Pirate Bay Announces Sale to Swedish Company For $7.8 Million

paulraps writes "The Pirate Bay is to be bought for $7.8 million by Global Gaming Factory X, a Swedish company specializing in internet café management software, the company has announced. As well as taking over the controversial brand, GGF has also bought Peerialism, a small IT company with roots at Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, which has developed a new file sharing technology. The acquisitions mean that GGF will be at the heart of 'the international digital distribution market,' allowing it to introduce a new pay model for file sharing." Reader pyzondar adds "However, the press statement also states that the deal will only go through 'if GGF and its Board of Directors can use the asset in a legal and appropriate way.'"

Comments

suckers

[QuantumG]

hehe, sure sold 'em that bridge.

Re:suckers

[tverbeek]

However, the press statement also states that the deal will only go through 'if GGF and its Board of Directors can use the asset in a legal and appropriate way.'

[EmilyLitella]Oh. Sorry. Never mind.[/EmilyLitella]

Re:suckers

[geegel]

I know that it's just a domain, I know that something better will show up. I even know that in the great scheme of things this is actually a good thing. ... but somehow I can't help feeling sad. It is the end of an era. R.I.P. TPB

Re:suckers

[orclevegam]

Long Live TPB 2.0, whatever they decide to call it. Not to be confused with TPB post buyout which will have a presence and relevance much like that of Napster post buyout, IE, none at all. When will companies learn that just because you bought the name, doesn't mean you've got the people. People don't go to TPB because of the name, they go because it offers something they want, once you stop offering that, then people stop coming, it's so simple even an MBA could figure it out (eventually).

Re:suckers

[pnewhook]

In the end, it just turns out to be a bunch of people scamming others so they get rich. So now can we get off this delusion that the owners of the pirate bay are heroes somehow out to protect our rights in the face of evil corporations?

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, just as soon as you let go of your delusion that sharing is scamming

Re:suckers

[gnick]

...they go because it offers something they want, once you stop offering that, then people stop coming, it's so simple even an MBA could figure it out...

A single MBA? Probably. Even quickly. An entire board? They need a couple of purchases encouraged by an enthusiastic idiot before they'll figure it out (or go bankrupt in the process.)

YMMV.

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend reading their blog-entry about it...

here: http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164

-Deepone

Re:suckers

[doti]

They have not sold the fight, just the name.

I hope.

Re:suckers

[pnewhook]

As usual AC, you completely miss the point of the comment.

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are not in a position to criticize our new pirate overlords.

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that's anonymous cowardon to you, pal...

Re:suckers

[Celc]

... get rich by giving the profits to a foundation dedicated to free-speech and democracy? I do however they get some monetary compensation for the ~5 years of labor they put in it but it wouldn't surprise me if they won't. Why on earth you are modded insightful is beyond me.

Re:suckers

[Seumas]

I doubt that there would not be some clause whereby they agree in the sale not to directly compete by starting up yet another service that does the exact same thing under a different name. Otherwise there wouldn't be much value in the transaction to begin with.

Re:suckers

[Seumas]

The blog entry is a bunch of meaningless drivel. I don't care what TPB guys say about the sale and how nothing will change, except for the better and the right guys will still be around running things -- the fact of the matter is that no publicly held business is going to buy a torrent website that facilitates in the transmission of almost exclusively copyrighted content and then continue to operate the site in the same way.

The only way they would buy it is if they transformed it into a "legitimate" service, thereby losing any interest any of the audience had in it and therefore contradicting everything stated in the blog.

Re:suckers

[Seumas]

I don't believe they said they were donating all the money. Frankly, I hope they don't. I'd say donate just enough to kick the foundation off and keep the rest so you never have to work another day in your life. Then you can spend that time doing whatever you really love. I have no qualms with that. In fact, I have no qualms if they just take all the money and go live on an island somewhere.

My only gripe is that yet another service attempts to go legit through support of traditional business only after building itself up on "questionable" methods. In no other industry would this sort of business model be legitimized, yet it happens repeatedly on the internet.

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

or they have decided they need to pay their fines/lawyers and/or serve their jail time....

Re:suckers

[hkmwbz]

What was the scam, exactly? And were they "scamming" on behalf of the organizations they are donating all the money to?

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm, dude, your head must be in the sand: DeBeers, the weapon's industry, Private Investigators, Bounty Hunters, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, the Cotton Industry. The Kennedy's.

That's just off the top of my head. The first step to getting rich is selling your soul to the Devil. What exactly that means is up to each person to decide, but very few people become filthy rich through legitimate means (There are rich people who did work hard and earn it, without crushing other's through unfair means, but they rarely top the 10 million assets mark?)

Just my 2 cents.

Re:suckers

[doti]

And you think they're in to compete in the warez scene?

They're buying the brand.

Re:suckers

[HTH NE1]

no publicly held business is going to buy a torrent website that facilitates in the transmission of almost exclusively copyrighted content

Um, almost all digital content is copyrighted. There are those that even claim new copyright over the digital forms of analog public domain works. It may even be bureaucratically impossible to release something into the public domain prematurely. Combined with how long that sufficient explicit copyright notices were no longer needed and renewals were no longer required, it would be nigh impossible for any digital work not to be copyrighted.

It has never been a condition of whether or not something was copyrighted; it was whether or not the copying was authorized by the copyright holder. (And that permission need not always be expressly written: it can be implicit in accordance with the medium.)

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it matter what their intentions are, if they are preserving our rights? Remember that many free speech rights (in the United States) are preserved only because Larry Flynt, by nearly all accounts a despicable human being, was willing to fight for them. If you disagree with the idea of reformed copyright policy, that's one thing. But discounting all the work the Pirate Bay Founders have done just because they made money in the end is disgusting.

Re:suckers

[Xest]

Not the first time either.

Anyone remember I think it was Loki torrent or something where he asked for donations to fight an RIAA court case but instead just took the money and ran?

The movement for change to copyright, or the piracy movement or whatever you want to call it doesn't need idols for exactly the reason P2P works so well - it's decentralised.

Similarly I think the guys purchasing TPB are idiots, no one in their right mind would trust a torrent site that is corporately owned and says it wants to turn into a legitimate service (not that it wasn't technically legitimate under Swedish law anyway).

Another site will step up and take it's place, the TPB guys will have traded this deal for public support, and no one will frankly care now if they end up going to jail. P2P will continue, with a new site, or perhaps even an existing one - BTJunkie already had a bigger userbase afaik and TPB will be a site no one uses anymore.

Ultimately TPB guys are human, but that doesn't mean this is a stupid move. Even if as they say it is to get money to continue the fight it's a severe blow to their credibility. The best they can do now is be 100% transparent and provide evidence of where every penny goes, if not it's only fair people assume it's gone into their pockets.

Re:suckers

[Seumas]

Those aren't quite the same things. Those are established companies doing bad things. We're talking about a business plan that is established on what courts and corporations keep insisting are illegal practices that then become legitimized as a direct result of the popularity gained by those practices. Additionally, the hypocrisy of anti-sharing and anti-fair-use businesses supporting sharing and fair-use (in their terminology, "copyright infringement") by rewarding them when they get enough eyeballs to warrant being desirable for a company on legitimate intentions.

A much better analogy than those you offered above would be when Interscope Records bought Death Row Records, which was started with drug money. The initial capitol and cash flow for Death Row Records came from the convicted Michael Harris, of course.

Re:suckers

[Seumas]

Correct. And if the community knew that the founders were just going to duplicate the exact thing elsewhere, the entire community would move over to whatever project or site that was, undermining the value of the brand that was just purchased. Anyone spending $8m to buy a torrent site has a lawyer or two who are surely going to have an eye on preventing devaluation of the purchase in such a manner.

Re:suckers

[Seumas]

When speaking of "copyrighted content" on torrent sites (especially TPB), it is assumed one is speaking of copyrighted content for which authorization has not been provided. I don't believe any one of us was under the perception of anything else.

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

To clarify a bit..

TPB has been owned by a company for the last years since the raid so nothing there will really change except the names of the owners. The talk about TPB are going to be a pay site is wrong, the CEO that said that does not know what he is talking about.

Now, the BIG change is that the tracker is going to be outsourced to a new formed company that wont know what they track, just that they connect peers, and the torrent listings will be handed by an other new company that will have torrents but they will not know either content or who is using the torrents. This setup will be practically impossible to take down or find anyone liable to sue.

The 3d party company services will have APIs, so you can on your blog or whatever have your own small torrent listings just as you now pull in twitter feeds. remember how the twitter design totally havoced the iranian attempts to block it as ppl just used another side that pulled in the feeds and read it there instead? well that goes for torrents and TPB to.

All in all, this is not the end of the world as some are seeing it but a rather interesting technical improvement.

And dont worry, not a dime will go to the media industries spectrial prize money what i know of but a really nice fund for doing cool stuff. /krs - co.founder of TPB and PB, not involved in TPB anymore and have no stake in any cash.

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

So now can we get off this delusion that the owners of the pirate bay are heroes somehow out to protect our rights in the face of evil corporations?

Obvious troll is obvious

Re:suckers

[pnewhook]

Why on earth you are modded insightful is beyond me.

Because I happen to be insightful. Very insightful actually. So insightful in fact that it is way beyond your level of understanding.

Re:suckers

[pnewhook]

What was the scam, exactly? And were they "scamming" on behalf of the organizations they are donating all the money to?

What organizations? If you don't believe they are running off with most or all of the money, then you are either extremely naive or an idiot.

Re:suckers

[AntiNazi]

btjunkie is not a tracker. It is pretty much worthless compared to tpb. Not that tpb was all that great but it will certainly leave a pretty big void in the pub p2p scene.

Re:suckers

[tnk1]

In the end, it just turns out to be a bunch of people scamming others so they get rich. So now can we get off this delusion that the owners of the pirate bay are heroes somehow out to protect our rights in the face of evil corporations?

Well, they have to pay the fine somehow... I never expected them to have to rot in jail for 20 years to make their point, although I hear that the money may not even go that way. We'll see what the Court has to say about that....

One would argue that they have already done a lot for the scene that they were promoting, and they put their asses on the line in terms of civil and criminal charges and running a site that had a bullseye on its back from Day One.

In the end, I don't know if they right in their convictions, and they certainly pushed the envelope, but I have trouble calling them sellouts. They seem anything but that. If anything, the goods would likely have been somehow confiscated anyway at some point, shell corporation or not. They might as well get something out of it while they can.

Re:suckers

[HTH NE1]

Yeah, I tend to assume when people talk about copyrighted content they don't realize everything is copyrighted, even their own writings, automatically. Even the Anonymous Cowards. It isn't that hard to say "unauthorized" before "copyrighted content".

Usually it isn't the person being responded to that needs the correction; it's the readers of his that need to be educated. (Besides, it isn't like you said "copywritten".)

BTW, I downloaded the documentary "Good Copy, Bad Copy" from TPB. I followed a link there from the website of the producers of the film. Oh, but that might be too controversial for them to host... er, I mean to tell other people where it is hosted.

Anyway, what's wrong with letting people know where criminal activity is taking place? If instead of The Pirate Bay it was called The Pirate Barrel and it advertised itself as an investigative search engine intended for use by copyright holders to catch those infringing copyright (but due to logistics it couldn't vet every user as being the holder of the copyright for each item being searched), would they be prosecuted as harshly? They could even get away with targeted advertising for law enforcement paraphernalia on the site, like CRIME SCENE tape, tamper-evident evidence bags, titanium handcuffs, iron-core batons, anti-ballistic riot gear, improved taser power supplies....

Newspapers tend to have a daily report of crimes committed in their readership's area, many of which are unsolved. That information could be used by people to find where to buy drugs, solicit prostitution, or other crimes. Should newspapers be barred from publishing such statistics?

(Actually, I've seen television field reporters lie about the location of crimes in an area, biasing intersections by one or two blocks.)

©

Re:suckers

[Matt_R]

Long Live TPB 2.0, whatever they decide to call it.

What's better than pirates? Ninjas. Somebody has already registered theninjabay.org :)

Re:suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you read it, you'll realize he's saying a lot of feel good words and phrases you hear in marketing or in office meetings to bullshit people. Which to me sounds like either one of the people feels guilt and is trying to convince people to stay, or already, a lawyer or a representative of the company that's going to buy them out has stepped in.

Someone mentioned that out of the four that run the site, one is a millionaire, who more than likely only has interest in the site because he saw to profit from it, which he probably will from this.

The court thing was probably nothing more than a song and dance to get fame.

"The old crew is still around in different ways."
This means what? yeah, I mean, I'm sure they're still around, unless the company executes them to finish the buyout.

"We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we're fueling up for going into the next gear."
So basically, they're becoming politicians, and you gotta love the vague and loaded statement at the end. What does going into the next gear mean in regards to TPB? oh right. nothing.

"TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it."
I don't think I need to say anything here. note the use of evolve. Evolution isnt always a good thing.

"It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols."
EVOLVE EVOLVE EVOLVE THE PROTOCOLS!

"And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It's win-win-win."
Again, another pointless statement that says absolutely dick about what's going to happen to the site. However it sounds more like how they're going to be focusing on being e-politicians rather than technology.

So in essence: "Fuck you guys, we're getting the money, TPB will change in a way we think is better for everyone, even if everyone doesn't think so, while we go dine on the dollar and become famous politicians. don't forget to vote!"

I'd rather them shut the damn thing down than do that, but hey, in all honesty, it's their call, but it doesn't mean we cant be disgusted by it.

Re:suckers

[hkmwbz]

You are the idiot for making claims there is no basis for.

Re:suckers

[shiftless]

In no other industry would this sort of business model be legitimized ...

Well, not quite. There are hundreds of perfectly legitimate Chinese manufacturing companies out there who regularly rip off competitors' products and manufacture clones for pennies on the dollar. Does this hurt the "real" legitimate businesses who spend years and lots of money developing products only to have them ripped off and copied within a month of release? Possibly, probably, but the point is this type of behavior is accepted and not against Chinese law at all.

Be careful in labelling a business practice as "illegitimate" before considering that acceptable behavior varies greatly between different regions and cultures. Hell, just consider that in the U.S. alone there is a sizeable number of people who don't see anything wrong with copyright infringement. Some even call for copyrights to be abolished altogether, or at least heavily limited. The fact is when you have a law that is being violated on a regular basis by a sizeable percentage of the population, the law is simply wrong and should be modified or struck down altogether. I don't think anyone can really stand on a moral high ground and point fingers at TPB for being "illegitimate" when the law is doing more harm to people than copyright infringers are.

Sold out

[LingNoi]

Just like supernova before em. Well that's the end of that..

Re:Sold out

[vertinox]

Just like supernova before em. Well that's the end of that..

Well not really. It will be called something else except they probably won't have a cool name.

Personally I don't really approve of piracy because it hurts Open Source alternatives and wouldn't trust anything downloaded from PB to not have trojans on it these days.

That said, I think as a political movement they are something else. Hopefully that money will be used to help the EU Pirate Party in future elections.

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

TPB instituted a method to verify uploaders to assure quality. Just look for the file you want with the green or pink pirate symbols to avoid any problems.

Re:Sold out

[CarpetShark]

Well not really. It will be called something else except they probably won't have a cool name.

It's not commercially viable right now, from what they've said about TPB being a non-profit project. If a company bought it, then almost by definition, they are planning to change it.

Re:Sold out

[Jurily]

Personally I don't really approve of piracy because it hurts Open Source alternatives and wouldn't trust anything downloaded from PB to not have trojans on it these days.

See what this phrase did to us? Free Software was about freedom, giving the users choice, and all those warm and fuzzies. Open Source can be hurt if the users decide what they want.

P.S. I've seen more trojans from Sony and retail games.

