The Pirate Bay’s Unfulfilled Promises
The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde and Frederik Neij recently sat down for a lively and intimate three-part interview with Dayrobber, a Danish online video site. But if, like me, you’re looking forward to a big announcement or two from these merry pranksters, you might come away disappointed. (Part one is embedded below, and parts two and three were posted today thanks to a request by TorrentFreak’s Ernesto.)
They continued to shoot down the idea that the popular torrent tracker is making a profit — Sunde says his take so far has been “a couple of free drinks,” and what income he does get is from speaking engagements. They did discuss related businesses they’re working on, but we’ve been hearing about those for months and I’ve yet to see any progress on those fronts.
NewTeeVee’s Janko Roettgers reported on projects The Video Bay, music site PlayBle and the new P2P protocol Neij is developing that promises to provide more anonymity to file sharers. But that was last May, and none of the projects are live to the public yet. Sunde promised to migrate to the new protocol by November, which leaves Neij about eight months to complete the task.
Just keeping the site online while doing battle in Swedish, Danish and American courts over copyright claims could certainly be eating into the team’s time. And if the site is just covering costs, that means there’s no profits to fold back into new projects — though as someone who donated to the efforts to purchase an island, I’d still like to know where that money went.
Who knows, maybe Carl Lundstrom can lend them a few Euros, or the site can reach a settlement in their suit against the labels and studios that will net some cash.
If the pace of development doesn’t pick up, the entertainment industry might finally catch on to the idea of a DRM free, ad-supported, bandwidth-efficient content distribution model — which Sunde admitted is about the only thing that would put The Pirate Bay out of business.
Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the feed
Sponsor Gallery
Recent
GigaOM Network
- Google Chrome OS: Distraction or Opportunity? [jkOnTheRun]
- Should We Force Marriage Between Broadband and Power Cos? [GigaOM]
- AmazingMail’s Web-to-Print Engine for iPhone [TheAppleBlog]
- Create a Free Poll Quickly With ProProfs [WebWorkerDaily]
- Solar Data Needs Standards, Too [Earth2Tech]
- List your LUG or Regional Meetings On Fossevents.org [OStatic]
- Operation Midnight Climax Depicts One of the CIA’s Dirty, Sexy Secrets [NewTeeVee]
© 2009 The GigaOM Network. Marketing consulting by ACS.
Thanks for the article but Dayrobber is NOT danish. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Dayrobber is a Swedish video site with daily videos in english.
Oskar on March 13th, 2008 at 5:59 am - Permalink
[...] BitTorrent Traffic Up 24% You know those high-profile lawsuits the MPAA are bringing against the Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites? Well…they’re kinda helping boost BitTorrent Traffic, [...]
Suing Backfires. BitTorrent Traffic Up 24% « NewTeeVee on April 18th, 2008 at 8:25 am - Permalink
[...] good track record when it comes to following through with their plans. NewTeeVee alumn Jackson West pointed out back in March that long-planned projects like The Video Bay, the music site PlayBle and a new and secure P2P [...]
The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet « NewTeeVee on July 9th, 2008 at 10:52 pm - Permalink
[...] The Pirate Bay’s Unfulfilled Promises NewTeeVee __________________ Hier geht die Post ab! VR rF3 Cockpit [...]
Deine Meldung des Tages - Seite 54 - Forum des Virtual Racing. e.V. on July 11th, 2008 at 3:23 am - Permalink
[...] como lo leen. Leo en Slashdot y en New Tee Vee que los muchachos de The Pirate Bay se lanzan en otro de sus ambiciosos proyectos -que esperemos que llegue a un buen fin-. Esta vez, preocupados por las recientes medidas [...]
The Pirate Bay quiere encriptar la Internet | Like a clockwork orange on July 11th, 2008 at 10:21 am - Permalink
[...] leia mais. This entry was written by rafa and posted on 18.Jul.08 at 7:10 pm and filed under sem categoria. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « dicionário de tah intarweb [...]
as promessas não cumpridas do pirate bay | kingston on July 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm - Permalink
[...] good track record when it comes to following through with their plans. NewTeeVee alumn Jackson West pointed out back in March that long-planned projects like The Video Bay, the music site PlayBle and a new and secure P2P [...]
The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet « Bolzano2910’s Weblog on July 20th, 2008 at 12:39 am - Permalink
[...] good track record when it comes to following through with their plans. NewTeeVee alumn Jackson West pointed out back in March that long-planned projects like The Video Bay, the music site PlayBle and a new and secure P2P [...]
The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet (NTV) | Direct2News on September 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm - Permalink
[...] it is, it’s that distinctive mixture of populist rhetoric, the always-deferred promise of huge announcements and continuous nose-thumbing at Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry. Here are five [...]
Five Years Of The Pirate Bay: The Most Memorable Moments « NewTeeVee on November 26th, 2008 at 2:48 pm - Permalink
[...] online record label, encrypt the entire Internet, launch a YouTube competitor called the Video Bay, purchase an island and shield P2P users from lawsuits, plus a number of still unnanounced projects. Our current [...]
5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale on June 30th, 2009 at 11:33 am - Permalink
[...] online record label, encrypt the entire Internet, launch a YouTube competitor called the Video Bay, purchase an island and shield P2P users from lawsuits, plus a number of still unnanounced projects. Our current [...]
e-mojo.net » 5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale on June 30th, 2009 at 12:07 pm - Permalink