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Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-you-can't-beat-'em dept.

mlingojones writes "TorrentFreak breaks the news of The Pirate Bay's acquisition by Warner Bros: 'After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.'"

32 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Oh well by Squiffy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, that's the end of that.

    1. Re:Oh well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      In other news, The Pirate Bay settled with the RIAA/MPAA today.

      In the agreement, TPB will pay RIAA/MPAA a licensing fee for every song they sell. RIAA/MPAA lawyers hailed the deal as ground breaking.

      TPB managed to keep a straight face long enough to get out of the room before laughing themselves silly at the RIAA/MPAA stupidity!

    2. Re:Oh well by Squiffy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Haha, yes, I fell for it. Would you believe the "I haven't had my coffee yet" defense?

    3. Re:Oh well by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Funny

      you believe this?

      Why not, in order to be an april fools joke, humor would have to be involved, therefore I can only conclude that this is seriousness.

    4. Re:Oh well by HardCase · · Score: 5, Insightful

      See, back in the day, /. used to come up with one really good original April Fool's joke. It was like they crafted it over the course of a month or two, then popped it on an unsuspecting crowd. It was elegant, it was funny and it suckered lots and lots of people.

      That evolved into the new philosophy of the past few years which is "if one really good joke was great, how about a bunch of really lame ones?" It's quantity over quality which, I guess, is what we want now.

      I miss the old /.

    5. Re:Oh well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your mom's a big fan of quantity over quality as well.

    6. Re:Oh well by Cap'nPedro · · Score: 5, Funny

      I miss the ponies!

    7. Re:Oh well by kestasjk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who cares? (Anything for a "good old days" rant I guess, I don't remember them being so great before)

      --
      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    8. Re:Oh well by Zerth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The downside is that since Warner bought the Pirate BAy.....there will no longer be any Warner Bros. titles offered there. Only stuff from the other guys..... /blockquote.

      This is a downside?

    9. Re:Oh well by Chabil+Ha' · · Score: 4, Informative

      With this extension you can relive OMG!!! Ponies!!! every day. Just go into the options and change the default style to OMG!!! Ponies!!!

      --
      We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
    10. Re:Oh well by damien_kane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That would actually be a pretty smart thing to do...

      Step 1: Agree to pay the RIAA/MPAA's "protection" fees (retroactively, of course)
      Step 2: Agree to the deal where WB takes control of your company (both assets and liabilities)
      Step 3: Profit?!!

      (As WB now has to pay out all of it's cash-on-hand to the RIAA/MPAA)

    11. Re:Oh well by notsaenej · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ah, nostalgia isn't what is used to be huh?

    12. Re:Oh well by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Duh! The point of an April fool's is to play along, not to show how "clever" you are by spotting it (playing along is much cleverer than that...)

      --
      No sig today...
    13. Re:Oh well by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Funny

      Huh? Are you sayign it's a joke? I just went to http://thepiratebay.org/ and it's confirmed there...I don't think an april fooler could hack into their site and change it.

      --
      No sig today...
    14. Re:Oh well by BCW2 · · Score: 4, Funny

      *Snerk, giggle, guffaw!*

      --
      Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  2. Seriously, guys... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants.

    1. Re:Seriously, guys... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Informative
      "Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants."

      Gotta ask...what the hell does that mean? Something is 'pants'?? Never heard that one before.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:Seriously, guys... by jez9999 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Crap. Shit. Stupid. Boring. Onanistic. Take your pick.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    3. Re:Seriously, guys... by VJ42 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants."

      Gotta ask...what the hell does that mean? Something is 'pants'?? Never heard that one before.

      It's a colloquialism in British English that's used as a rough synonym for bollocks\crap\rubbish\arse.

      Pants in British English are underwear instead of trousers, hence the negative connotations.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
    4. Re:Seriously, guys... by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants.

      That's what I love about the Brits. Yes, we Yanks/Americans get all the crap for not speaking English properly. Yet somehow our Canadian friends to the north, who except for a few odd British spellings (colour) and a few strange words (ever sat on a Winchester? It's not a gun.) say almost the same thing as we do with an accent that's close to ours, yet they escape condemnation. And don't get me started on the Aussies, who would probably say some crap like this:
      Apfo pan
      and we'd be expected to know that means "April Fools is pants".

      But I digress. Really, you have to love the Brits. According to one source I found, saying that something "is pants" means it's of poor quality. So instead of saying
      April Fools is lame
      or
      April Fools' is tired (note the apostrophe because the day is April Fools' Day with an apostrophe)
      they have to tell us that "it's pants", which somehow we non-Brits will all magically know. For shizzle my nizzle.

    5. Re:Seriously, guys... by Jamamala · · Score: 4, Informative

      Pants, used in the British way; perhaps underwear to you.

    6. Re:Seriously, guys... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Funny
      "I believe it stems from British English. They call pants trousers, and underwear pants. I also believe that pants is used as a somewhat general derogatory there."

      Ah..that explains it.

      Even if I knew British English....I'd not get it, since I go 'commando'.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    7. Re:Seriously, guys... by KylePflug · · Score: 4, Funny

      I believe pants to be an evil dichotomy.

      I don't think that word means what you think it means.

  3. It's about time by notarockstar1979 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Honestly this is the whole reason for the lawsuits. It was to devalue TPB so that WB or one of the other big media groups could purchase them on the cheap. I can't believe no one saw this coming.

  4. Next on the block? Sony by pha7boy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sony was, reportedly, also interested in a deal with Pirate Bay to distribute it's share of Sony-Ericsson over the net. Fortunately, the deal fell through... for now...

    --
    -- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
  5. Great detective work there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would never have figured this out if it weren't for your insightful comment

  6. 13.37 Billion... by Nushio · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thats one 1337 way to close the shop!

    --
    Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
  7. Re:Not a bad idea by zoobaby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While sounds good, every one with the know how would go out and set up a torrent in hopes of a buy-out.

  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  9. Re:In an unrelated news, by perryizgr8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    In an unrelated news, Stallman has just announced that he's joining Microsoft.

    in related news, windows 7 goes open source.

    --
    Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
  10. Re:In an unrelated news, by shadowbearer · · Score: 4, Funny

      More breaking news: Darl McBride announced that he's going to throw his weight behind linux; "If you can't beat'em, join'em." he declared in a surprise announcement from amidst the still smoking ruins of SCO's headquarters.

      He was hospitalized shortly afterward in critical condition due to what appears to be injuries inflicted by an office chair.

    SB

     

    --
    It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
  11. Re:Not Reading Slashdot by panthroman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are reasons I don't read Slashdot on 4/1. This is only one of them.

    Something about your post is... impossible.