Re:Sold out

[AvitarX]

TPB, as a community is atually probably quite safe. Between DLing from trusted people, and the comments that warn quickly if it's a scam.

And I am willing to bet sites the TPB are a far bigger concern to the mdia companies that software. Of course my view is probably skewed as I run Linux, so have no interest in bootleg software.

Re:Sold out

[Ceiynt]

Ya, just like Napster and Kazaa. Cash out on a good name, company turns it to trash.

Re:Sold out

[patro]

Personally I don't really approve of piracy because it hurts Open Source alternatives and wouldn't trust anything downloaded from PB to not have trojans on it these days.

AVIs of Lost episodes are trojan-free.

Re:Sold out

[entgod]

See what this phrase did to us? Free Software was about freedom, giving the users choice, and all those warm and fuzzies. Open Source can be hurt if the users decide what they want.

P.S. I've seen more trojans from Sony and retail games.

You are assuming the people were accustomed to, or at least had heard of the open source alternatives before turning to piracy. Usually that isn't the case. I don't think people accustomed to open source software turn to pirating their commercial alternatives that often.

Re:Sold out

[machine321]

If it has a Trojan on it, it's safe, right? That's what they taught me in health class.

Re:Sold out

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Indeed, the party is over. The site has been defeated.

This is a massive victory for the *AA organisations. There is little doubt that the site is being sold to pay off the colossal fines incurred as a result of the Pirate bay trial. It's probably the case that the final straw was the appeal courts brazen exoneration of the original trial judge on charges of bias.

At this point, the Bay founders probably realise just how much the entire justice system was railed against them. With the media industries monetary, political and personal connections being able to exert such heavy influence on the Swedish justice system, they never had a ghost of a chance and now they know it. Remember how confident they were when the trial began. I think they've finally lost that enthusiasm.

This case has proven one great truth. Even those a bold, outspoken and idealistic as the Pirate Bay founders can and will be broken by the weight of legal and political forces that can be sent against them. Any centralised component in a P2P system is and forever will be a critical weakpoint. This includes search engines like Google.

The only possible way for P2P to succeed, and with it a free internet, is for the system to become totally and utterly decentralised. Nothing else will suffice. There can be no one site, no one client, no one port, no one encryption method that can remain to scuttle the entire project. It must be, like TCP or SMTP, an ideal which no one controls yet everyone can use. It must not be tied to a single person, or webhost, or legal system. If it is, then the weakest link in the chain will shatter under the weight it will be forced to bear.

Re:Sold out

[spyrochaete]

Just like Suprnova, and ShareReactor, and Mininova, and Pizzatorrent, and a zillion others. That's the end of that, and the beginning of another.

Re:Sold out

[i_ate_god]

See what this phrase did to us? Free Software was about freedom, giving the users choice, and all those warm and fuzzies. Open Source can be hurt if the users decide what they want.

P.S. I've seen more trojans from Sony and retail games.

You are assuming the people were accustomed to, or at least had heard of the open source alternatives before turning to piracy. Usually that isn't the case. I don't think people accustomed to open source software turn to pirating their commercial alternatives that often.

Of course they do, because many open source alternatives are not up to par to commercial software. Gimp vs Adobe? OpenOffice vs. MS Office? Ardour vs. Cubase/FL Studio/Protools?

Open source has some amazing stuff. Apache, Cyrus, Gnome + Compiz, Pidgin, and I could go on and on, but it's naive to think that every open source alternative to a commercial product is a good one, just because it's open source.

Re:Sold out

[Jurily]

You are assuming the people were accustomed to, or at least had heard of the open source alternatives before turning to piracy.

No, I just assume that if they search for "Photoshop", "Gimp" is not a search result by any reasonable standard.

I don't think people accustomed to open source software turn to pirating their commercial alternatives that often.

Wrong again. Case in point: me, virtualbox and vmware. Many of us who know about Open Source, also know which tool is the best for the task. License is secondary, especially if you don't live in the US.

Re:Sold out

[Keeper Of Keys]

Hopefully that money will be used to help the EU Pirate Party in future elections.

I was hoping that too, but according to this interview with TPB founder Peter Sunde the money will go to a foundation which can only spend the money on new, unfunded projects, one of which will probably be a kind of distributed tracker.

This reddit comment has more info, too.

Re:Sold out

[Keeper Of Keys]

Indeed, the party is over. The site has been defeated.

This is a massive victory for the *AA organisations. There is little doubt that the site is being sold to pay off the colossal fines incurred as a result of the Pirate bay trial.

Fortunately, you are utterly, utterly wrong about this. The TPB has been set up as a legal entity in such a way that it's founders can't access that money (they were sued personally), so they won't be able (or willing) to pay the fine with it. The company buying it is essentially investing in a foundation that will develop new products.

The only possible way for P2P to succeed, and with it a free internet, is for the system to become totally and utterly decentralised. Nothing else will suffice. There can be no one site, no one client, no one port, no one encryption method that can remain to scuttle the entire project. It must be, like TCP or SMTP, an ideal which no one controls yet everyone can use. It must not be tied to a single person, or webhost, or legal system. If it is, then the weakest link in the chain will shatter under the weight it will be forced to bear.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the kind of thing they're planning to develop.

Re:Sold out

[doti]

This phrase doesn't even make much sense.

What OS have to do with pirated software?

Re:Sold out

[mrjimorg]

and wouldn't trust anything downloaded from PB to not have trojans on it these days.

Sadly, I feel like I can't trust products I buy from the stores because I KNOW that they have DRM 'drivers' that crash my system randomly because of conflicts with my anti-virus programs. I now have 2 systems- one that I allow to get virused, DRM etc until it gets to bad and I have to reformat/reinstall the OS and the system I use for business, taxes, programming, etc, etc.

Re:Sold out

[KillerBob]

I wouldn't hold Pidgin up to the same pedestal as Apache... I use XFCE as my preferred desktop, and went as far as to install parts of KDE so that I could use Kopete over Pidgin. On a Netbook... Pidgin sucks *that* much. Seriously. Try using some of the alternatives, and you'll see how badly designed its interface is, and how limited its features really are.

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, my kingdom for a "-1, Whiny drama queen" mod...

Re:Sold out

[i_ate_god]

I wouldn't hold Pidgin up to the same pedestal as Apache... I use XFCE as my preferred desktop, and went as far as to install parts of KDE so that I could use Kopete over Pidgin. On a Netbook... Pidgin sucks *that* much. Seriously. Try using some of the alternatives, and you'll see how badly designed its interface is, and how limited its features really are.

how many features do you need? I think that's WHY I like Pidgin. It has nothing that I personally would consider fluff.

But it's always fun to try something new so what alternatives would you recommend?

Re:Sold out

[jim_v2000]

"At this point, the Bay founders probably realise just how much the entire justice system was railed against them. With the media industries monetary, political and personal connections being able to exert such heavy influence on the Swedish justice system, they never had a ghost of a chance and now they know it." The fact that they, and the people using their site, were breaking the law probably had nothing to do with it, right?

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, i thought they are the wrong ones!

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. I've seen more trojans from Sony and retail games.

Video games come with condoms now! They really are promoting safe sex at a young age.

And I am surprised that Sony, a Japanese company would do such a thing. After all workers in Japan can get time off with pay to go make babies. Yo would think that Sony would put thing to get people in the mood with no birth control.

-- Couldn't resist sorry.

Re:Sold out

[el americano]

Of course they do, because many open source alternatives are not up to par to commercial software. Gimp vs Adobe? OpenOffice vs. MS Office? Ardour vs. Cubase/FL Studio/Protools?

An illegal copy of MS Word, instead of Abiword or OpenOffice? You're kidding, right? It's a normal word processor, it doesn't julienne fries. They're all the same. As for the rest, they get more and more obscure. Gimp does not offer everything that Photoshop does, but how many people require what Gimp doesn't have? Maybe they think they do, but the idea that hordes of people require Windows to do their professional photography and autocad'ing is overstating things, to say the least.

Re:Sold out

[AceofSpades19]

Just like supernova before em. Well that's the end of that..

Well not really. It will be called something else except they probably won't have a cool name.

Personally I don't really approve of piracy because it hurts Open Source alternatives and wouldn't trust anything downloaded from PB to not have trojans on it these days.

Have you ever actually downloaded something from thepiratebay?

Re:Sold out

[Seumas]

Agreed. Nobody cares about these "legitimate services", because they are always expensive, locked-down, and have too many conditions and hoops to jump through.

I understand that the guys are fighting an uphill battle in the courts, so they probably had no choice but to do this so they could pay their legal fees and judgments and hopefully walk away with a few bucks to start a new life and go on to something new.

However, I have a major problem with how this story always plays out. The same way it played out with Napster and Suprnova and other services. It's a major hypocrisy on all sides. Corporations which usually are completely draconian and absurd essentially buy the structure and eyeballs of a service formerly facilitating "questionable" delivery of content. On the other side, proponents of sharing and haters of extreme intellectual property laws, selling out to the corporations they've been fighting the whole time.

The only loser in these things is always the audience.

Think about this business plan. How is it even legally? It's certainly not ethical, no matter what side of the fence you're on (and I'm a huge TPB fan).

Site (such as Napster, etc) gains enormous fame and attention and audience providing what is supposedly a very questionable service using mostly content that they do not own and is not free to give away.

Once they have enough attention and eyeballs, corporations come a knocking.

Corporations make the founders of the service extremely wealth and then pervert the service by turning it into something "legit", thereby losing 98% of the audience (seriously, who has ever used Napster once they went "legit"?).

This seems similar to the following proposed business plan:

I want to start a movie company, but I don't have any money or infrastructure. Instead, I decide to start stealing movie reels from Warner Brothers down the street. Then I promote and sell those movies as if they were mine. After a few years, I've stolen enough of someone else's product and sold it as my own that I've made enough money to finally go legit.

Now, using ill-gotten finances from someone else's products, I become a fully legitimate movie producing powerhouse. And everyone in the business and industry regard me as legitimate.

How can these even be allowed to happen? Isn't there someone regulating this stuff? How can a legitimate company have beginnings doing questionable things and not pay for it? It's like the Mafia suddenly deciding "Hey, we're tired of laundering money and killing people, so we're going to start a string of burger franchises". And everyone just saying "okay, cool".

Re:Sold out

[s73v3r]

It's naive to think that every open source alternative to a commercial product is a good one, just because it's open source.

No, but if people couldn't easily pirate, say MS Office, then they might look harder at Open Source alternatives, which would then get more users, and possibly more talented contributors to improve the quality of the product.

Re:Sold out

[amicusNYCL]

What in the world are you doing where you "allow" your system to get infected? My primary computer at home does everything for me, it's my entertainment, communication, development machine, etc. I don't run a software firewall or virus scanner. I don't bother to install Windows updates. I have IIS and MySQL running on it 24/7. Power outages are the only reason I shut it down. I have a Linksys NAT router on the network. We even have a static IP. This particular computer has never gotten infected in the two years or so I've had it. The computer before this one got infected a single time when my roommate used IE to browse for porn.

So, just what exactly are you doing where your computer eventually becomes unusable because of the crapware you've "allowed" on it?

Re:Sold out

[Drinking Bleach]

No, I just assume that if they search for "Photoshop", "Gimp" is not a search result by any reasonable standard.

Just for humor's sake, look what turns up on a search for "Photoshop": http://www.google.com/search?q=Photoshop

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want "completely decentralized" filesharing, just fire up Gnutella and wait 3 days for your movie to download. Checkmate content industry.

Re:Sold out

[tixxit]

Easy, if someone wants crop/scale/adjust some images, then they want some sort of image manipulation program. Say 3 options they run across are:

• Photoshop - $700
• Paint.NET - Free (OSS)
• GIMP - Free (OSS)

Photoshop clearly has more features, but the average person also won't use most of them and would not pay $700 for it. Obviously it would make sense to use GIMP or Paint.NET. Now, when piracy comes into the equation, the comparison becomes:

• Photoshop - Free
• Paint.NET - Free
• GIMP - Free

Paint.NET and GIMP kind of lose their appeal, don't they? Piracy hurts both free and proprietary software.

Re:Sold out

[QCompson]

Good god man! Kopete has the worst user interface known to man. That may make it fit in well with the rest of the KDE desktop, but to load kde libs to use it on a netbook is insanity.

Re:Sold out

[doti]

Point taken.

Re:Sold out

[Hurricane78]

Stop using that unword! It is proof that you bought in to the **AA bullshit propaganda.
Piracy = stealing shit on the high seas, sinking ships and murdering people.
It is intended by the **AA, to make you associate those actions with file sharing, exactly because it is such a horribly wrong association.

So every time you use that word, yo spread **AA fearmongering. You essentially assist an help them.
Please stop it. All of you.

Re:Sold out

[Hurricane78]

It's never about what you need. It's about what you *can* use. Gnome and also Pidgin is notorious in deciding for you what you want to use and how you want to use it. Everything is hard-wired, and every function that you don not absolutely need is removed.

They act as if they specifically wanted to have the most retarded users and the most featureless interface, for the sake of "simplicity", when in reality, you can have an endless number of features and options, and integrate them well.

The key point here is: Good defaults.
Defaults are like having all features, and having everything wired in the most intuitive way for most users. But allowing you to change everything. And I mean everything.
So you can have Gnome's simplicity AND KDEs features.

KDE partially tried that, but still has to become better.

But Gnome fell into a doctrine, and totally failed that one. I find them very arrogant. Especially their lust to decide what I should need or not need on the desktop. Who are they to decide?
I think it's just the laziness of coding in the other features, combined with ignoring the power of defaults, with the power of a cult.

KDE people do not hate the Gnome ideas, of keeping it *efficient* (what Gnome they misunderstood as "simplicity", but really isn't the same thing). They only think you should have a choice.
But apparently, Gnome people hate KDE people. Which is no wonder, with that cult-like doctrine behavior.

Whatever. If you want to limit yourself, go ahead. More power for us free people.

Re:Sold out

[skarphace]

What OS have to do with pirated software?

Pirated software is a competitor on the same price point.

Re:Sold out

[maz2331]

My question is what measures the authorities will resort to to get the fines paid. Is it possible that they will just keep imprisoning these guys over and over until they cough up the cash?

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that, after installing and trying to use the GIMP for 5 minutes, they will be so frustrated that they will run to the shop to buy the non-free version with the hopes that it doesn't suck.

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_(media) - Note the paragraph that states, in part: "The practice of labeling the act of infringement as "piracy" actually predates copyright itself."

So every time you use that word, you spread **AA fearmongering. You essentially assist and help them.
Please stop it. All of you.

Stop what? Using one of a word's commonly-accepted definitions, because you want to restrict such to only one? You need to find another windmill at which to tilt.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, GIMP lost most of its appeal when they chose that acronym...

Re:Sold out

[Edis Krad]

This is interesting. However you're stating than the appeal of open source software is not its quality but it's price tag.

Re:Sold out

[KillerBob]

That may make it fit in well with the rest of the KDE desktop, but to load kde libs to use it on a netbook is insanity.

which should serve as testimony to how bad and irritating Pidgin is. Said netbook is still quite zippy.

And don't call me "man". I'm not.

Re:Sold out

[KillerBob]

I already named one alternative to Pidgin... one that supports the 2nd line (comment) for MSN names, one that doesn't need me to install a completely new build every time MSN or Yahoo changes their servers around, one that's able to send/receive offline messages for said networks, and one that supports webcams and voice chat. The fact that it has a better graphical interface that's more pleasing to the eye while also being more functional is just icing on the cake.

Seriously. Pidgin is just plain fugly, and lacks a great many features that alternatives have.

