If I start a warez site with some friends. We buy a legal vBulletin or IPB license, get a custom made skin, add some add-ons to the forum etc. And we get a constant traffic of 2k people on. How much will it be worth?
If I make a car with some friends, we get a legal tax disk, get a custom paint job, add some hub caps and new lights, and we drive this car 20 miles a day, how much will it be worth?
You can't value a site before its made, its simply not possible. You need to know things like domain name, pr, age, posts, threads, advertising revenue. All of the above and more will give your site a vaule, so untill you have made it you wont know. Also with it been a warez forum alot of people won't actually want to buy it as they not 100% legal and therefore can be shut down.
Why? Most warez-sites are legal because they mostly don't host their files and don't direct link to them (anonym.to, rapidshare,...)!
You have a very niche market that will buy a site that could easily be shut down. The smaller your initial buy pool the less you will probably sell it for.
You are mistaken, there are some examples of warez sites which impossible to shut down, for example www.nulled.ws (yes its russian). If you write letter to hosting company that hosts it, they will just ignore you. If you write to domain registrar company, it will ignore you (simpy because warez sites are not prohibited by their rules ...). It is possible to shut down it IF: 1) you have a good lowyer 2) you have money and time for lowyer 3) you are ready to repeat 1) & 2) for each new domain name they transfer their warez site after shutdown. PS: and yes - i tried.
i`ve heard of bulletproof hosting where you can host anything you want. i think servers are in countries where some laws don`t exist.
Not really mate It's not because warez-bb stays online that others also stay online! I was a warez person years ago but stopped since one day, the cops were here and picked all with them (laptop, pc) Now I understand that it is stupid to spread warez But that is what warez forums are doing And yes, you may be sure that warez-bb pays money for things Not as much as youtube, but also some money.... Otherwise it won't survive They also pay tinypic and photobucket etc Why do you think tinypic and photobucket are blocked on PW and not on w-bb? It's all about money, and to start a new warez forum well it's almost impossible mate But you can give it a try
Tell that to The Pirate Bay? They make $xx,xxx every month and it's completely legal, police have *tried* to shut them down, but they can't find them breaking any laws... infact, The Pirate Bay is suing the police for interfering with their perfectly legal service. Immoral and illegal are worlds apart.
This is my favorite post in this thread, because it really show how a lot of people here on DP don't make any sense when they ask questions. I mean, I know that you can't learn anything without asking questions, but at least ask smart questions. Do you think someone can just look in their crystal ball and tell you how much your site is gonna be worth? That's ridiculous. To figure out the value of a website, you need to include a lot more factors than just the type of site and traffic. You could be getting 2k hits/day, but your ad placement may suck and could make less than a site with 1k hits/day. Your original post doesn't make any sense. Go ahead and start up the site and see for yourself how much it's gonna be worth. Don't start out right away with Vbulliten. Save some money and use PHPBB. After you make some revenue then get Vbulliten.
That's very far from the truth. Just because they don't 'host' the files doesn't mean they're not breaking the law. It's like giving a loaded gun to someone knowing they're going to kill someone, you are an accessory to murder. You help someone break the law, and you're an accessory to the crime. Just because they have disclaimers saying they can't be held responsible doesn't mean that's true. Warez sites are illegal. But I guess it depends which country the site is hosted in and which country the administrator lives in.
I remember that The Pirate Bay got closed last year .. didn't it ? when did they come back ? and how ?
Yes, they were illegally shut down by the police for 3 days whilst they tried to pin a crime on them. This is the reason why TPB are suing the police, because they had no right to shut them down for those 3 days because they're not breaking any laws. ThePirateBay make $xx,xxx/month from advertising Limewire, Morpheus, Emule - P2P applications like these make A LOT of money and have little if any legal ramifications YouTube (you may have heard of it?) was created with warez, in the early days, it was only really used for copyrighted material.. it sold for $1.6bn If TPB are doing anything wrong, then so are Google. You could get exactly the same results as TPB just by doing a Google search. They can't shut one down without the other.
Because the creators of Limewire, Morhepus and Emule can use the defence that they were made to share 'non-pirated' things. The Pirate Bay cannot do that on the other hand.
What on Earth gives you that idea? They all use torrent files, infact, TPB has a lot of files uploaded by bands and filmmakers who want to share their art. The Pirate Bay is not breaking any laws, it's been running for years, has had malicious and illegal DDoS attacks from MediaDefender (who were paid by the RIAA to carry out the attacks). This is why they're suing MediaDefender. The more you read into this, you the more you'll see that the RIAA is a twisted, hypocritical, backward company who have broken a lot more laws than the people they sue. MediaDefender is a joke, this is why their email system was hacked recently, and all their company emails were uploaded and distributed to the public - many of the emails counted as further evidence in TPB's case that they intentionally break the law when attacking websites. It was only a few months ago that MediaDefender attacked Revision3's website and brought it down (Revision3 is a side project from Digg.com, Kevin Rose ect), because Revision3 distributes it's shows via Torrent files, which MediaDefender deemed illegal - eventhough all the content is made, owned and distributed by Revision3. Revision3 reported the incident to the FBI and is suing for loss of revenue.
Of course legitimate people would use TPB to share things, but look at the categories that TPB has. "Games" "Music" "Movies" which is obviously for the sharing of PIRATED (considering the title of the site its pretty daft to say otherwise). It was MADE for pirated material. And it is ILLEGAL (at least by generally accepted international laws) to create a website for the hosting of illegal material. It's like creating a website which ALLOWS for the posting of child porn. The site would get shut down quickly. And it wouldn't get away with it just because it wasn't "HOSTING" it. Though, alot of the reason warez sites get away with it is because they're hosted and run in countries where they don't give a fuck about warez. Host a site like that in America, or Australia, etc, and you'll get in alot of trouble. and of course, I hate the RIAA too, they do break the law, but it doesn't mean the people they're going against aren't breaking the law either.
What illegal material exists on The Pirate Bay? None. What illegal content is hosted on The Pirate Bay? None. The Pirate Bay is a search engine for torrent files, much like Google is a search engine for torrent files. It's not hosted in some backward country, it's hosted and managed in Sweden, inside the European Union.