Torrents of Money
March 12, 2009
Check out the meager revenues from some of the dead tree crowds’ online services. What about Twitter revenue? Not much there. Now click here to read the Ars Technica story “Torrent Search Engine Mininova Earning €1 Million a Year.” You may be able to locate a link to Mininova with a Google search. I am not comfortable putting a link to the site on the addled goose’s blog. What is evident that users of torrent sites will pay money to locate data indexed by a torrents’ system. No big surprise. For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
Even a casual glance at the site will confirm that a huge percentage of the .torrent files it hosts (Mininova, like The Pirate Bay, does not host actual content on its own servers) infringe copyright, but Mininova isn’t quite The Pirate Bay. While the Bay used to delight in posting—and then ridiculing—takedown requests from copyright owners, Mininova claims to comply with all such requests and has a prominent page on its Web site providing information on the takedown process.
I liked the Ars Technica write up. My hunch is that as legal eagles get more knowledge about torrents, the number of legal challenges will increase. Mininova may have the dough to fight today’s battles, but repeated, contentious, and prolonged legal battles will kill the company. Interesting challenges for the parties to the matter. Older folks have difficulty explaining why torrents may be problematic. The children of these individuals have zero problem understanding the benefits of a torrent site, finding them, and using them. Not much chance of a quick change in this pattern in my opinion. Search is a gateway to information. A link delivers the information object. The children of legal eagles may ask their parents, “What’s the big deal?” No quick or easy answer yet.
Stephen Arnold, March 12, 2009
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