Re:Sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

The only possible way for P2P to succeed, and with it a free internet, is for the system to become totally and utterly decentralised. Nothing else will suffice. There can be no one site, no one client, no one port, no one encryption method that can remain to scuttle the entire project. It must be, like TCP or SMTP, an ideal which no one controls yet everyone can use. It must not be tied to a single person, or webhost, or legal system. If it is, then the weakest link in the chain will shatter under the weight it will be forced to bear.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the kind of thing they're planning to develop.

Sounds exactly like Gnutella (used by LimeWire) which exists since what, 2000? Anyway, how can one trust the charity stuff after all these lies?

Re:Sold out

[tixxit]

What? I did not state that THE (as in singular) appeal of OSS is its price tage. That is certainly one of its appeals, but it is not the only one. However, for 95% of computer users out there it is, by far, the biggest one. Obviously, this is Slashdot, so the majority of the people here probably fall into the 5% that use OSS for all the other reasons as well, but pretending that your average (ie. NOT YOU) user cares about any other aspects of software then cost vs. quality is crazy. I simply proposed a situation (in context to the parent and GP's post) that showed how OSS can lose a (as in one of many) advantage that could be enough for an average user to choose proprietary software over OSS.

Then it should go through.

[AltGrendel]

The technology is legal, some of the files shared may not be. That will depend on your local legal code.

Re:Then it should go through.

[Sockatume]

The court case itself basically ignored the local legal code in favour of US legal precident. I can't see this project surviving the DMCA, even several thousand miles away from the DMCA's jurisdiction.

Re:Then it should go through.

[sopssa]

It didn't ignore local legal code. In scandinavian countries the courts look into purpose of what you did, not always 1:1 to written laws. That is why The Pirate Bay's talk about "but we only host the .torrent files, not the files" didn't work out for them. Its also pretty clear what was The Pirate Bay's purpose, along how they mocked companies asking to remove content.

Re:Then it should go through.

[MasterOfDisaster]

It's impossible to say what percentage of files on The Pirate Bay is illegal for two reasons: 1) It's subjective. What's illegal in one country might be legal in another, and what's legal before one judge might be illegal before another. 2) files are constantly being added. For example, try and determine what percentage of videos on YouTube contain cats doing something hilarious.

However, there's a surprising amount of content on TPB that is definitely legal, Linux ISOs of various vintages, books and video in the public domain, as well as content uploaded by it's author.

There's also a lot of content of questionable legality - is a No CD patch/crack legal? After all, it's just a series of instructions to change certain bits in a file matching a specific hash. How about a keygen? That's essentially a random number generator, unless you have the program it makes keys for. Probably depends on the laws in your country.

'Fake' files are likely also legal to download, as they tend to be random data and/or uploaded by (agents of) the copyright holders.

You would be right in saying that little of that has to do with the name Pirate Bay, though.

Re:Then it should go through.

[gpalyu]

"For example, try and determine what percentage of videos on YouTube contain cats doing something hilarious." The answer is 0.

Re:Then it should go through.

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's impossible to say what percentage of files on The Pirate Bay is illegal for two reasons: 1) It's subjective ... 2) files are constantly being added ...

It's pretty obvious the number is between 99% and 100% - your statement is only relevant in determining the number of significant digits.

Re:Then it should go through.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's impossible to say what percentage of files on The Pirate Bay is illegal for two reasons:

It's my understanding there are NO files "on" TPB. Just hyperlinks.

Re:Then it should go through.

[billcopc]

How is it "pretty obvious" ? Have you performed some type of statistical analysis on the entire set of torrents available on the site ? Do you have a magic tool that can instantly identify a torrent's legality based on its metadata ? Why aren't you offering this magic tool to the tracker admins so they can self-censor their content ?

If you're so omniscient, could you also gauge the ratio of illegal material on Usenet ? How about RapidShare ? What about all the private FTP caches ?

Re:Then it should go through.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in Norway, a significant double-digit portion at the very least would be considered perfectly legal to download. In fact ALL content up to june 1st 2006 would certainly be and arguably also quite a bit of content after that although that has not yet been tested in a court of law. As for simply possession and not distribution, possession, ALL content is legal.

This may surprise you but American law does not apply everywhere.

Re:Then it should go through.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that will protect them if it ever goes to court.

What? Oh, never mind then.

Re:Then it should go through.

[jim_v2000]

They don't need to worry about laws in other countries. They need to be concerned about Swedish law.

Re:Then it should go through.

[amicusNYCL]

*Some* of the files *may* not be legal to share. Don't you think that's glossing over the whole thing? The site was specifically set up to track things that are illegal and can't be tracked other places. No one needs a huge site to track Linux ISOs, those are already out there. It's already easy to find them (a Google search will do that). The name "Pirate Bay", and the logo of a cassette tape with crossbones, indicates that the original purpose of the site was to search for "pirated" music. Or else why would they choose that name and logo?

It's fair to say that more than half of the files listed in the Audio, Video, Applications, and Games sections are not legal for distribution in any location that has copyright laws or treaties with the US. But the number of files is not the important statistic, and can't even be calculated. The important statistic, which can be calculated, is which files are actually getting downloaded the most. So, look over the total top 100:

http://thepiratebay.org/top/all

See anything there that's legal to distribute in most jurisdictions? Or how about the top 100 from just the Applications category:

http://thepiratebay.org/top/300

It's pretty disingenuous to say that "some of the files may not be legal", although that's a true statement. It's much more accurate to say that "most of the files people download are not legal for distribution in most jurisdictions". But saying it like that, and realizing that all of this technology is essentially being used by college kids to download crappy movies, sort of takes the "nobility" out of the whole thing, doesn't it?

Re:Then it should go through.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty obvious the number is between 99% and 100%

[citation needed]

Re:Then it should go through.

[mobby_6kl]

It's pretty damn obvious if you just look at the available torrents; you don't need to be omniscient or check every single file to get a statistically sound estimate. There are lists of recent and most popular torrents and looking through a few pages of each would give you a pretty accurate picture of what's going on.

While there are quite a few of questionably to probably ok torrents which nobody downloads on the recent additions (WTF is Zatoichi #18 aka Zatôichi hatashi-jô with 0 seeds/peers), the most popular ones are completely different. Here are the top 10 or so:

• Knowing[2009]DvDrip[Eng]-FXG
• Transformers.Revenge.Of.The.Fallen.TS.XViD-XDurus
• Angels and Demons (2009) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED
• True.Blood.S02E03.HDTV.XviD-NoTV.avi
• The Haunting in Connecticut[2009][Unrated Edition]DvDrip[Eng]-FX
• Transformers.Revenge.of.the.Fallen.TS.XviD-DEViSE
• MICHAEL JACKSON GREATEST HITS [R.I.P.] [Bubanee]
• Michael Jackson / The Jackson 5 / The Jacksons Discography
• Weeds.S05E04.HDTV.XviD-SYS.avi
• Transformers La Vendetta Del Caduto 2009 iTALiAN iNTERNAL LD TS

and for good measure, the three from the bottom of the same list:

• The Perfect Sleep (2009) LiMiTED DVDRip XviD-ARiGOLD
• Knowing.720p.BluRay.x264-HUBRIS.mkv
• Michael Jackson -Thriller 25th Ann[2008][CD+4 SkidVid_XviD+Cov]1

There isn't a single Linux ISO on the list.

Is that not recent copyrighted material? I'm sure uploading and downloading it is legal at least somewhere, like Somalia perhaps, but there's no getting away from the fact that the site is used primarily (by number of downloads at least, if not by torrent counts) to share copyrighted commercial works. Note that I'm not arguing any other point here, like the ethics of any of the parties involved, the fairness of the relevant laws, or whether manufacturers of various tools should be responsible for their use.

Re:Then it should go through.

[PhotoGuy]

However, there's a surprising amount of content on TPB that is definitely legal, Linux ISOs of various vintages, books and video in the public domain, as well as content uploaded by it's author.

I'm not sure if this has any legal bearing, but I think one thing that differentiates the legal content, is that it is *easily* and *reliably* found elsewhere. I want to bittorrent an Ubuntu distro, I can find a tracker on ubuntu.com, guaranteed, 100%. I think the same would apply for most other categories of free content. If an author John Doe makes his books available for free, then johndoe.com is probably a better place to download them, or find a tracker.

For illegal movies/software, there is no obvious official source; in some ways, the Pirate Bay has become the defacto source for a lot of this stuff.

Personally, I find rapidshare (esp. with a premium account) lets me download stuff much faster, more reliably, and without freaking out my routers with so many connections. (For legal content, of course. :)

(On that note, and a bit off-topic, why is it that torrents seem to kill my internet connecdtion (ADSL) for pretty much any other internet browsing, even when I throttle to a handful of connections, and a reasonable kbps rate?)

Re:Then it should go through.

[daveime]

They need to be concerned by Swedish judges who do not actually *apply* the law, but their own personal convictions of what it "should be".

FTFY

Re:Then it should go through.

[Phurge]

I think he's using the heuristic called "real world commonsense"

Re:Then it should go through.

[HTH NE1]

It's impossible to say what percentage of files on The Pirate Bay is illegal for two reasons: 1) It's subjective. What's illegal in one country might be legal in another, and what's legal before one judge might be illegal before another. 2) files are constantly being added. For example, try and determine what percentage of videos on YouTube contain cats doing something hilarious.

Carpetbagger the RIAAlly Prolonged: I will sue the Internet! I will sue everybody in it!
Lawyer 1: Oh.
Lawyer 2: Ridiculous!
Lawyer 3: Is he all right?
Lawyer 4: Look, it's utterly impossible. Think of all the new users uploadin' and downloadin' all the time.
Carpetbagger: I don't care. I will sue them all. Individually. Personally. One by one. And... in IP-numerical order! There are cakes over there if you want them.

Re:Then it should go through.

[emjay88]

It's ok, we'll call the next one The Ninja Bay and should go under the radar (sonar?) for a fair while. I mean, *AA and the legal system base their judgment of an organisation's legality on its name right?

Re:Then it should go through.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad thing is, There are companies that would like to claim that distributing Linux isos is illegal or SHOULD be illegal (microsoft would love to say this themselves, but they decided to have SCO scream it for them)
There are companies stealing from public domain these days and claiming ownership over anything in the public domain, Hell, the RIAA and ASCAP tried to claim rights over Woodie Guthrie's music, who stated on his copyrights that they were to expire 14 years later, and that anyone was allowed to play them or use them as they wanted to, he wasn't a stupid man. After all, the abuse of the system that occurred at the turn of the last century makes this crap look sane. Funny how if they had continued to try to invalidate his copyright, they would have set a precedence that would have invalidated ALL of theirs too.

Then there's the issue where something may be public domain in certain countries, while others still have copyrights over them (australia anyone?)

Either way, in the end, TPB will probably become another run of the mill hosting provider that charges a fee, and premium content
Think rapidshare with torrents.

Re:Then it should go through.

[yuna49]

But what if your torrent client is also uploading at the same time as is usually the case? Wouldn't that be seen as infringement even in locales where downloading might be legitimate?

Re:Then it should go through.

[billcopc]

Common sense usually doesn't apply to the law, or so the past decade of litigious bullshit would lead us to believe.

When the going gets tough...

[Caboosian]

The tough sell out. As would I. That fine's gotta get paid somehow.

Re:When the going gets tough...

[n30na]

Actually, they have said the money is going to political activism, not their fine.

Re:When the going gets tough...

[dtml-try MyNick]

sure....
They're gonna give away those millions just like that. After that they will cough up the millions to pay the fines out of their own pockets

If you believe that stuff I'd love to do some business with you..

Re:When the going gets tough...

[n30na]

If they never have money, then they just go bankrupt and the companies don't get a cent.. makes sense to me.

Re:When the going gets tough...

[Keeper Of Keys]

TPB was purposely set up so they cannot benefit financially from it.

Re:When the going gets tough...

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole deal smells fishy. Anyway you read it it stinks. Check out my thoughts on and CARTOON on the sale of the Pirate Bay here http://www.pcdisorder.com/2009/06/pirate-bay-kosher-treasure-found.html

No profits made?

[j-turkey]

So much for operating thepiratebay.com at no profit. That sounds like a sizable profit to me, even after the $3.6M in damages awarded. There is still the issue of the 1-year prison sentence for each of the four operators...but each will walk away from prison with about $1,050,000 after all is said and done.

Re:No profits made?

[RMH101]

The "owners" of the TPB haven't made a profit: they've asked for payment to a fund for "internet projects" instead. This will presumably be some interesting new political statement.
They also aren't actually the owners as such: TPB was sold in 2006 to a shell company specifically to avoid any legal problems for the founders.
The buyers will find that they've bought another Napster: i.e. nothing but a recognised name, with a value proposition that fades away like fairy gold once the free content goes away. TPB founders start up another interesting project, with boatloads of cash to fund it, and away we go again. If you ask me this is a pretty smart move: the establishment will effectively be funding a new political project around the freedom to share...

Re:No profits made?

[elrous0]

By the time they pay all the taxes, I doubt very seriously anyone will be walking away with anything.

Re:No profits made?

[Darkness404]

You are assuming that the appeals fails which I doubt it will once they get a judge who is halfway decent.

Re:No profits made?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you hold onto your anal virginity, that's not a bad earn for a year's work.

Re:No profits made?

[lorenlal]

Actually - isn't the going tax rate in Sweden 50%? Looks like you're dead on to me.

Re:No profits made?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless of course various copyright organizations got together and decided to drop a cool $8 million into burying The Pirate Bay (via an intermediate company)? It's probably cheaper than fighting it through the courts.

Re:No profits made?

[j-turkey]

Actually - isn't the going tax rate in Sweden 50%? Looks like you're dead on to me.

I'd take $500K. It's not necessarily F.U. money, but it's buy-a-house money. Anyway, if I understand correctly, Swedish capital gains tax for property is around 30%. It looks like business sales are more like 28% (source). More like $756K (after penalties, etc) - still nothing to scoff at.

Anyway, without really understanding their operations and investments; I'd say that other than the possible prison sentence, those guys made out pretty well.

Re:No profits made?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe you're all so god damn naive.

These are not honest people.

TPB was originally run by their swedish company. When they got into legal trouble, they moved the company and all assets abroad to avoid Swedish law. With the sale of TPB, the money goes to this company. The guys now have both fame and fortune, and can funnel money into whatever they feel like doing through this "fund for internet-related projects, including political activism" operated by said company without having to worry about paying the courts or any swedish taxes.

Re:No profits made?

[n30na]

But it already did. Though, how can they be convicted if they didn't even own the company?

Re:No profits made?

[MBraynard]

except for, you know, the jail time.

Re:No profits made?

[Opportunist]

A halfway decent judge for a copyright trial? Can you take a picture, I heard the National Inquirer pays well for such things.

Re:No profits made?

[Trahloc]

And that is bad why? The pirate bay may have swung the pendulum too far against copyright/IP law but that is a natural and just reaction to immoral laws. Most people would have respect for IP laws if they weren't so severely imbalanced. Yes some would still break the law but its hard to argue that a 5-7 year term for copyrights/IP with severely limited options to extend is immoral. While it's easy to call the current system of lifetime plus 20-70 years as immoral. When you might die of old age before the creative works made during your *grandparents childhood* is public domain, its easy to dismiss stupid laws like that.

Re:No profits made?

[blitzkrieg3]

Did you read GP's post? Then the Pirate Bay guys would have a cool $8 million to start up a new company with the intention of pirating media, where before they had no money. Why would the MAFIAA want that?

Re:No profits made?

[Krneki]

If they are proven guilty and even then they walk away with a lot of money.

I don't know about you, but I'd trade 1 year of prison for 1M Euro. Especially if you have a good prison (like we have in Slovenia) where you can learn something while you wait.

Re:No profits made?

[hesaigo999ca]

- but each will hold their behinds and waddle away from prison with about $1,050,000 after all is said and done

There..,.fixed that for you

Re:No profits made?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your anal virginity is worth 800kE? You must have a VERY nice posterior.

