You don't need to be smart and good to start a torrent site. There are thousands of them online at this point.

The 2-3x salary increase is also faulty. A salary is pretty much capped to a tiny raise...year in, year out. Businesses on the other hand grow more or less exponentially. So yeah, 2-3x salary may not be worth it, but you need to take the long term view, a few years from now that # will be 5-6x salary...more or less guaranteed without major effort.

Also, I don't really buy the going to jail argument, these guys aren't in the USA, so they are a lot more protected from RIAA etc. And worst case scenario, they'll have to shut down the site and pay a small fine. And the most extreme scenario where they go to jail...its not like they'll end up with the general population, they'll go to some white collar prison instead.