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Pirate Bay Announces Sale to Swedish Company For $7.8 Million

Posted by timothy on from the fully-support-new-overlords dept.

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.'"

19 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. suckers by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Funny

    hehe, sure sold 'em that bridge.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:suckers by orclevegam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    2. Re:suckers by Seumas · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. They're not even keeping the money... by cibus · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:They're not even keeping the money... by rbarreira · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    2. Re:They're not even keeping the money... by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
    3. Re:They're not even keeping the money... by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      Electronic Arts does it all the time...

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    4. Re:They're not even keeping the money... by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      --
      My blog
  3. Re:No profits made? by RMH101 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  4. Clarification of sale details from "krs" by gilgoomesh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs" by debrain · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Clarification of sale details from "krs" by chebucto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
  5. End of one generation, beginning of another? by NoNeeeed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Paul Leader
  6. VPN? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's to happen regarding the IPREDator VPN service?

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  7. They should've checked bittorrent by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    stuff |
  8. Re:This already worked so well... by Vectronic · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  9. Not Naive, Quite Vicious Pump and Dump by lacoronus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  10. Linking is legal by bzipitidoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
  11. Re:Sold out by tixxit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.