Re:No profits made?

[Keeper Of Keys]

We obviously have a different idea of honesty. They have used the legal system to protect what is essentially a political project, and disconnected themselves from it financially so it *cannot* be stopped, no matter what happens to them. They are quite open about it. They are not allowed to make any money from TPB and won't benefit personally from this sale.

Re:No profits made?

[RMH101]

I wouldn't be surprised if that was what was behind this: a media-cartel backed buyout and takedown. Bear in mind that it's not just TPB that'll go away - an awful lot of other trackers just index TPB traffic. Bring on the minibay.org.

Re:No profits made?

[number11]

Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30, @08:40AM wrote:
I can't believe you're all so god damn naive.
These are not honest people.

Whereas, anyone can see that your name is your bond.

Re:No profits made?

[jitterman]

You can learn a few things in the prisons here in America, too. I'm just not certain that you really want that type of education!

Re:No profits made?

[Krneki]

I guess you get whatever your government wants you to get.

Re:No profits made?

[MichaelSmith]

Wouldn't work that way in Australia. The Government can confiscate funds which are the proceeds of crime. For example if you commit a crime and make a fortune writing a book about it you won't be allowed to keep the money.

Re:No profits made?

[Krneki]

Probably you are right and the same thing applies everywhere.

Sad.

[scubamage]

Very, very, very sad. So what do you think the next step will be? Turning TPB into a CDN? Using advertising revenue to pay for files shared? What are your thoughts?

Re:Sad.

[L4t3r4lu5]

Well, my thought (singular) was "Meh. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=torrent+tracker "

Re:Sad.

[Miros]

I feel like CDNs are almost a dime a dozen at this point, and are typically structured very differently from the way TPB is. I dunno, I feel like this may have been a bad investment for someone, with things like shows on YouTube, Boxee, Hulu, Amazon.COM on-demand, netflix watch instantly, etc, the peer to peer ship may have begun to sail at this point. Not saying it wont still be huge, but when I think of my average non-tech savvy friends, many of them have stopped using torrents all together and have not looked back.

They're not even keeping the money...

[cibus]

On The Pirate Bay blog the TPB crew gives their side of the story.

Idealism is not dead: The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah, and they also make the dubious claim that:

And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

As soon as Global Gaming Factory X buys it, you can say bye-bye to all the torrents, and worst of all, all the trackers. Which means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB.

I guess the MAFIAA has won, after all.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[rbarreira]

What makes you think some company is wasting $8 million and then destroy what they bought?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[nloop]

Nah, Suprnova was TPB before it was around. Napster and Kazaa also had a pretty decent market share of the illegal downloads before they got killed off. It will put a damper on torrents for a bit, but someone else will come up and replace it. Just needs to gain critical mass. I say one month max and there will be a clear heir.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

DO NOT CLICK ON THAT LINK! It's a forced redirect that keeps giving endless pop-ups about navigating away from the site. Only way to stop it is to kill Firefox.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Spad]

Yes, because that worked so well before with Napster. And Audiogalaxy. And Kazaa. And eMule. And so on.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, seeds and peers are already down to 17mio, used to be 22-25mio.
I wouldn't be surprised if this buyout was funded by the MAFIAA. $8mio is nothing for them and a bargain considering this is ruining TPB and thus all indexing sites like mininova et al.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[itsthebin]

until someone mashes twitter or rss feeds into a torrent client where tracker info is hosted by everyone running a client.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[jollyreaper]

As soon as Global Gaming Factory X buys it, you can say bye-bye to all the torrents, and worst of all, all the trackers. Which means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB.

Yeah, and when Napster died, that was the end of mp3 distribution as we knew it. Then came the era of mp3 distribution as we had not known it. After Audio Galaxy died something else came along. Supernova died, Mininova came. Pirate Bay dies, something else comes along.

P2P is like the Borg, endlessly adapting to whatever attack you come up with. Blast it with a phaser? The next one has a phaser shield. Modulate the phaser beam, the next one has modulated shields. Rip its its arm off and use it to club the thing to death, the next one will have sturdier arms that can't be ripped off.

This is actually quite funny because p2p services operate off the same popularity dynamics as normal products and services. Something like McDonalds comes along, it monopolizes the fast food burger market and also serves to suppress the wide-scale popularity of potentially better burger chains. If McDonalds folded tomorrow, we'd see an explosion of innovation and potentially better burgers.

The same inertia works in the p2p world. If Napster was never destroyed, we'd likely still be listening to crappy, half-broken mp3's to this day. People tend to stick with what works, even if it doesn't work well. Kill Napster, now suddenly there's a wide-open market for better clients and protocols to compete in. Kill off one of them, now the next generation can compete. The RIAA is like an incomplete course of antibiotics and the p2p networks are like MRSA. You don't kill 'em off completely and they'll just come back to eat your face.

So, the Pirate Bay is dead. Long live p2p. You know something else is coming.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[castironpigeon]

It is the best option. It's obvious you can't go toe to toe with the media interest groups right now and TPB had long ago grown too large to stay under the radar any longer. What could they do?

This is a good way to step out of the frying pan they've landed in, regroup, and, if they're still interested, figure out another way to compete with the interest groups a few years down the line. It may be idealist to think they'll want to spend their entire lives fighting for this cause, but if they really go through with that then this is the most practical way to do it.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[lorenlal]

Is that the new justification for never RTFA-ing?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Stormwatch]

What makes you think some company is wasting $8 million and then destroy what they bought?

Electronic Arts does it all the time...

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[ElKry]

What's wrong about eMule? eDonkey got bought and was taken over by the RIAA/MPAA, but not eMule.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

$8 million to shut down the pirate bay - WHAT A STEAL!!!! Imagine how many millions are spent by RIAA & MPAA trying to stop file sharing...

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[mdwh2]

Well, it makes a change. I mean, instead of people having to pay the RIAA etc millions everytime they get caught, instead the RIAA will pay the people millions everytime someone sets up a site. So I guess that's not all bad...

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[n30na]

I don't really think that GGF has the cash reserves of EA though =)

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[morgan_greywolf]

Ssshhhh! Let them think they won! Maybe they'll go away for a while.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[CarpetShark]

What makes you think some company is wasting $8 million and then destroy what they bought?

See the sordid, bungling buy-wreck-sell History of the Amiga.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Darkness404]

Right, because I really want Twitter linked to my downloads? When I download I want to be as anonymous as possible, that means no personal information save for my IP (which most people should use a proxy anyways). Having Twitter which might have info on my phone number which then would make it trivial to place a 100% undeniable blame on someone.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Reality Master 101]

Oh, please. They have ALWAYS been in it for the money, and they have ALWAYS been lying to you. Yeah, a huge site like that makes no money? Bullshit!

They will keep this money, just like they kept the money from the running of the site.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Borg? Bad example. The RIAA only needs to hire Captain Picard and p2p is fucked. He'll remodulate the shields through the tachyon phaser array and defeat p2p in less than 40 minutes, no doubt while teaching us all a heartwarming story about the value of friendship.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[VShael]

This is probably a good time for it to happen to, during Summer repeats.

Let's hope the new thing, whatever it is, is up and running in time for the Fall season premieres...

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, after napster died while you could still download music, the selection was worse and there was more effort involved.

The two big advantages of napster for the user were that it was popular with lots of people sharing content and it was centralized as far as ease of connecting and searching. Once they went down it seemed like centralization was the weak point and decentralized systems like gnutella became popular, but they aren't usually as easy to connect, search, find obscure things or download. People also seem less likely to share over those systems.

Whatever happened to the idea of having a decentralized system with no tracker like gnutella which also had features like anonymity to encourage sharing and reputation to prevent garbage and spam?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Merls the Sneaky]

It's not like you can sign up to twitter with anonymous email and bogus name/contact details. Oh wait......

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[rbarreira]

That was because the buying company went bankrupt if I understood correctly... not a willful destruction of the assets which got bought.

I understand that it's possible this will destroy The Pirate Bay... it's just not a likely result until someone proves otherwise.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Opportunist]

You mean, all the idiots that are too stupid to actually mask their identity will be sued away? Oh joy, it will be 1995 all over again! Filesharing for a few, ignorant masses paying for content, a mafiaa that doesn't care about it because the damages are petty if that...

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Opportunist]

Well, if they do want to continue the fight, they sure took the right path. Found a business, make some money, go into politics, test the waters, find out that you can actually attract voters, sell your business to fund your politics.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[thesnide]

An interesting fact is that terrorists are also like that : they adapt faster to security measures than governments. As Bruce Schneier said[1], it's all about defending against what the terrorists did last time. You shall never underestimate creativity for evasive maneuvers.

[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/fixing_airport.html

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[elrous0]

The ultimate goal of the MPPA/RIAA and its ilk isn't to stop P2P on a site-by-site basis (as they did with Napster, Supernova, Pirate Bay, etc.), but to stop P2P at the *ISP* level. What they're shooting for now is a system where when a new pirate site goes up--they send out a quick automatic blacklist update to the handful of broadband ISP's out there and bam, that site and all its associated IP addresses are blocked for everyone. Someone comes up with a proxy server to bypass it? Bam--that gets blocked too. Someone comes up with a proxy server list? Bam--blocked! All with no police and no court battles; affected almost instantaneously. Imagine the equivalent of Websense on every single broadband connected computer in the world, with a constantly updated blacklist of P2P sites and proxy server bypasses.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Chrono11901]

you mean like one of the many usenet providers and one of the many usenet index sites?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Darkness404]

But all those things still link a huge chain together that can be used to harm you in a lawsuit. If all they have is an IP, there are a million ways someone who isn't you could be using that IP. If they have your IP linked to several of your accounts that you referenced, then it becomes harder. With every site referenced more than the tracker and the swarm, the option of denial quickly fade away.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you don't deal with management a whole lot. I hope you're right, though.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Minwee]

If McDonalds folded tomorrow, we'd see an explosion of innovation and potentially better burgers.

While exploding burgers would be cool in a Michael Bay sort of way, I don't see them selling quite as well.

But at least putting an exploding burger in your mouth would be better for you than eating at McDonalds.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[KneelBeforeZod]

Yep. They've gone the way of Napster so you better get it while its still good. That said, where should I go next for my download needs?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[stephanruby]

and worst of all, all the trackers. Which means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB.

I don't think the mods got your joke. There are tens of thousands of trackers, Pirate Bay is just one of them. And there are also so many tracker aggregators out there, there isn't a single file that's tracked by Pirate Bay that's not already tracked by several other trackers at the same time.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[CarpetShark]

Yes, but they went bankrupt by not doing proper R&D to advance the line, by selling crap packages, and by not properly advertising the products. They had many loyal customers demanding new, updated products, and let the entire line of multimedia machines fall behind to the point were even the lowly PC could do better multimedia. They most definitely destroyed the product they bought.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[nausea_malvarma]

Which means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB.

I guess the MAFIAA has won, after all.

Ever hear of the hydra?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[the_one(2)]

Uhm... You do know they are the biggest bittorrent tracker in the world, right? That takes a bit of bandwidth and processor power for which they receive NO money! They only have ads on their (pretty crappy) search page. Since they are a pretty "gray" site they can't get the best advertisers to their site and will have to make do with less money for the ads.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[stevey]

I guess the old adage is true:

Swearing trumps proof.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Reality Master 101]

Uhm... You do know they are the biggest bittorrent tracker in the world, right? That takes a bit of bandwidth and processor power for which they receive NO money!

"NO" money? You are incredibly naive.

Since they are a pretty "gray" site they can't get the best advertisers to their site and will have to make do with less money for the ads.

Yeah, god knows those "gray" porn sites make no money with their advertising. /s

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one of the few situations where I think closed-source applications would be preferable to open source counterparts

I don't know the complexity this idea, or if it can be done. Nor, do I know if it already exists, but how about it?

Imagine creating a client/server application which clients can download, and run, that connects to a server (or, group of servers whose sole job is to keep track of proxy servers), proxy masters if you will, and is handed the address of a proxy, to use for whatever purpose a proxy may be desired.

If the attempt to contact the proxy fails, the client application reports to the server that the proxy is not present, and it is removed from the available pool.

If the connection succeeds, then the application configures the proxy settings on the client, and the client performs the task that is desired.

I would imagine that you could use some sort of encryption to keep the proxy server lists secure. Couldn't you?

That wouldn't completely solve the problem of blacklisting, but, I would think it would mitigate it a bunch. Obfuscation, essentially.

The other piece of the puzzle would be having a mechanism informing the proxy masters how to contact their proxy servers when they come online.

Then, I suppose that you might need to have a place to keep these proxy masters, so that they would not be subject to seizure, even though the data that they serve isn't illegal.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[the_one(2)]

From whom do they receive money for their trackers services? Does mininova pay TPB or something?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[billcopc]

Depends who you ask. The person most commonly blamed for the Amiga's failure is Jack Tramiel, same guy who couldn't make up his mind about (the original) Atari, and drove that one into the ground too.

Bad management ? Certainly. Willful destruction ? Possibly. Tramiel was a tempermental, jealous and stubbornly competitive owner. He just wouldn't leave things alone.

But this has nothing to do with TPB's buyout. Bad management won't matter here, it's already headed for the grave. If they wanted to keep it going strong, they should have kept mum on the whole sale and pretend like nothing had changed.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Reziac]

From TFA:
=============
New technology would require users to pay to download films, games and music, but "they will be able to make money" by sharing their files with other users, GGF chief executive Hans Pandeya said.

"And if you earn money by sharing your files, then maybe it's not that hard to pay for top quality," he told Swedish news agency TT.
========

This is exactly what I suggested a while back -- make filesharing a profit center where *users* can share in the profits BY DISTRIBUTING the files in question -- so the more you share the more you make. Less up-front money for the content owners, but tons more microsales to make up the difference.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[billcopc]

Imagine millions of frustrated internet users clogging the phone lines and yelling at support agents until they go postal and murder their entire team.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

where should I go next for my download needs?

A geek standing at the corner of a street disguised as a drug dealer. You just have to know the special handshake.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Threni]

> As soon as Global Gaming Factory X buys it, you can say bye-bye to all the torrents, and worst of all, all the trackers. Which
> means pretty much the end of BitTorrent as we know it, since most of the pirated content in the world is tracked TPB.

It's got the be the world's most expensive URL.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

You really believe that BS? hahahahaha

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[TheSpoom]

What makes you think that GGF won't be bought by a conglomeration of movie and music recording studios?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Pentium100]

Well, BitTorrent was created to be decentralized. TPB goes down, some other tracker will pick up where it left. Just like TPB did after the closing of SuprNova. Indexing sites will be affected only in that a lot of their old torrents will not work anymore (but there's also DHT, so you may be able to finish that download). Newly added torrents will be using other trackers and the BT community will live on.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Pentium100]

Use TOR, but only to communicate between your PC and the twitter server. Peer-peer connections should be direct, without TOR (the tracker traffic is quite low, so TOR can be used for it, while you wouldn't want to transfer big files using TOR).

You can also use TOR to access twitter normally. In that case, they will not have your IP in their logs, only in the tracker.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[ozbird]

If McDonalds folded tomorrow, we'd see an explosion of innovation and better burgers.

Fixed that for you.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[WndrBr3d]

Idealism is not dead: The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!

Read: This money is going to pay our legal fees as we try to save our asses!

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[elrous0]

Just one problem I see with that. What's to stop the ISP from just blocking the client it has to connect to to get the proxy list?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[morgan_greywolf]

No, they didn't. *sigh*

Tough crowd.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Hurricane78]

Because they are dumbasses, and don't know the three Es.

Sincerely,

Microsoft

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Hurricane78]

That is security trough obscurity. And it will never work.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Hardolaf]

I already have. It wasn't pretty.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

go mininova !

