Mininova Grosses €1 Million in 2007, Throws the Classic Subway Tunnel Bootlegs-On-a-Beach-Towel Business Paradigm out the Window

If you ever feel a pang of regret about downloading the latest episode of Lost on a torrent site, maybe your guilt should include the fact that you're making some Dutch nerds rich. Reporting for tech news site arstechnica.com, Nate Anderson recently pulled Dutch records, which Mininova, as a legitimate business with an office located in Utrecht, Netherlands, is required to file annually, to discover that the website's revenue statement from 2007 was €1,037,560.

Mininova's Niek van der Maas confirmed that amount to Anderson, but pointed out that it doesn't count for taxes and expenses. He also claimed that "website revenue has nothing to do with copyright infringement," a dubious statement considering the amount of traffic brought in because of the site's .torrent files. Nonetheless, Mininova, which doesn't actually host illegal content on its site, does have a prominent procedure for requesting the takedown of .torrent files from its site. This is in contrast to the Pirate Bay, which has openly mocked takedown requests from copyright owners in the past. The Pirate Bay is currently in the middle of a trial that is focusing on whether its administrators have profited from the sharing of illegal content.

It remains to be seen whether sites like these will continue to exist in the future, but it doesn't help Mininova's case that they're merely acting as an uninvolved conduit for .torrent files when there are clearly large amounts of revenue involved. As Anderson points out in the article, if the IFPI starts asking questions, the site has resources to put up a legal fight. I guess if you're going to steal something, steal big -- you can just buy yourself out of trouble in a pinch.

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