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The Pirate Bay Sold to Public Company with Plans for "Legit" Service

Posted 07/01/09 at 09:30:01 AM  by Paul Lilly

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We all know what really goes down over at The Pirate Bay, and apparently so does the Swedish District court, which found TPB's defiantly outspoken founders guilty of assisting copyright infringement and ordered them to serve a year in prison and pay a combined $3.6 million in fines. And if the latest rumor turns out to be true, they'll be the ones laughing all the way to bank, even if ultimately paying the fine, which would leave them with $4.2 million.

That's the amount that would be left over after Global Gaming Factory X, a gaming company, acquires the torrent sharing site for $7.8 million. GGF says it plans to complete the acquisition by August and then launch new business models that would pay copyright owners.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Hans Pandeya, CEO of GGF. "The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world."

Of course, illegal access to copyrighted content might play a small huge role in why TPB is so popular, but GGF believes it can build on the torrent site's success while going completely legit.

Image Credit: Volvo

COMMENTS:5
TAGS: bittorrent, torrent, business, the pirate bay, file sharing
COMMENTS
avatarOh yeah, right...

Submitted by Radiogrrl on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 11:31am

...because after all, Napster did so well after it went legit.

The whole thing is just dumb. While the major media companies are playing whack-a-mole and got this one, five more similar sites will spring up elsewhere to handle the PB traffic that's looking for a new site to download from.

If the major gaming companies really want to put a dent in online piracy, the way to do it is by making their games more affordable in a recession economy, not by going after a site or two or trying to sue middle-class working moms for millions they'll never see. All that does is inspire an even more staunch "us vs them" mentality among those who pirating, and publicly cast efforts to stop online piracy as laughable.

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avatarI think the whole thing is a

Submitted by jcollins on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:25am

I think the whole thing is a bit bizarre.  Who in their right mind would want to buy TPB and be the target of the misc lawsuits?

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avatarLinux distros

Submitted by JDorfler on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 6:42am

Hopefully we'll still be able to get our Linux distros from here.

Sager NP5797 (Clevo)

nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX/Intel QX9300/4GB DDR3 1066

Vista/Ubuntu/Fedora OSes

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avatar/agree

Submitted by AntiHero on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:18am

I need my daily dose of linux. However, what will happen when it comes to them paying the copyright owners? Do we need a subscription? AWESOME! Our payment information on a site that actually has been prosecuted.

I don't like Microsoft, I associate with it.

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avatar and fansubed movies,

Submitted by nekollx on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 8:04am

 and fansubed movies, backups of softwere we already own (maybe via some kind of submit serial code, get link to iso torrent, i dunno)

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.

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