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[salimma]

... or Microsoft. Remember FoxPro?

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[modecx]

Chalk up another reason to to hire those Indian support techs.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[visible.frylock]

I wouldn't be surprised if this buyout was funded by the MAFIAA.

No, don't you see? It was funded by the Tokugawa!

They're making their move, it seems.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Zapo_Verde]

Except the ISPs where I live make their money from selling bandwidth. If I wasn't allowed to P2P, I would have no need to have near the bandwidth I have now. P2P is just about the only reason to have over 2GB a month internet. It is in the ISP's best interest for P2P to continue.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[rbarreira]

Then good luck to them with that strategy, if they're planning to buy and destroy every torrent site.

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[morgan_greywolf]

Bah! My root password is ""

Re:They're not even keeping the money...

[Grizzled Old Scout]

Something like McDonalds comes along, it monopolizes the fast food burger market and also serves to suppress the wide-scale popularity of potentially better burger chains. If McDonalds folded tomorrow, we'd see an explosion of innovation and potentially better burgers

On what is this based? I would argue the opposite: By showing the world that enormous profits are to be made by selling hamburgers, McDonald's has *encouraged* burger-joint innovation. There are, within about a ten-minute drive from my office, close to a dozen restaurants (and probably more) that sell hamburgers. There are national chains and mom-and-pops. There are burgers that can be had for a dollar and some "gourmet" ones that sell for six times that. I'd say that burger innovation is doing just fine, and largely because of Mickey D's.

Is there any evidence that the opposite is true? I might be willing to sign on to that if MD's were a true monopoly that had cornered the market on burger-selling and had used that power to erect massive barriers to entry, or if it were a monopsony that forced all burger-ingredient providers to sell their wares at whatever unreasonable price it chose to demand, but I don't see it.

Goodbye TPB

[rodrigoandrade]

>> 'the international digital distribution market,' allowing it to introduce a new pay model for file sharing."

So, it'll be Napster 2. Big corp buys out great service for the tech alone and uses it to further corporate greed.

And here we were thinking the TPB founders were selfless Jedi helping file sharers and making the digital world a better place for all. They SOLD OUT!!!

TPB was nice while it lasted.

Re:Goodbye TPB

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people who still think they are selfless Jedi are those who paid no attention to their trial. When they went to court there was tough talk all over the internet, here for sure, about how they would stand up for file sharing. There were all sorts of IANAL assurances that they did nothing wrong and didn't need to hide any of the details of what their site does. The TPB guys were gonna stick it to the copyright holders just like they did in that correspondence they posted on their site.

But when it came to cases they all claimed they really didn't have anything to do with the site. One guy all he did was keep it up and running by wrenching servers. Another guy was just a spokesman. Nobody stepped up with any RMSesque ramblings about the ethics of copyright. They ran and hid from the truth of it kust like every other internet commando would do if it were his neck on the chopping block.

Re:Goodbye TPB

[Opportunist]

Supply and demand will win, don't worry.

The demand for filesharing is still there. Why would it go away? Someone will step up and offer the supply. Maybe as torrents, maybe as something else, we'll see. For a time we'll have a few trackers and a few competing systems, then a new de facto standard will emerge which we will use, they will eventually be selling out, and the whole game starts anew.

Why do you think it should be different this time compared to Napster's sold&folded?

Re:Goodbye TPB

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you live in a movie fantasy world where the judge will in the end be swayed by the heartwarming speech of the underdog? Happy end and all?

It's time to wake up. Whatever it takes to avoid a sentence - no matter how - was the only way to save themselves AND TPB.

It's not a fight they could have won. Too much political influence and possibly monetary incentives played a role. Selling TPB before the court seizes it and gives it to the ??AA, was a smart move. The only other option would be to wait and lose everything.

Re:Goodbye TPB

[n00btastic]

No. If you had read 1/10th of the comments posted, you would of read that the money is being used for political activism. They knew the spirit behind TPB could not be sold.

Re:Goodbye TPB

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they just think that they're superfluous and intend to focus on other areas. Look at their secondary services (see baywords, videobay, go to their site for all the others), they're almost like an "executive branch" of the EFF.

Re:Goodbye TPB

[DeskLazer]

I know parent was an AC post, but why was it modded down? It's true that it would be hard to sway the courts with what they believe in since there's lots of bribery and money involved in places that we cannot see or hear. Not to mention that most people weren't savvy enough to pick up on what was really happening. Yes, you could say that people download illegal things from it, but TPB never hosted the files themselves. That was done by their users.

They, for YEARS, stared in the face of those promising to bring litigation and not only stood up for themselves, but sent back nastygrams and publicized them. They're not heroes, but I think they at least had an inkling of knowing what they were doing.

I for one laud them for selling the brand name only [like previous posts have said about Napster] and using it to fund other political projects. Again, not heroes, but I will give credit where it's due. They're not completely selfless, but they're not scaredy-cat "internet commandos" as you put it either.

Best of luck to the future TPB.

Re:Goodbye TPB

[shutdown -p now]

It's not a fight they could have won.

It's not a fight they should have picked in the first place, really. If you've read TPB correspondence on their site, in quite a few replies they actually dare the copyright holder to sue them in Sweden courts. The only point in doing so is if you plan to win and thus establish a legal precedent, or lose and become a martyr to the cause, Rosa Parks style. But if you know you're going to lose - doesn't matter if it's because of "influence and bribes", or because you're actually doing something that's illegal under the standing laws - and aren't willing to argue for your claimed cause - then why the original daring attitude?

This already worked so well...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for Napster

Re:This already worked so well...

[Vectronic]

Napster

After a $2.43 million takeover offer by the Private Media Group, an adult entertainment company, Napster's brand and logos were acquired at bankruptcy auction by the company Roxio, Inc. which used them to rebrand the pressplay music service as Napster 2.0.

In September 2008, Napster was purchased by US electronics retailer Best Buy for $US 121 million.

Napster 2.0

Net revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2007 was $25.5 million, up 9% from $23.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2006.
Net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 was a record $28.4 million, up 21% from $23.5 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2006.
Net revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 grew to $29.1 million, up 9 percent from $26.8 million in the prior year quarter and up from $28.4 million ...
On April 3, 2007 Napster reported it had over 830,000 paid subscribers. (@ $5 per month (9.95 per month in the UK), or $14.95 per month (14.95 per month in the UK) for transfers) ...
September 15, 2008 - Napster is purchased by Best Buy for $121 million

However...

Revenue: $111.08 million USD (FY 2007)
Net income: $36.83 million USD (FY 2007)

May not have worked very well for the original creators or the people that used it, but seems to be working fairly well for the company.

Re:This already worked so well...

[Kjella]

So pressplay + 2.5 million dollars of branding = 122 million, but didn't really say how much pressplay was worth to begin with. From what I understand pressplay had among other things very valuable agreements with the music industry, existing customers+++ which probably made them much more valuable than the Napster name.

Re:This already worked so well...

[Hurricane78]

Who cares? Is money all you can think about?

How about the epic fight for out freedom on the Internet? How about keeping the criminal mafia of the **AA down? How about TPB being a haven and a fortress against the **AA?

Money? Really? That's all?

That is really sad...

Re:This already worked so well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that napster has 'faded away' only in the eyes of people who pirate. Napster is a huge commercial success and anyone with a clue knows this.

But you will no doubt read the 50 posts already here on slashdot saying TPB will fade away 'like napster'. So it will 'fade away' to making 30 million $$ profit per year? Sounds pretty good for the buyer.

How do they plan to make money?

[notseamus]

The file sharing community isn't the best known for paying for downloads (although studies have shown that they buy more music/films etc), but if this company starts charging for access to TPB or per download, they'd better make sure that they won't reveal any names or info about downloaders. Otherwise all of their appeal will have evaporated.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[dintech]

Maybe that's a potential business model. Buy the all the data behind TPB and sue all the trackable uploaders/downloaders into oblivion. I wonder how much of $4.7M they could make back using that strategy and with access to that data...

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[Darkness404]

But I think that would raise lots of doubt (were the logs planted? Did the IPs change owner? Etc)

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[mdwh2]

I wonder how much of $4.7M they could make back using that strategy and with access to that data...

I calculate that it comes to just under 59 mp3s.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[notseamus]

Either way, surely this is the death of The Pirate Bay. It's followed the pattern of being something underground, to becoming something well known amongst the technically literate, to something known by the populace at large, to being discussed by governments, courts and the media to being absorbed by the corporate world.

Like social networking sites like Friendster to Myspace which are in decline or are terminal, the internet crowd is fickle, and will move on to the next big thing at the drop of a hat. Nothing is stopping you.

A comment above from Reddit pointed out that the site has been in ownership for a year now, and that trackers are down to 17 million.

What's replacing it in some sectors seems to be watching tv/movies online, the gray sites that act like iPlayer that link to movies hosted ni China etc. I know quite a few people that use those regularly, that wouldn't necessarily have used torrents before. And sneaker nets are as alive and well as ever.

A lot of other people will think like you, and we can expect to see the pirate bay's traffic to fall, and other trackers to rise in the coming weeks. Whether it recovers or not is a different matter.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[Opportunist]

I'd guess a fair lot of TOR exit node operators get some really angry letters really soon...

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[houghi]

I am in Belgium, so if they want to sue me, they have to have some legal representation here.

In Belgium the courts do not like to go after people if those people do not make money of it. Selling CDs? They are happy to help. Sharing stuff for your own use? That can be considerd as obstructing the working of the courts.

A few years ago the courts even told the Belgian *AA so in a letter. Unfortunately I do not have the letter anymore.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[bettega]

Totally agree. And let's get back to a client like eMule http://www.emule-project.net/ using KAD protocol.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the Pirate Bay's appeal consisted in not charging. And it's not the company's choice whether or not to reveal personal data. Eventually they will be forced to collect and reveal them by law, or to install a backdoor. If the Swedish state is reluctant to force them, some court or the EU will.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[93 Escort Wagon]

(although studies have shown that they buy more music/films etc)

[citation desperately needed] [especially for the "buy" part]

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really just say that Myspace is in decline?

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[Steauengeglase]

We depend on top level pirates to buy and then pirate the music that drives the industry. Great, now on one will be left to buy the music.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[scarboni888]

Yeah. It did. And I've found Myspace safe to ignore for quite a while now. & you will too. Soon.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[shutdown -p now]

The file sharing community isn't the best known for paying for downloads

I'm not so sure about that. AllOfMP3 and its countless clones were (and remain) very popular, largely among the same community.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[shish]

The file sharing community isn't the best known for paying for downloads

If the download was as quick / simple / DRM-free as TPB is now, I would

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[vaporland]

they'll make money by selling the IP addresses and email addresses of all their registered users to the RIAA & MPAA

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[will_die]

Not really sure it will be that much.
They will get more than 25% taken away for taxes, Sweden is high and I am presuming they tax the sales of companies at a relative appropriate rate; if treated like standard income it would be in the 40%+ range. So they are down to 6 Mil, will call it 25% for this example to be nice.
3.6 goes to the lawsuit. So now 2.4 Mil left. They have to owned lawers and with the length of that suit we will say 400,000 so they are left with maybe 2 million. If taxes are in the 40% range it is under million range.
So getting this sale allows them to be clear of all lawsuit awards, have money for a house and maybe something else, be clear of any legal problems and pocket any existing monies they had and from previous reports they had a fair amount because of sales of ads.

Re:How do they plan to make money?

[notseamus]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4718249.stm
http://torrentfreak.com/why-pirates-buy-more-music-and-music-labels-fail-090428/
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/

Dead thread, but i thought it was worth replying to anyway. There've been a slew of reports on /., ars etc, and they seem to have the numbers behind them unlike the industry's: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/ben-goldacre-bad-science-music-downloads

All about the money

[Computershack]

With a millionaire involved, you can bet your bottom dollar that it was all about the money at least in the eyes of one of the four. People who are rich from business tend to want to find more ways to make more money they don't need.

Enter Carl Lundstrom. Had the money to put up for badly needed servers. Has seen the rise of TPB and sees the $$$. Sinks in some cash for a few servers, sits back and waits then sells out for a whopping profit.

While it may have originally been done for the spirit that they CLAIMED they had in the trial, it certainly wasn't that in the last couple of years. The lying fuckers even went to court knowing that they were going to sell out not long after and stood there and perjured themselves saying it wasn't about the money. Yeah right.

NOBODY BELIEVES YOU

Re:All about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it was always about the money. People really don't believe that they believed all that stuff they were saying, do they? I mean, come on. Information wants to be free? Etc?

I prefer Cory Doctorow's method. Let the artist decide. Artists that are signing contracts that sign away their rights to decide don't get to bitch afterwards. They took their money.

Re:All about the money

[LizardKing]

Enter Carl Lundström.

Ah yes, the one with interesting political affiliations.

Re:All about the money

[Asic Eng]

This here presents the story a little differently: http://newteevee.com/2008/02/02/who-is-the-fourth-man-in-the-pirate-bay-case/ I don't know which version is correct, though.

Re:All about the money

[LizardKing]

From that article:

Lundstrom supposedly also suggested in an email to move The Pirate Bay's operations to Argentina.

Somewhat appropriate considering Lundstrom's links to neo Nazi politics (which unlike the degree of his financial involvement in TPB, aren't disputed). Perhaps they could have named the move "The ODESSA Project".

Re:All about the money

[hkmwbz]

What, Carl Lundström was actually involved in running the site?

Also, all the money from the sale is going for a non-profit organization. So much for "all about the money", eh?

Re:All about the money

[hkmwbz]

Ah yes, guilt by association. The fallacy of the idiot.

Re:All about the money

[Computershack]

Also, all the money from the sale is going for a non-profit organization. So much for "all about the money", eh?

Or so they say. They also said that TPB wasn't for profit and selling for $7.7m sure sounds like one hell of a lot of profit to me, regardless of where it ends up.

Re:All about the money

[Raenex]

The lying fuckers even went to court knowing that they were going to sell out not long after and stood there and perjured themselves saying it wasn't about the money. Yeah right. NOBODY BELIEVES YOU

Unfortunately, a lot of people believe them based on empty words and vague promises without actual facts to back them up. Just look at all the posts here defending them. People are so naive.

Re:All about the money

[horza]

Yes it's crap like this that has stopped me from reading The Register. Sad fall from investigative journalists to the IT equivalent of the Daily Star.

Phillip.

Re:All about the money

[hkmwbz]

It isn't profit for the TPB guys. Again, all the money is going to a non-profit organization. You are just spreading FUD.

Bye Bye PirateBay

[R4nm4-kun]

Was nice knowing you... now, let's all move to some other tracker of of the thousands out there, and let it die like others did .I guess this cat and mouse game is going to last a while.

Re:Bye Bye PirateBay

[R4nm4-kun]

Am I blind or does Slashdot have no edit option after I submitted a comment. Anyway it was "out of", didn't sleep much, sorry.

Re:Bye Bye PirateBay

[sznupi]

There are just a few trackers that can come even close to TPB, not "thousands". And TPB is by far the best of those few (with many "torrent sites" using, in reality, tpb as a tracker), with largest numbers of files and longest times they remain usable.

Maybe somebody will finally do something with the speed of bt but with catalog/etc. in freenet/tor/i2c kind of network (so it won't be shut down; but it must have controlling owners so it can be kept nice & tidy)

Re:Bye Bye PirateBay

[Anonymous Coward]

And it seemed that way when suprnova went down too, but TPB will be replaced far quicker than that was. In fact, the demonoid trackers probably have more torrents already. It's just a matter of getting invited or waiting for open registration days.

Re:Bye Bye PirateBay

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us introduce you to our good friend "Preview"...

