Music Industry Wants a Cut of Pirate Bay Sale

suraj.sun writes "The music industry will attempt to seize money paid to acquire the Pirate Bay. A couple of weeks back the Global Gaming Factory, a Swedish software company, announced that it would acquire the Pirate Bay for $7.8 million. Since then the company has been touting a new business model and even hiring executives, such as Wayne Rosso, the former Grokster president, to legally obtain content from film and music industries. What remains to be seen is how that sale might be affected by attempts by the music industry to collect the $3.6 million damages that a Swedish court awarded it in April. Alex Jacob, a spokesman for the IFPI, said that the group has always intended to collect the damages award, but now, should the sale go through, music execs know that the original Pirate Bay operators have access to the money." According to CNet, the four original Pirates claim they no longer own the company and that no money from the sale will go to them.

Comments

Not just a cut of the Pirate Bay sale

[Fujisawa Sensei]

They don't want just a cut of the Pirate Bay sale; they want a cut of your salary for the music they think you should have bought. And they think that amount should increase each year.

I'm confused

[CopaceticOpus]

"If you liked free music, you're going to LOVE paying for it!"

Is this making sense to anyone? What is the Pirate Bay without the pirates?

question

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain why anyone would pay money for a customer base that doesn't like to pay money for media?

Also $3.6m seems pretty cheap, here in the US I lost track of how many trillions of dollars the RIAA insists everyone owes them.

They want money

[furby076]

Ignore for a moment your hatred for RIAA/MPAA (i know it's hard, but try).

RIAA sued Piratebay
RIAA won
RIAA want's their money before Piratebay tries to run off with it

Now again, ignore your hatred of the RIAA - or swap RIAA for say your grandmother. How is this such a bad thing that the RIAA wants the money they won in a lawsuit? Imagine your grandmother sued the local supermarket and won. Now the supermarket is trying to sell itself and figure out a way to not pay your grandmother. Why would you object to your mother trying to claim the money she won?

Hate them - love them - or be indifferent - but they won a lawsuit and they should get what they are owed...and in this case its about 3.2 million.

Re:They want money

[Anonymous Coward]

if your grandmother lobbied an entire COUNTRY to change its laws and forced a prosecutor to prosecute and bribed a judge to convict, yeah.... i'd be against your grandmother getting anything too.
 

Re:They want money

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Hate them - love them - or be indifferent - but they won a lawsuit and they should get what they are owed...and in this case its about 3.2 million.

The central flaw in any such "legalistic" arguments is an unspoken assumption that winning a lawsuit makes one "right" by definition. Well then, instead of your biased substitution of a "grandmother" for the RIAA, let's try some others:

"The NAZIs accused a man of being a "subversive" Jew, a NAZI court agreed (yes they did have "lawsuits" in some of these cases), NAZIs won (no surprise there), NAZIs want their Jew before he runs off to somewhere they can't get him and all of his possessions ..." or try this, closer to home: "A slave escaped a Southern plantation and manages to make his way to Canada, the plantation owner finds out that his escape was helped by someone with US holdings, he sues that person, he wins, and now wants his money before the person in question tries to run off with the money...."

I could go on, but this should be enough to show you the basic truth: "legal" and "right" are not necessarily (and in recent years, increasingly ever more rarely) the same.

Re:Jesus Christ

[mcgrew]

Like California's Governator (who apparently helped terminate California's state budget) said a few months ago on This Week, "there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans".

The government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" has, sadly, perished from the earth. It was replaced by a government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation. As long as you can donate to more than one candidate in a race, the corporate media will keep telling you that a vote for enyone else is wasted. As long as you can contribute to candidates you're not eligible to vote for, corporate bribery to politicians will continue and your vote will continue to be essentially meaningless.