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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.'"
The technology is legal, some of the files shared may not be. That will depend on your local legal code.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
The tough sell out. As would I. That fine's gotta get paid somehow.
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...
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
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.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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.
Ssshhhh! Let them think they won! Maybe they'll go away for a while.
My blog
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
right...
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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).
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
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.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
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.
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.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I don't really see how. At the end of the day, they're just promoting making unauthorized copies of digital media.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
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.
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 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:
Paint.NET and GIMP kind of lose their appeal, don't they? Piracy hurts both free and proprietary software.