RIP Piratebay

[elrous0]

Well, there goes the best of the great torrent sites. I'll bet dollars to donuts that this new company attempts to Napsterize the site, turning into a pathetic shell of its former self.

Re:RIP Piratebay

[Anonymous Coward]

The death of TPB just highlights those people who have yet to discover the best torrent sites are unfortunately private.

Also: I subscribe to the new corporate Napster. It took a while, but it is better than the original now... if you don't mind paying of course :)

Money Money Money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody's Got A Price!

Well this is obvious

[kazade84]

1. Set up a file sharing website with a cool name
2. Build a domain and brand worth millions
3. Profit!
4. Move to another domain
5. ???
6. Profit again!

??? is probably "GOTO 1"

Re:Well this is obvious

[DeBaas]

??? is probably "GOTO 1"

Then you'll never get to the profit part ...

Re:Well this is obvious

[cellurl]

I have seen the Internet from the 70's. TPB are visionaries. They have families, and to hold on as long as they did is downright martyrdom. My wife would have left me years ago for such a cause...

------
http://www.wikispeedia.org/
Open Speedlimit Database.
My wife is about to leave me.

Re:Well this is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

??? is probably "GOTO 1"

Then you'll never get to the profit part ...

No, the third line is "Profit!". However, a "GOTO 1" at 5 does make the sixth line superflueous because it is never executed.

Re:Well this is obvious

[AmberBlackCat]

The program will still run the first profit and the optimizing compiler will never put the second profit routine into the executable...

Re:Well this is obvious

[Ash-Fox]

TPB are visionaries

I don't really see how. At the end of the day, they're just promoting making unauthorized copies of digital media.

Re:Well this is obvious

[cellurl]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
I put a church sermon out there. Search for "revolution".
Its totally legal, but very unpopular.

You must be a performer? I am not.

Re:Well this is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you will. Over and over.
Just never to the "Profit again!" part.

Not only that...

[Hasney]

But they've just launched a restriction free video streaming site as well.

I'm unsure if that is related to the buy-out or not, but if it is, it really is a statement of intent to go forward with the things that TPB stood for.

Place your bets, place your bets

[tacokill]

What do you bet TPB puts up geographic walls in the near future? As in, "sorry, this product is not available in your country".

That seems to be the authorities response to the internet's "route around censorship" philosophy. And it appears to be fairly effective, thus far - as evidenced by many foreign posts on slashdot of users having problems with iTunes, Hulu, or whatever.

Re:Place your bets, place your bets

[Opportunist]

Yeah, it really sucks to tinker with the exit nodes on TOR to be in the "right" country...

Maybe it's time to create a new kind of "proxynet". I.e. one where you provide the service to come from your country for people from outside your country to access content only available for your country...

Let's go somewhere else

[Pessimist Cynic]

If they're going to charge for downloads, then it's really the end of it. People will just go elsewhere. Why should anyone pay for a service when they have the same for free elsewhere? That's the whole point that created a demand for Pirate Bay in the first place, and it's the same reasoning that is going to destroy it. There's no bland loyalty here. People aren't going to keep tracking torrent from Pirate Bay just because it's Pirate Bay. They're gonna go to where it's free. What a dumb idea... (but then again I know, they got sued, need the money, bla bla bla. but what about me?)

Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[gilgoomesh]

The following comment was made by krs on another site

To clarify a bit..

TPB has been owned by a company for the last years since the raid so nothing there will really change except the names of the owners. The talk about TPB are going to be a pay site is wrong, the CEO that said that does not know what he is talking about.

Now, the BIG change is that the tracker is going to be outsourced to a new formed company that wont know what they track, just that they connect peers, and the torrent listings will be handed by an other new company that will have torrents but they will not know either content or who is using the torrents. This setup will be practically impossible to take down or find anyone liable to sue.

The 3d party company services will have APIs, so you can on your blog or whatever have your own small torrent listings just as you now pull in twitter feeds. remember how the twitter design totally havoced the iranian attempts to block it as ppl just used another side that pulled in the feeds and read it there instead? well that goes for torrents and TPB to.

All in all, this is not the end of the world as some are seeing it but a rather interesting technical improvement.

And dont worry, not a dime will go to the media industries spectrial prize money what i know of but a really nice fund for doing cool stuff. /krs - co.founder of TPB and PB, not involved in TPB anymore and have no stake in any cash.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. This is a great example of the P2P Hydra effect.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[debrain]

Now, the BIG change is that the tracker is going to be outsourced to a new formed company that wont know what they track, just that they connect peers, and the torrent listings will be handed by an other new company that will have torrents but they will not know either content or who is using the torrents. This setup will be practically impossible to take down or find anyone liable to sue.

The concept of willful blindness may apply as a substitute for intention.

Quoth the article:

A famous example of such a defense being denied occurred in In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 334 F.3d 643 (7th Cir. 2003), in which the defendants argued that their file-swapping technology was designed in such a way that they had no way of monitoring the content of swapped files, and suggested that their inability to monitor the activities of users meant that they could not be contributing to copyright infringement by the users. The court held that this was willful blindness on the defendant's part, and would not constitute a defense to a claim of contributory infringement.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[zwei2stein]

They still have central services that could be taken down. And their 'legal' existences still depends wholly on same law avoidance schema like before.

And since they go a long way to make sure they can not be liable for providing access to copyrighted shit because they would not know it is there (which they know will be there, hence the blind services), its kinda self defeating as they prove themselves they are 'looking for trouble' and expecting material that they will be liable for, and that they want that material there.

10$ that pedoporn will appear there asap, forcing them to react with implementing ability to block certain content. I am sure RIAA can afford few machines in 3rd world do get some content up there.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Pessimist Cynic]

The lesson to be learned here is that you can never win against the government, because they have the unique ability of coming up with cool-sounding names for things they just plain don't want you to do just because. "yeah, you can't share trackers without knowing what they're pointing to, because, because... because you can know, you just don't want to, so if you can know then you should know, you can't just choose not to know, because then you get what you want and we don't get to stop you. so I'll name this "willful blindness", because see, you're wanting to be blind to what you're doing, as in, you're choosing not to see the files... get it? pretty cool, I know. but anyway, back to the subject, yeah, you can't do that."

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[chebucto]

The lesson to be learned here is that you can never win against the government, because they have the unique ability of coming up with cool-sounding names for things they just plain don't want you to do just because.

No, the lesson is that the law actually takes notice of the real world, and that shell games like the GP suggests only work until the laws are updated to reflect the reality...

Shell games and the like, which really do willfully ignore the copyright violation going on, feel unethical and are something I would rather not associate with. Not to mention the fact that narrowly technical claims ('not actually hosting copyrighted files', etc.) are disingenuous and, in effect, simply shift all of the blame, and criminality, to the file-shareres themselves.

If the spirit of the law says that you're not allowed to share copyrighted works, then the letter of the law should and will eventually reflect that.

The thing to do, IMNSHO, is continue working to change the spirit of the law. The goal should be to make the law reflect the fact that people should be able to share copyrighted works, as long as they aren't making money on it. Otherwise, the buck has got to stop somewhere, and someone - either the trackers, the users, or the network - will eventually have to take the blame for breaking the law.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[pnuema]

I'd be concerned - if the 7th circuit wasn't a US court. TPB is not in the US, in case you didn't know.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible that TPB is outside the jurisdiction of the "United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit"

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[cpghost]

The thing to do, IMNSHO, is continue working to change the spirit of the law.

The idealist in me agrees. The cynic in me asks where the deep pockets to do that are. And the realist in me says that people will simply ignore an unpopular law.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[demachina]

"remember how the twitter design totally havoced the iranian attempts to block"

Its kind of hard to tell what exactly happened in Iran, but I've seen speculation that the protesters extensive use of Twitter and the Internet mostly just made it easier for the Iranian government to identify the trouble makers and where they lived so they could pay them a visit. Its possible the use of Twitter just made it easier to crush the protests more quickly. If you are advocating the overthrow of a government from within anonymity is relatively important.

When you are trying to topple an authoritarian regime using the Internet from anything other than an untraceable IP address seems extremely unwise to me especially when all of Iran's internet traffic is being funneled through monitored choke points.

It is likewise being somewhat optimistic at this point to think that any site that will enable widespread piracy is going to be impervious to tracing, warrants and shutdown notices. About the only way to do it is for the hub to be located in a pariah country that is indifferent to digital rights and which will ignore the complaints, and block any attempt to traces the IP addresses going in and out of the hub. Its pretty tough to be a rogue nation if the U.S. and E.U. use their governments to apply diplomatic and economic pressure. China seems to be one of the few countries mostly immune to western digital rights concerns.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Anonymous Coward]

The spirit of they copyright laws was to have works move into the public domain, not feed greedy companies and their hired politicians for all eternity. Just wait until that crappy disney mouse is about to expire again, the copyright period will be extended. Watch the Beatles material do the same.

It's time to rewind these copyright extensions and start seeing material coming into the public domain.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Anonymous Coward]

chebucto says: "The goal should be to make the law reflect the fact that people should be able to share copyrighted works, as long as they aren't making money on it."

Huh??? So a new CD comes out, someone buys it and puts it online for free (not making any money on it) and millions of people download it, and you say that's the way it should be? Tell me how that economy would work.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[gemada]

No, the lesson is that the law actually takes notice of the real world, and that shell games like the GP suggests only work until the laws are updated to reflect the reality...

you mean like how the government has shut down the shell games the international financial system has been playing since the beginning of time...oh wait....

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these 'shell games' ethical? Probably not. Is the piracy of copyrighted material ethical? Most definitely not. However, I still can't help cheering for these guys.

Rigging a trial with a judge who is on the board of a copyright industry lobby group pretty much takes the cake as far as 'feeling' unethical, reguardless of whether or not the courts hold that there was any actual bias.

The defendents accomplished one of thier major stated goals, they allowed the proceedings to take on the air of that of a kangaroo court, and in the process were able to sway public opinion in a signifigant, quantifiable manner.

I don't know what this most recent move in this bizzare game means as of yet, but it has certainly been interesting, and I very much doubt it is exactly what it seems.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[tinkerghost]

No, the lesson is that the law actually takes notice of the real world, and that shell games like the GP suggests only work until the laws are updated to reflect the reality...

That depends on who has the money. In this case, the banks, manufacturers, and distributors that set up the laws regarding shell companies have more money than the media companies. They also have more to loose. Selling a lot of things to NK is illegal from the US, but if you route it through shell companies in Europe, Africa, South America, and the Philippines you can do it with impunity. Routing your money through a shell company in the Cayman Islands is perhaps one of the best known ways of protecting "investment" earnings.

Most shell companies exist solely for the purpose of isolating business dealings from each other in order to limit or block liability - TPB is actually discussing using a series of shell companies exactly as they are designed to be used.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Hurricane78]

So the sale was accompanied by the worst PR handling ever!

If they had told what you said, it would continue to be a success.

Unfortunately, everyone now parrots the sale like you see it here. Which means, they will die, just as foretold by half the posts on this forum.

I don't know what to think about this. Maybe after some time, it will clarify.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[shutdown -p now]

The idealist in me agrees. The cynic in me asks where the deep pockets to do that are. And the realist in me says that people will simply ignore an unpopular law.

And the pessimist in me says that some of those people will end up with hefty fines and/or in jail.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Hatta]

The thing to do, IMNSHO, is continue working to change the spirit of the law.

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way; its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Enough said.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Stray7Xi]

Now, the BIG change is that the tracker is going to be outsourced to a new formed company that wont know what they track, just that they connect peers, and the torrent listings will be handed by an other new company that will have torrents but they will not know either content or who is using the torrents.

Sounds like a distributed usenet model. So you get your indexing from one company and that links to trackers run by another company. One problem, the indexing company can run ads. What does the tracker do to make money?

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>The lesson to be learned here is that you can never win against the government, because they have the unique ability of coming up with cool-sounding names for things they just plain don't want you to do just because.

That's what Marie Antoinette, Musolini, Chauchescu, etc etc thought.
You see how their story ended.

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[blind biker]

Not to mention the fact that narrowly technical claims ('not actually hosting copyrighted files', etc.) are disingenuous and, in effect, simply shift all of the blame, and criminality, to the file-shareres themselves.

Yeah, that would be like shifting responsibility from road building companies to the criminals who use them to get away from a crime scene. That would be stupid.

(+1, Car Analogy)

Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs"

[debrain]

The concept of willful blindness may apply as a substitute for intention.

I'd be concerned - if the 7th circuit wasn't a US court. TPB is not in the US, in case you didn't know.

Sir:

As I said, willful blindness is a concept. The concept is unconstrained by jurisdiction. The Wikipedia page just happened to have a convenient reference to a U.S. case.

Willful blindness has arisen in practically every jurisdiction in the world, mutatis mutandis, including Sweden, as a legal fiction that applies in lieu of actual intention because of the need and/or desire to reach fair and just conclusions in cases where actual intention is wanting but necessary for criminal prosecution. In case you didn't know. ;)

End of one generation, beginning of another?

[NoNeeeed]

This feels a lot like history repeating itself - It's Napster all over again...

Music industry sues P2P service -> service loses -> service turns legit -> becomes irrelevant -> gets replaced by something better, and less centralized.

I'm curious what's going to come next, but I suspect this turn of events will spur on some interesting technical developments.

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[elashish14]

I was under the impression that the next big thing in Bittorrent would be the introduction of distributed trackers. Are we there or not yet? Or is it just some wild fantasy of mine?

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem being, in this case, "something less centralized" is sort of in the range of spitting out single .torrent files from random websites, only findable through Google (if that). Which will annoy people to the point where they will want something MORE centralized, and the function oscillates at this point.

Unless by "something less centralized" you mean we revert to providing .torrent files on the street in real life or something like that.

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Per Wigren]

We are already there. Even if they shut down the TPB trackers today, as long as people have access to the .torrent-files in some way, they will continue to work forever as long as there are seeders.

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Opportunist]

Probably the next step would be to use a technology already in use by some malware update systems, where you essentially don't need a tracker anymore and the nodes get their updates automatically from their peers. The update has to satisfy the signature, of course, so some injector can't simply send a "kill yourself" update, but basically everything you need for fully trackerless P2P data spreading is already there.

We just have to adapt it for "good" use. I have a bit of spare time, maybe I can rewrite that puppy...

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Locklin]

You mean trackerless torrents?

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[TheoMurpse]

We've been there for maybe half a decade now. I know Azureus incorporated DHT a long time ago for this very reason.

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[CodeBuster]

This feels a lot like history repeating itself - It's Napster all over again...

It is reminiscent yes, but with Napster it was possible to keep the name and logo intact because neither of them overtly suggested that copyright infringement was the way to go other than the formative history of the brand, which fades as people move on. However, this case is different. How are they going to operate "The Pirate Bay", which has a pirate ship logo and cassette tape and crossed bones from the "home taping is killing the music business" campaign, without the perpetually reminding people of the pirate connection?

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kademlia is already here and running well.

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Hurricane78]

Funnily, BitTorrent was more centralized than Gnutella for example. It was more like a eDonkey network with no central server list, no cross-server-queries, and no search functionality at all. But with stupid files that you have to download and then use to download the actual content, instead of simple ed2k:// or magnet:// links.
Oh, and the BitTorrent "network" never had those rare files. Like the white-label vinyl of some exceptionally good bootleg that only existed seven times in the entire world.
Luckily, mlDonkey allows BitTorrent, plus half a dozen other networks, including eDonkey.

I always thought that it was a big step backwards.
I hope that the Gnutella(1/2) and/or eDonkey nets get more successful again, or replaced by something more safe that still can reach a good performance.

Re:End of one generation, beginning of another?

[Yogiz]

Could it be time for an encrypted tracker (i2p,tor) for which everyone can provide proxies? Impossible to track - they'd have to go after the proxies or encryption itself. Nah, too soon I guess. Maybe after one more generation.

