I personally don’t know anyone who visits pirate sites (that I know of), and if they do, it’s something they do occasionally. How many movies and virus-infected warez does one person need? Everyone I know who goes online visits Google routinely, probably several times per hour of online time.
Is it possible that pirate sites get more visits than Google or Wikipedia?
Almost certainly. A large torrent tracker can easily get billions of connections per day since everyone who is connected to it will refresh the connection every few minutes. It adds up.
Alexa says the Pirate Bay (which I assume is the most active pirating site) ranks 75th in terms of pageviews and visitors. Google is number one, wikipedia is number 6.
I’d be interested in knowing where Pogue got the idea. I’m guessing it was an MPAA press-release.
ETA: 6% of all page views (!) on the internet are of Google. No way Pirate Bay comes close.
So, it seems like his data is pretty well debunked. A more relevant question is how many page visits from the US go to pirate sites vs. other sites. My guess is that the difference will be even more stark, since consumers in the US generally have better access to legal copies of the works being pirated. Why pirate when you can watch it on Netflix?
That question is more on-point, I suppose, since SOPA is US legislation. Does anyone have any idea how to track down page visits to various sites from US addresses?
Alexa has US specific data as well. Pirate Bay is the 85th most popular US site, as opposed to the 75th globally. Not sure how far you can stretch that in terms of US pirating behavior vs the rest of the world, since Pirate Bay is just one of several big pirating sites, but I expect your right that ease of availability in the US is at least part of the story.
I suspect the statistic Pouge was mangling was that there is more traffic on the internet from pirating then from Google and Wikipedia. I’d believe that, simply because pirating involves moving large files around while google and wikipedia are largely text and pictures. But its not really a meaningful comparison (and not what he actually said, in anycase).
Another article in the New York Times today says that Megaupload, a large file-sharing site, was shut down for violating copyright laws. The article says, “The indictment says that at one point, Megaupload was the 13th most popular Web site in the world.” So perhaps collectively Megaupload and similar sites are more popular (in terms of site visits) than Google?
Heh, maybe. But, then, shouldn’t the comparison between piracy sites in general and non-piracy sites in general? Maybe (just maybe…) all the piracy sites in the world get as many visits as Google, but do they get as many visits as Google + Wikipedia + Facebook + Myspace (that’s zero) + AOL (10 visits) + AltaVista (0 again), and so on?
Anyway, I think my general question has been answered – Pogue is incorrect, at least how he wrote it. Thanks, all!
It’s not a case of need. It’s more of a want because it’s possible, and you don’t have to pay for it. Similar, if not identical, to telling the teenager they cannot have it. They will always try out of defiance to authority.