'The Pirate Bay' Sells For $7.7 Million; Firm To "Legitimize" Business Model

[Turborama]

Source: AHN

Online file sharing website thePirateBay.com has been purchased for $7.7 million. Known for its legal troubles, Pirate Bay will introduce a "legitimate business model" according to its new owners, Global Gaming Factory X.

"The Pirate Bay site is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies that requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary," Global Gaming CEO Hans Pandeya explained. "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," Pandeya added.

The Pirate Bay has been the center of file sharing legal complaints for years. As a website, it indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. However, those files can contain copyrighted materials, such as movies, music and software. In April 2009, three of its founders were found guilty of "assistance to copyright infringement" under Swedish law. They were sentenced to a year in prison and fined $3.62 million USD (30 million SEK).

On its company blog, Pirate Bay explained: "TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it's value if the money would be the interesting part. It's not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site. As all of you know, there's not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It's the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn't evolve. We don't want that to happen. If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of (sic) us," they added.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7015648402

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Mininova strangles itself with a filter after TPB's court case and now an imminent Napsterization of Pirate Bay, bummer.

[tridim]

1. Legitimate piracy?

:rofl:

[Born Free]

36. Not everything on Pirate Bay is illegal or involves piracy

I seed several linux related torrents 24/7 and I just checked all is well with them. I know there are better sites for obtaining linux software but there always seems to be a few people on Pirate Bay that are looking for linux files. There are a lot from outside USA and some spend days getting a torrent. I don't do illegal movies, have Netflix & HD Tivo and can get most all the movies/show I want legally for less than $10.00 a month.

[Joanne98]

2. If you can't beat em buy em. Sell out bastards!

[jefferson_dem]

3. The end of an era...

...just like when Napster was forced above ground and "legitimized."

Let's hope TPB stays true to its mission.

[Political Heretic]

8. Hardly.

[Adir Pykhtin]

34. Well, there's still Limewire

Let's see how much that one lasts.

[Political Heretic]

35. The end of napster did not end peer file sharing.

peer file share simply evolved.

[tridim]

9. Except for the dozens of other torrent sites that still exist.

and will probably always exist in some form.

[jefferson_dem]

10. True.

I guess while the names and methods change, "the underground" is here to stay.

[dbonds]

21. And there is always google

just search for filetype: torrent 'name'

[Alamuti Lotus]

38. hardly the end

When Napster caved in to fucking Lars Ulrich, WinMX and Kazaa took over. Pirate Bay goes legit, Demonoid and a million others just take their share.

[drm604]

4. I'm curious to see if they can come up with a business model

that will maintain their user base, be legal, and make a profit. I'm skeptical that they'll be able to do this.

[cstanleytech]

6. I'm kinda doubting they can, look at what happened to napster when they tried for example nt

[Occulus]

16. Vuze is already doing what I think TPB is going to do

You can order films and television shows on Vuze (it's an application, not a website), and in fact Vuze is underwritten by and hosts content from several major networks.

Not only that, but Vuze is also a bittorrent client, which means you can use .torrent files not provided by Vuze. It even has meta files that automatically search for files on a number of torrent tracker sites.

I'm thinking Pirate Bay is going to move in that direction. No matter what happens, the torrent genie is definitely well and truly out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back in. Bittorrent is a protocol, not a program or a website, and is thus as ubiquitous as HTTP.

Torrents, never fear, are here to stay.

[Oregone]

17. Maybe they don't understand how torrents work

I wouldn't put it past them.

TPB was little more than a search engine to find bit torrent clients (not associated with TPB) sharing illegal software/music/movies. If you remove that component, well, eh, I am not sure what they are left with

[madrchsod]

5. someone bought 7.7 million worth of nothing

[Oregone]

18. Exactly.

But they bought a brand/URL really. Itd be interesting if they could possibly leverage it to get a positive ROI

[Political Heretic]

7. Pirate Bay will become like Napster, and all the savy people will move on to other underground sites

isohunt, is one I like.

[Hawkeye-X]

11. I'm a member of another..

And a really good one too. Far better than PB... I admit I started using TPB after retiring from IRC warez scene.

[Oregone]

19. Same here

IRC was too personal I found out. You became "someone", which inevitably led you to be tracked down in the end. I like being an anonymous torrent user

[Seedersandleechers]

12. My favorite

is Demonoid. Haven't used TPB in years.

[Turborama]

14. Luckily

I managed to get an account with them when the registration was open, just after Mininova started filtering stuff. It's been on the back-burner until now.

The only thing is, because my satellite connection is so lame, I can't seed as much as I want to so my ratio is at a paltry 0.8

[Hawkeye-X]

28. Same here. Even their registration is open for new members...

And I give them a monthly donation as well.

[bc3000]

13. They bought the wrong domain name?

It's thepiratebay.org that got famous, not thepiratebay.com

[Turborama]

15. 563 comments on their blog about it so far...

It's causing a real shitstorm over there: http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164

[Oregone]

20. Its a tad hypocritical

But, show me a suitcase of money and Ill put my righteous indignation away for quite some time

[Akoto]

25. I'm rather amused by some of the comments ...

They call the former site owners cowards and "not true pirates," and in the same turn, demand a method of deleting their accounts. If they didn't want to be caught, then they shouldn't have been copyright violators ... But then, fearing the law isn't very pirate-y, is it?

[Hayabusa]

22. A Sad Day for File-Sharers

I can only hope those distributing on the site get out and get out fast.

[Sin]

23. rapidshare...

megaupload...Sharebee....hotfile .... wink wink... nudge nudge ya know what I mean.

[Vidar]

24. Too bad. They were the best.

[SidDithers]

26. It'll be a regular business...

and nobody will use it.

Sid

[Kurska]

27. Doesn't matter Isohunt has been returning better results for atleast a year

I always seems to find better torrents and less "What the hell this is not at all what I searched for" results on Isohunt then I ever did using pirate bay.

[Odin2005]

29. Sell-outs!

:grr:

[closeupready]

30. I'm getting so old - I had never heard of the Pirate Bay until last week.

:D

[PfcHammer]

31. Meh.

usenet has everything.

[regnaD kciN]

32. The big question, of course...

...is "just how much personal information does TPB have about those who share their services?"

I could see a "legitimate" company coming in and turning over all their user records to law enforcement...

[Regret My New Name]

33. There goes its usefulness. :P

[sofa king]

37. They've been napstered.

[harun]

39. Pirates don't sell out.