Supernova

[giorgist]

Something will pop up in it's place. The idealists are misplaced. The rest will just find a new way, but with the lessons learned.

This is the end

[nloop]

What was the point of going through the court proceedings? Why, money, of course!

Also, as evidenced by Kazaa, Napster, Suprnova, and I'm sure many others that I didn't personally use, taking a free piracy site (sure, sure, pirate bay has a few legal uses, but lets be honest here) and turning it into an "innovative pay model for sharing" just doesn't work. You're fan base does -not- transfer. Apples fan base, yeah, they buy things, iTunes can work. Jimmy down the street downloading bootlegs? Not buying. GGF just wasted 60 million kroner.

Re:This is the end

[Aladrin]

Kazaa and Napster had their own protocols to sell, at least. As far as I know, TPB doesn't write any software, they just maintain it and have a website to go with it. Buying TPB doesn't get this company anything that they couldn't just get for free, except a little knowledge... And they could get that a lot cheaper than $7.8mil.

Re:This is the end

[nloop]

They get Brand. A brand that has a major political party behind it. But yeah, not a brand that equates to buying dollars, that's for sure.

Re:This is the end

[MrMista_B]

It gets them a brand, which they valued at being worth obviously more than they paid, else they wouldn't have bought it. I tend to think they know what they're doing.

Re:This is the end

[Anonymous Coward]

You're fan base does -not- transfer.

Your

Re:This is the end

[the_one(2)]

The pirate party has nothing to do with TPB.

Re:This is the end

[nloop]

Yes, they do. While TPB have no part in running the party, it is most definately not a name coincidence:

On 31 May 2006 Swedish police raided a facility hosting The Pirate Bay (and Piratbyrån, along with over 200 other independent site owners, hosted at the same facility), leading to a breakthrough for the Pirate Party in the public eye. Before the raid, the Party was steadily growing with some ten new members every day, but the raid caused a surge of 500 new members by the end of the day, with a membership count of 2,680. The next day another 930 people had register membership, giving a total of 3,611 members, more than doubling their original number.

In April 2009, after The Pirate Bay trial verdict, the Pirate Party gained 3,000 members in 7 hours, making it larger than 3 of the 7 parties in the Parliament of Sweden, by member count.[9] One week later it had already 40,000 members â" compared to 15,000 members before the verdict â" and now has more members than 5 of the 7 parties in the Swedish Parliament, with over 46,376 members as of 22 May 2009

2000 members before the raids, 46,000 after. They are most definitely part of the brand.

Re:This is the end

[AmiMoJo]

It isn't clear how this affects those found guilty in TPB's trial. Presumably they still plan to appeal to try and avoid jail, but if they loose anything they gain from this deal would go directly to the copyright holder's groups who sued them.

Re:This is the end

[Hurricane78]

Actually, all uses of that site were by definition legal. Only what happens when you use that .torrent file, to actually download something, was what was a bit gray.
Also please stop buying in to the **AA propaganda bullshit by using unwords, like "piracy". If you use it, the **AA knows, that their method works on you. Don't allow that to happen.

Re:This is the end

[mcvos]

They get Brand. A brand that has a major political party behind it.

A major political party? They got 7% of the Swedish votes for the Europarliament, which is quite impressive, mostly because it's the first time they won any seats in a parliament at all. They're still not in Swedish parliament. The most impressive thing is their membership, which has been growing rapidly in the last couple of months, probably because of the Pirate Bay trial.

Even so, the party does not officially support TPB. They want copyright reform, not copyright violation.

At least that's how I (as a foreigner) understand it.

TPB blog

[migla]

"A lot of people are worried. We're not and you shouldn't be either!":

http://thepiratebay.org/blog

Re:TPB blog

[Tony Hoyle]

Worrried? Nope. There are plenty of other sites.

Their press release said 2 things:

1. They were going to find ways to get people to pay for content
2. They were ditching bittorrent for a proprietary solution

The two are probably linked.. but whatever they my say in a blog (TPB is down again.. can't read it) you can't do those two things and end up with anything that resembles the existing site.

Re:TPB blog

[Anarchduke]

Of course they aren't worried, they just sold a website for 7.8 Million. I wouldn't be worried with close to 8 million dollars, would you?

Re:TPB blog

[choongiri]

"A lot of people are worried. We're not and you shouldn't be either!"

I wouldn't be worried, either, if I was retiring with a $7,800,000 nest egg.

Napster?

[cyberjock1980]

So is TPB going the way of the Napster? Buy them out and try to turn them into some legitimate website?

Re:Napster?

[jmcvetta]

Buy them out and try to turn them into some legitimate website?

A legitimate music sales site is illegitimate as a music sharing site.

VPN?

[L4t3r4lu5]

What's to happen regarding the IPREDator VPN service?

Re:VPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit waiting. Subscribe to Relakks. Same service, offered by the same people.

Still, good question. I still have two months left on my subscription.

Re:VPN?

[NoPantsJim]

hmm, having trouble here. Relakks just shot down both my credit card and debit card, although I know both are good to go with plenty of available funds. Is Relakks not available in the U.S.?

The Pirate Party?

[nloop]

Wow, having your political party's idealistic figurehead be bought by an internet cafe if kind of a kick in the balls, huh? Does GGF now get a seat in their parliament?

Re:The Pirate Party?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The party and the company are separate entities.

Re:The Pirate Party?

[inamorty]

Avast! Low flying woosh..

They should've checked bittorrent

[192939495969798999]

What a waste of money. You can download TPB from bittorrent or any p2p share for free!

A joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, they wouldn't just hand over the site to someone else could they? What if the mpaa or riaa, the entertainment industry tries to make some deal with them about ip logs?

Could this be the beginning of more lawsuits?

What does this mean?

[j00bhaka]

TPB founders say they will be using the money for good; to support idealism and promote free speech. What happens when the money is depleted and they can no longer use TPB to combat corporate and government ignorance?

Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Jugalator]

The Swedish news site Realtid.se is now running an article that make this sound less than promising, even if you wasn't bothered by the concept presented in this (Slashdot) article.

Please excuse the Google Translate machine translation, but it should still be readable:
http://translate.google.se/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Frealtid.se%2FArticlePages%2F200906%2F30%2F20090630101501_Realtid980%2F20090630101501_Realtid980.dbp.asp&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[n30na]

....you can read that? Could someone put that into actually readable english for me?

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[iammani]

In short, a former business parter of Pandey (the founder or CEO of Global Gaming Factory) warns about Pandey being the most unethical man on earth.

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Xest]

The only thing I managed to take away from that article is the guy buying it has sharp elbows and teeth.

This sounds like it could be very beneficial if it ever comes down to hand to hand combat against the music industry.

Oh and I think there was something about not eating Danish people with seaweed or something too.

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[TheP4st]

A former partner of Hans Pandeya the major shareholder of GGF is according to one of his former partners a major Douchebag. That pretty much sums it up.

Now one should bear in mind that the former partner have quite a grudge with Pandeya so while what is being said (Pandeya is a douchebag) do seem accurate the source is obviously very strongly biased and use quite a few "he did this he did that, check it out."

Pandeya may indeed be the douchebag he is described as with nothing but hearsay/gossip or quite possibly the anonymous former partner is engaging in some serious asshattery while masquerading as AC.

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[TheP4st]

Gaahh... Need coffee. The first sentence should have read. "Hans Pandeya the major shareholder of GGF is according to one of his former partners a major Douchebag"

My apologies for any eyestrain, blindness or spelling/grammar nazi invocation caused.

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[n30na]

Aha, that makes sense. The article was just formatted funny, i guess.

Is it me, or does this publication look like a gossip paper? (think the Enquirer)

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Jugalator]

....you can read that? Could someone put that into actually readable english for me?

OK, some quotes from one of his former partners there:

- Pandeya (the GGF CEO) is completely freed of shame.
- This will end with misery.
- And what the hell is he dealing with TPB for?
- To me, the warning bells are constantly ringing regarding Pandeya.
- If these guys behind the TPB now deals with Pandeya, they're leaving the ashes for the fire.
- It will end with them (TPB founders) not sitting with a dime on their hands.
- I have never met anyone like him.
- When I discuss this with more experienced partners, their mind boggles.
- People like Hans Pandeya must not play with the big guns.
- No one from the family Wallenberg will touch him with a pole.
- But he can earn quite a bit of money as long as he's afloat.

He introduced the company GGF now purchasing TPB to the stock market via a "back door" (since Johan StaÃl von Holstein denied it from being introduced the normal way as he felt the company was too small, and things went too quickly) by letting it be devoured by a company called AddYourLogo, a company then in crisis which an ecocriminal was behind. Pandeya soon rose to become its primary owner.

Pandeya then asked for 60M SEK, and later even more, so that he soon had 100M SEK in funds from his company's owners. These money are now supposedly gone according to the anonymous partner, and the reason being that Pandeya pumping GGF on the money by letting GGF's own consulting company get expensive honorariums from GGF due to them keeping the aformentioned software Smart Launch up-to-date. :-S

The anonymous partner then claims "Where has the money went? GGF barely has any employees."

The partner later told this to a professor in finance analysis, and he claimed this was the perfect way of emptying a company from funds, and if he'd done so himself, he'd done it a similar way, with a small consulting company being made very expensive.

GGF is on the Swedish "Aktietorget" where AddYourLogo originally was. This is a stock listing exempt from control from the Swedish Finance Inspection. The partner continues by claiming this kind of stock market introduction was probably not even legal, since the maximum stock ownership in a company is 30%. Pandeya owned 80% in GGF/AddYourLogo at the time. This rule is there to avoid "muscle men" and bluff introductions from taking place.

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Anarchduke]

OMG Google translate can be funny sometimes

What do you think of Pandeyas ethical and moral stance?
He is completely exempt from the ethics and morals.
I have never experienced anything similar.
When I discuss with more experienced people than me, so baxnar the.
You might need to be ready to walk over corpses to become millionaire?
I know many rich who have not. They have managed very well with mostly pretty cleaner.
- Such as Hans Pandeya may not play with the big guns.
- None of the Wallenberg family to take him with seaweed.

Not really sure what he is saying, but I find it humorous.

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Jugalator]

Oh damn, it feels like that summary is reeking with grammar mistakes due to me being Swedish now that I'm re-reading what I just quickly wrote. Hopefully it was more understandable than the translated article at least. :-S

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Anonymous Coward]

and please don't forget that Realtid.se is a tabloid (with financial focus, but still a tabloid).
So take that Google translation with a bucket of salt! ;-)

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[n30na]

Yes, much more so, thank you =)

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[Reziac]

"None of the Wallenberg family to take him with seaweed."

WTF??

Re:Worrying news on Pandeya just incoming now

[TheP4st]

Based on that specific article. Yes definitely! And I doubt I will waste my time visiting it again.

Borg Pirates attack McDonalds?!

[PinkyDead]

Where can I download this?

Legal and appropriate?

[Opportunist]

In other words, profitable? HOW?

Ponder this for a moment: What did you buy?

1) A database, consisting of torrents. The "illegal" content can't be used. The legal content can be gotten anywhere. Nobody will pay for this.

2) A brand name. People go to TBP to look up torrents. If they can't do that for free, they will go elsewhere. Nobody will pay for this either.

3) Erh... beats me.

Not Happening, If You Ask Me

[lacoronus]

From the press release:

Completion of the acquisitions are primarily subject to GGF obtaining financing for the acquisition

So to summarize: they're buying a company with unknown business model and unknown future legal status, for money they don't have.

I don't see that working out. Usually you at least make sure the seller has something to sell, and the buyer has the ability to buy, before you announce a sale. This is just fantasy so far.

Re:Not Happening, If You Ask Me

[Tony Hoyle]

Could the TPB owners be that naive?

They've allowed the site (particularly its reputation) to be essentially destroyed and GGF may not even complete the deal... they simply mess about for a few months then walk away claiming 'no funding'. TPB owners are serving their jail sentence by that time and there's nobody to rescue the remains.

Legal Napster emulated the pirate music model

[Sockatume]

I think it survived because it latched onto the kind of music purchasing model that attracted people to file sharing in the first place. People don't buy music at retail any more because it's essentially valueless. The $10 CD nothing to produce, the music in the store is constantly on the airwaves anyway, and the support it gives the artist is close to zero. Music had become a disposable item, so all-you-can-eat music for the cost of an internet connection was an incredibly attractive proposition, and that's what file sharing provided. And that's what the Napster service had the sense to provide when it went legal.

Pirate Bay down?

[jassa]

Hmm, I haven't been able to connect to TPB for the past hour. The timing seems a tad suspicious.

Re:Pirate Bay down?

[n30na]

what the hell, neither can I. That was fast.

Re:Pirate Bay down?

[Zelaron]

Weird. It doesn't work here either (I'm in Sweden). http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/thepiratebay.org reports that it's currently up though.

Re:Pirate Bay down?

[Zelaron]

Update: They're dead now. The only good reason for a DDoS attack this early on would probably be to hail Eris.

Re:Pirate Bay down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I hear they are handling a deluge of traffic right now. I wonder why.

Re:Pirate Bay down?

[Zelaron]

It's possible, but TPB has been fine during previous traffic spikes, e.g. just after its creators were sentenced.

The server at thepiratebay.org is taking too long

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone has a mirror...or torrent for the site?

The Piratebay is down

[jonfr]

The piratebay is down. Given the news, I guess that is not a surprise at all. The new owners, deleting the web page. I think that the company that did buy The Piratebay was a shell company for one the RIAA/MPAA members.

ping -c 4 thepiratebay.org
PING thepiratebay.org (192.121.86.15) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- thepiratebay.org ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 3009ms

Re:The Piratebay is down

[Jugalator]

I think that the company that did buy The Piratebay was a shell company for one the RIAA/MPAA members.

I don't think so, they've been around for a couple of years in other businesses. BUT they have quite a poor reputation, it seems. The CEO seem to be the kind of guy that just pulls out once the deal is over, from what I've read. He would already have made 30-40 million SEK or something on that order. Their stock skyrocketed from basically nothing. I wonder what he REALLY told the TPB folks. :-S

Re:The Piratebay is down

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah...thats a troll.
thepiratebay.org is very much up and alive.

Re:The Piratebay is down

[mambodog]

Works for me...

Re:The Piratebay is down

[Anarchduke]

nope seems to be back up again

Re:The Piratebay is down

[Anonymous Coward]

it's back up again

Re:The Piratebay is down

[jonfr]

The problems with shells is that they are hard to spot. Some have been around for years, building up legitimate reputation and such.

In the case of TBP, we will see.

So in other words..

[kheldan]

..TPB is going the way of Napster?

What no court can kill, a business will

[Colonel Korn]

The courts could have fought for another decade without denting TPB, but this news is a eulogy.

first things first

[Anonymous Coward]

is my piratebay hoodie still cool to wear?

Dude!

[Hillgiant]

Ixnay onay ethay enetusay!

Re:Dude!

[Mister_Stoopid]

Petitioning to add "-1, Fight Club" to moderation options.

talks at fisl

[Gusfm]

Peter Sunde gave two presentations last week here in Brazil. On the first one he talked about the history of TPB, and on the second one he talked about TPB services. In the end of one of his presentations (I don't remember witch one) he was asked, if someone offer to buy TPB for some money, would they sell it? His answer was that they would do what's the best to TPB (He said some more things also).

I don't know why but I felt he was hiding something.

Anyone wants to guess which record giant

[Phizzle]

bankrolled this on the back end? Seems like a pretty well played out end game - PB crew gets rolled in court by a judge working for the record companies, then this miraculous offer comes out that will cover their legal expenses and give them a little extra something-something for themselves, plus a chance to safe face with that little charity speech, and everyone ends up happy minus all their disposable fan base. I guess the record companies realized that once someone gets elected into politics they get a price tag :) Well played indeed.

