TL Server Costs

[Actatoi]

There are no conspiracy theories, kingrob's admitted on several occassions that the TL sysops make money from the site. It would be pointless hiding it seeing as its so obvious.
The funny thing is that the way TL is at the moment its seems much more likely that TL sysops will be pursued for tax evasion rather than copyright infringement (assuming they dont declare all that money coming in)

Alright, if you're speaking the truth it sounds fair enough.

[Charles Lindbergh]

Hi people !!!

It was much trolling here. I'll post my opinion:

If TL sysops are earning 100.000 or 1.000.000 per month I don't realy care. They are not forcing to anyone to pay or donate. They are doing their job great with best scene releases. I don't see there nothing that can be wrong.
They deseverve every single dollar because they are working hard to offer to them who donate and them who don't. Most valuable thing that you can sleep in peace, but they sometimes watch throw the window, remmember feds are watching always. They are good and big, interested for us and for feds of course. Watching some stories like "so what if they go to jail" makes me realy mad. Usually that's are stories of people who never been there. I know what is freedom and there's no price for that.

I can only tell that that I'm missing their invite.

Great job and keep going TL mates!!!


Regards !!!

[Zeus]

I was estimating the amount of money they probably make. Its just a guestimate so here goes:

This is monthly donations.

# of users: ~70k
% that donate: 5%, lets say. Its definitely more than that because of the number of people that have bad connections and they only ask you to pay about 8euros so I think its still a fair approximation.

5% of 70k = 3500
3500 * 8 = 28000 Euros!!!

That is some crazy amount of money they're making.

Actually TL has twice that many users, so its more like 50,000+ euros each month. 600,000 euros a year isnt bad is it?.

I can see why some of you dont care that there are people making money this way, but personally I think its wrong to make that kind of money from other people work. I would rather see the money go to the hands of the artists, writers, developers etc who put the time and effort in to bring us these things and who come up with the ideas in the first place (or even to the record labels and production companies without whose investment none of the things we download would exist). If anyone deserves to make money from their work is them. Im not against filesharing, but downloading something for your own use is one thing and making huge amounts of money from other peoples work is quite another. I stopped using TL a long time ago due to its blatent profiteering and I honestly think it would be a good day if the site got shut down. The site gives filesharing a bad name and just gives organisations like the MPAA fuel for their publicity campaign against filesharers generally. I dont just target my remarks at TL, there are plenty of other sites out there headed in the same direction. You wont find many others out there making as much money as TL at the moment though.

[Actatoi]

I would rather see the money go to the hands of the artists, writers, developers etc who put the time and effort in to bring us these things and who come up with the ideas in the first place (or even to the record labels and production companies without whose investment none of the things we download would exist).

I don't think 600 000 euros would make the slightest difference to the ammount of things that are free on TL, if people bought things instead that means.


But I do understand your point, well written.

[Nemrod]

Very well expressed what you say Zeus,and I must agree with you in many things, but I´d like you read this (if you haven´t yet), just to let clear some things that are not the way they look like.

[parrot]

+ I can't even imagine the amount of knowledge and money it takes to actually start a working successful tracker.. Wouldn't try it, but appreciate that it's free for most!

[stoi]

I have to cringe at threads like this, full of presumptions and accusations, that are giving bittorrent and filesharing a bad name.

On our tracker i can say with hand on heart, we get about 0.2% of members donating to VIP (probably a bit less than that actually, and thats on a good month) and 0.5% donate anything at all even $1 (which paypal takes 30cents of at least).

the point im trying to make is, even with 100,000 members we got the same donators. so with 100,000 members we got 0.1% VIP and 0.25%.

Problem is whatever i say, someone who doesnt run a tracker will still come up with presumptions and add 2+2 and come up with 20,000 somewhere along the line.

People will believe whatever they want to believe, but i just have to say that Kazaa back in the day you had to pay for, until kazaa lite came out, Usenet the vast majority of us have to pay for (ISP Usenet is usually crap), Private FTP access you usually have to pay for. and these are "Paying For" not Donating so completely different to what most torrent sites do, and all of the above are "filesharing".

so why torrent sites are getting such a bum deal these days, i havnt a clue, and most torrent sites are faster than Usenet/Kazaa/FTP (some dump sites anyway).

also you say not to pay2leech, but how many of us subscribe to Usenet and not use torrents exclusively, you do not have to "Upload" so if that isnt pay to leech, i dont know what is, also the files are actually on their servers somewhere, torrent sites (if the owners have any sense anyway) do not and should not keep files on the servers the tracker runs on at all.

thats my 2cents anyway, there are a lot worse filesharing money making schemes out there than torrents imho.

[Mistral]

Why are you comparing pay2leech to Usenet/Kazaa/FTP? For Usenet you're paying for access, Kazaa you're paying for an application, FTP you're paying for access. In each case you're buying something.

With pay2leech you're paying for staff to fiddle with stats and in comparing them to the above you're saying that pay2leech is also a sale. Then you call it "donating". Which is it?

Donating is giving something freely, getting something in return is a purchase. There's a clear difference.

Pay2leech apologists continually try and spin the truth in order to justify their point of view but it doesn't matter how you dress it up, it is what it is.

If a community can't sustain itself on donations or other fund raising activities then obviously the site isn't valued by it's members and should be allowed to die.


@Zeus, Thanks for the back up m8, I appreciate your input and it warms my heart to see there's still people around that believe sharing shouldn't come with a price tag. I especially agree with your point that pay2leech sites give "filesharing a bad name and just gives organisations like the MPAA fuel for their publicity campaign against filesharers generally."

These sites are damaging to the BitTorrent community as a whole.
I can only hope the next time the authorities decide to crack down they go after the pay2leech scammers and leave proper sharers alone(unlikely).

[ersatzp]

I love the ethical debates regarding piracy. It's almost as comical as the sat hacking scene. People bitch about clones and how it's not fair to steal someone's work. It's so funny when the shoe is on the other foot. You just have to appreciate the irony of the entire matter.

[stoi]

so which trackers out there do not offer anything at all for donatations.

as in you donate for the good of the site and you get 0 in return, no gigs, no special perks like free leech, VIP, Star. no extra slots to seed/leech with. basically you donate and you have exactly the same influence and perks as you had before you donated.

Im not saying they do not exist, but i bet they are very few and far between.

and i mean Private sites, like TL, BCG, etc etc not public sites with a shit load of ads like TPB or Mininova, BTjunkie.

and so your saying that paying for access is ok, but donating for a perk isnt.

I bet if NG suddenly said you dont get full access, you dont get full speed, you only get XX gig per month and you have to seed back, most if not all users will tell them to stick it.

and i do not know anyone that pays for NG for the community spirit (just the text files rooms).

to me if you dont like them dont use them, its that simple, yes i agree some P2L schemes that some trackers do is just plain wrong, but then if they are in a pickle and need funds quickly, then i cant see anything wrong with doing anything for a month just to try to keep the tracker ticking over and surviving for another month.

but again, whatever i say here wont influence you in any way, as it looks you have already got your presumptions wether they are right or wrong.