> The ads were making millions
Citation?
Citation?
Another citation: me, but not going to prove it. I am friends with an ad network TPB used. They made $10k daily from adware installers alone in 2013.
Maybe 30%, worst case?
And literally the second paragraph in your link:
The claims were dismissed by Jonas Nilsson, legal counsel for one of the defendants, Fredrik Neij.
Nilsson argued that instead of being a profits earner most of the work to keep The Pirate Bay running had been undertaken on a voluntary unpaid basis.
"The revenues, which were not very large, went to buying new equipment," Nilsson said.
So I guess the court believed the prosecutor.
How do you figure? Their fine was not based on their advertising revenue was it?
And, two, given the current legal environment in most of the West including Sweden, "the court believed the prosecutor" doesn't mean shit, really. Of course the court believed the prosecutor - they are on the same team, after all.
I've never paid for StackOverflow, TheDailyWTF or CNN.com yet somehow they all keep running.
Using website X witout paying doesn't mean website X makes no money.
How much they make can be argued, but to think they don't rake in mad money (Look at how much contemporaries like Dotcom made)... is a bit shortsighted to say the least.
The assumption is that that companies are willing to spend the same amount of money to advertise on a torrent site as a international news paper.