Only if you put a big fat SOLD stamp across

[Phizzle]

the TPB logo :)

Not Naive, Quite Vicious Pump and Dump

[lacoronus]

No, I don't think they're that naive.

Having thought a little bit about it, what I think the plan is, is this: The shares of GGF (a micro-cap stock) went up a lot on the press release. I think that's the point, and where the money in all this is.

This is a pump and dump scam.

They're betting on not enough people really reading the press release. Wannabe daytraders put money into the penny stock of GGF and are taken to the cleaners. Where the money goes - well, I don't know. To new nebulous "internet projects", somewhere? Maybe.

GGF is under no obligation to complete the deal. All they have to do is claim "no funding" and the deal is off - but not after the owners of GGF stock has been able to sell it at a much higher price than they would've been able to without this press release.

As I said at the start - this is what I think. I have no proof of anything of the above, but I'm just stating what I think this smells like.

Pirate Bay BACK UP! With a message.

[Phizzle]

TPB might change owner
Yes, it's true.
News reached the press today in Sweden - The Pirate Bay might get aquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB.
A lot of people are worried. We're not and you shouldn't be either!
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. We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed 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 us. The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we're fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It's win-win-win. The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!

Podcast interview with Peter Sunde

[Johan Folin]

Swedish free-lance journalist and IT entrepreneur Thomas WennstrÃm made an interview with TPB spokesperson Peter Sunde earlier today: http://www.whatsnext.se/2009/06/30/podcast-with-peter-sunde-on-the-ggfs-accquisition-of-the-pirate-bay/

dudes' just chill

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. the pirate bay corpse isn't even cold yet and already y'all are foaming at the mouth. Sure there is a lot of money involved, but perhaps they speak the truth(I know completly crazy thought, right?)we know nothing except that for years they gave the people what they wanted and they were "heros". Now apparently there lepers. People need to stop jumping to conclusions and show a little loyalty for the folks that helped you get illegal shit and didn't snitch on you. seriously, the world is the crappy place it is because of people believing the worst of everyone. give these guys the benefit of doubt untill they PROVE their not worthy.

$7.8 million ?? That's all ?

[bonedog73]

$7.8 million for one of the most popular websites in the world??? Why doesnt the RIAA/MPAA just offer them $10million and shut it down? Even if they killed all the torrents and sold T-Shirts they'd make their money back...

Re:$7.8 million ?? That's all ?

[nloop]

Well, you have to take into consideration the timing. A week ago it would have been for more when there was still a chance at continuing the site , but the Swedish courts just declared that the judge was not biased, and that TPB does not get a retrial. So, it's one of the most popular websites that has just effectively been killed. They bought a 7.8 million dollar domain name.

The Trial & Judgment Made This Inevitable

[MarkvW]

The owners and controllers of TPB got a massive financial judgment against them. After a plaintiff gets a judgment, the next thing that he or she wants to do is enforce that judgment. If the losers won't pay voluntarily, the winners get to use judicial process to take the losers' stuff. The "TPB entity" is such stuff.

The pirates sold their business because it was doomed anyway.

If they're hiding assets from their creditors, they are looking at another round of trouble with the trial judge.

Re:The Trial & Judgment Made This Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually "TPB entity" as you call it was given over to a third party in 2006 specifically for if a circumstance like this ever arose. They do not own TPB. The courts cannot make person B give up something they own because person A did something bad. As well, all money from the sale of TPB does not go to them it goes to a Fund for support of the internet, privacy, politics, etc.

TPB delete requests

[splatter]

http://suprbay.org/showthread.php?t=57490

Linking is legal

[bzipitidoo]

there's a surprising amount of content on TPB

There is nothing "on" TPB, and that fact is a major part of their defense. They only link to content hosted by others, they don't host anything themselves. Like an ISP, they disclaim responsibility for the legality of the content. They are not in the business of being IP cops.

impossible to say what percentage of files on The Pirate Bay is illegal

No, that's easy to say: 0.

Please don't make this mistake. We can hardly expect the legal world to get this right if you and the mods slip up on this important distinction. That Napster did host content is what the copyright maximalists used to take them down. This time, lacking that argument, the copyright maximalists seemed to have gotten their way (so far) by co-opting the judges. They don't have any legal basis. Judges are proving too easy to co-opt by playing on fears over change and disruptive technology. The judge for Napster really lost it when she exclaimed that they "created a monster". All she really did was show the copyright maximalists that the legal world was full of plums ripe for the picking.

is a No CD patch/crack legal?

I wish I could say that of course that's legal. But the DMCA stupidly criminalized much of that. So, best I can suggest is that a crack is a tool that has many legitimate purposes as well as the obvious illegitimate purposes.

Re:Linking is legal

[s73v3r]

And that defense worked so well for them.

Re:Linking is legal

[amicusNYCL]

So, best I can suggest is that a crack is a tool that has many legitimate purposes as well as the obvious illegitimate purposes.

Considering that the DMCA expressly criminalizes removing copy protection, what exactly are the "many legitimate purposes" of a crack? Do you think a crack even has more than one purpose?

Re:Linking is legal

[Anonymous Coward]

The cool 8-bit music tracks that go with them are sweet.

I personally collect them for the musics.

Re:Linking is legal

[WillyDavidK]

Even if TPB isn't hosting the actual files themselves, they are still providing direct access to the files, essentially assisting many in alleged illegal activity. The fact is in many cases the files are there but one can only get to them THROUGH TPB. It's criminal assistance and questionable motive. That's what gets these guys in trouble.

Re:Linking is legal

[zuperduperman]

You're absolutely right that linking is legal, but facilitating a crime is not and this is where it gets murky. For example, it's legal to drive a car, but you are rightly still in trouble if you intentionally drive it as a getaway car in a bank robbery (even if you are not the person who actually entered bank).

This is the whole core of the Pirate Bay problem: they intend to help people breach copyright. The intent is clearly expressed through the name of their web site. There's no two ways around it.

Like you, I earnestly hope that this case does not set a precedent to indicate that sharing links to unauthorized content is considered equivalent to sharing the content. That would be outrageous. However the answer is not to defend the Pirate Bay for what is clearly a step too far but to ensure that the verdict is not misinterpreted. They screwed up, and actually endangered our rights more than help protect them by giving the copyright industries an easy win where they should not have had one.

Re:Linking is legal

[blackest_k]

While I sympathize with your position, mine is nowhere near the united states and the DMCA means nothing outside of North America. Maybe some of us should setup proxy servers so the oppressed Americans can download safely without fear of persecution by their government or corporate masters. Actually that could get interesting if safe proxies were established for free or for hire, allowing secure encrypted connections for oppressed citizens round the world. It could be possible that a big fat connection could download at a far greater rate than most users can manage.

Re:Linking is legal

[cybernanga]

DRIVING a getaway car is not illegal in and of itself.

IANAL, however, if you have a current drivers licence, valid insurance, road tax, i.e. you and are compliant with your local regulation for driving a vehicle on public roads, it doesn't matter whether you are driving a getaway car, or a truck full of heroin or AK47's, you will not be in trouble for DRIVING, unless of course you break the rules by running a red light, illegal parking, speeding or some other infraction.

Even if you intentionally drive it as a getaway vehicle, what you will be in trouble for has nothing to do with the act of driving. Conspiracy, aiding and abetting etc. will still apply whether you were driving a car, or pushing them in a wheel barrow, or carrying them on your back.

Re:Linking is legal

[amicusNYCL]

Haha, I like it. I'm not feeling all that oppressed (or restricted, I guess), I was just curious what the GP thought a crack's purpose was other than to remove copy protection. As far as I can tell that's a piece of software built with a single purpose. The "many legitimate purposes" argument is usually saved for BT, I've never heard someone try to say a crack has more than one purpose.

A twitter convo i had with Brokep of TPB

[Anonymous Coward]

@brokep I think people are seeing the fact you lost the case and pretty much sold up afterwards as a bad thing.The money is talking here.

brokep@gully666uk so either there is 60M in a fund, or there is no site and no money. What's the preferred deal? We have no energy left.

@brokep You have done well to keep it up, but people mostly have reacted badly.Its pretty similar to napster and we know how that went.

brokep@gully666uk Yes, we're trying to avoid just that. It's just a site, we need to take the icon status away so lots of sites can replace that.

@brokep I applaud your stance , whether it succeeds only time will tell.You created the icon by taking on the riaa sadly they are winning.

brokep@gully666uk They're not winning. A cannon is now being loaded with money.

@brokep Let us both hope the cannon isn't firing blanks.Good Luck with your future endevors.

brokep@gully666uk Thanks. I'll need it. People hate me now for wanting to pause the 6 year free work we've been doing. Feels unfair.

gully666uk@brokep Everybody deserves to be paid for working.It's a fine line between love and hate.It's the way of the web sadly people expect allot

brokep@gully666uk I'm glad people have high expectations. But we're not that many people. And we've been fighting for a long time. We need help.

@brokep I hope you now can get the help you need.Me i am only one person with very little so from that point of view i understand why.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

the only thing cool about TBP was that it was popular AFTER Supernova.

the fucking thing died as it was meant to in this case co-opted by some big company who, really doesn't seem to have any idea about what TBP does. all they see are the 'potential' millions of people it could serve up ad space in exchange for p2p services.

fuck TPB. bring on the next tech....

jDownloader anyone?

I spoke to one of the founders of TPB earlier

[gully666uk]

His name is Brokep over twitter here is what was said,

@brokep I think people are seeing the fact you lost the case and pretty much sold up afterwards as a bad thing.The money is talking here.

brokep@gully666uk so either there is 60M in a fund, or there is no site and no money. What's the preferred deal? We have no energy left.

@brokep You have done well to keep it up, but people mostly have reacted badly.Its pretty similar to napster and we know how that went.

brokep@gully666uk Yes, we're trying to avoid just that. It's just a site, we need to take the icon status away so lots of sites can replace that.

@brokep I applaud your stance , whether it succeeds only time will tell.You created the icon by taking on the riaa sadly they are winning.

brokep@gully666uk They're not winning. A cannon is now being loaded with money.

@brokep Let us both hope the cannon isn't firing blanks.Good Luck with your future endevors.

brokep@gully666uk Thanks. I'll need it. People hate me now for wanting to pause the 6 year free work we've been doing. Feels unfair.

gully666uk@brokep Everybody deserves to be paid for working.It's a fine line between love and hate.It's the way of the web sadly people expect allot

brokep@gully666uk I'm glad people have high expectations. But we're not that many people. And we've been fighting for a long time. We need help.

@brokep I hope you now can get the help you need.Me i am only one person with very little so from that point of view i understand why.

I think he makes some good points myself.

They won't get rich?

[Lord Satri]

In the end, it just turns out to be a bunch of people scamming others so they get rich.

Not true? Judging from TFA, the amount they get is the amount of the fine they have to pay. (obviously, that's probably not the only numbers of the equation)

as long as

[greymond]

...I don't have to go back to mininova :P

missed opportunity for RIAA

[twistedcubic]

All they had to do was bribe TPB for a small sum to shut down, but they instead paid lawyers even more (probably).

Done to death

[Oricalchos]

I for one welcome our new(read: old) overlord: pretty pretty money! Aren't you a big fat wad of pretty money?

Show me the money

[pinkushun]

GGF obviously just wants TBP for it's user base. They're buying into all the site hits. I wonder how many of us will stop using the site if they do acquire it...

You can't cheat an honest man

[westlake]

So now can we get off this delusion that the owners of the pirate bay are heroes somehow out to protect our rights in the face of evil corporations?

The production costs for WALL-E: $180 million.

Double that for marketing and distribution.

The number of studios producing CGI feature animation at this level: 1.
The Amazon price for the three-disk Blu-Ray edition of WALL-E with BD Live and digital download copy: $24.99 Wall-E

That is - at least theoretically - 150 GB of content for about one half the cost of one month of broadband cable.

Pixar's return from the geek who links to Pirate Bay: $0

Re:You can't cheat an honest man

[Anonymous Coward]

Do Pixar even get commission from Amazon/equivalent for copies sold? As far as I was aware the copies sold to Amazon/equivalent were all paid for 'up-front' and that was the end of the money flow in that part of the process.

So it's more Amazon's return from the geek who links to Pirate Bay: $0, except that this is the same as Amazon's return from the person that shops anywhere else, and only theoretically affects Pixar in the sense that Amazon will not restock as soon.

New Pirate Bay Logo

[Phizzle]

http://www.gadgetking.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ThePirateBay2.jpg

June 2009

[PPNSteve]

June 2009 - to be remembered as the worst month ever: First Ed McMahon dies, then Farrah Fawcett, which lead into Micheal Jackson and BILLY MAYS' death.. Now just before the end of the month we add The Pirate Bay to the list and you all have now witnessed the worst June in history. I for one am not liking this. You shouldn't either.

That's it. The Pirate Bay is DEAD.

[Hurricane78]

Long live the Pirate Bay. :((

How can the ex-owners of the Pirate Bay not know their history? They will become another Napster. A "industry-platform", with ads en-masse, filters for "illegal" content, an about page that allows you to win bullshit bingo in under one minute (= full with words like "leverage", etc), and so on. Nobody will use them anymore. And the next generation will pop up.

Oh well, they got my last vote, but after that sellout, they will not get the next one.
This is the best indicator, that they too will become just another party, that follows the money, and the money alone, just as the green party did.
Interestingly, they just announced that they will join the green party's fraction in the EU "parliament".

Brokep'sAnakata'sTiamo's ThePirateBay

[parazite.org]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Pirates! Gameplay Pirates! is a single-player game. The player receives a letter of marque authorizing service as a privateer for Spain, the Dutch Republic, England, or France in the Caribbean. The player's loyalties may change over the course of the game; he may also hold rank with multiple countries and may turn to piracy at any time. Gameplay is open-ended; the player may choose to attack enemy ships or towns, hunt pirates, seek buried treasure, rescue long-lost family members, or even avoid violence altogether and seek to increase his wealth through trade. The game also has no predetermined end, although as time goes on, it becomes more difficult to recruit crew members. Also, as the player character ages, fighting becomes more difficult, and deteriorating health will eventually force the character into retirement. The game ends when the player retires, at which point he is given a position in his future life, from beggar to King's advisor, based on accumulated wealth, land, rank, marital status, and other accomplishments.

oblig XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Set up a file sharing website with a cool name
2. Build a domain and brand worth millions
3. Profit!
4. Move to another domain
5. ???
6. Profit again!

??? is probably "GOTO 1"

http://xkcd.com/292/

The Pirates Have Sold Out

[Anonymous Coward]

So shouldn't they rename the site to Buccaneer's Bay?

TPB helps change the law

[jonaskoelker]

The goal should be to make the law reflect the fact that people should be able to share copyrighted works, as long as they aren't making money on it.

Try to find the big events in the history of The Pirate Bay. Next, try to find the big intakes of new members of The (Swedish) Pirate Party.

Next, try and see if they line up somehow :)

I say The Pirate Bay is doing a lot towards changing peoples' attitudes towards copyright. The future will tell whether The Pirate Party can convert that attitude to legislative changes.

Re:$7.8 million? - Sale won't even go through

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the sale will even go through if this keeps up...

The site seems to be under attack, just tried to search for something, it was overloaded (not all that unusual) but then maybe a hundred 'click ok to leave this web page, click cancel to stay' windows opened in the few seconds it took me to shut down firefox.

YAARRRRR the crew be scuttlin' her. Hate to see her go down like this.

Ship's officers are going to crap themselves if they can't get a handle on this.

You need to read this.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dishonesty

Google Piracy

[manflaps]

Just use e-mail account generation and store all the pr0n as gmail attachments. duh.