripheral costs such as proxies, over the course of three years, it sounds about as much as he'd take in and spend to me.

More likely the case.