Sweden Launches Criminal Probe of Pirate Bay Sale

uolamer writes with word that the Economic Crimes Bureau in Sweden has opened an investigation into the upcoming purchase of The Pirate Bay by Global Gaming Factory X. Quoting: "The Swedish newspaper SvD reported Saturday that authorities are looking for possible insider trading after Global Gaming's stock jumped a week before they announced plans to acquire The Pirate Bay. Trading of Global Gaming shares was halted by AktieTorget, a Swedish exchange, on Friday after officials there requested proof that Global Gaming had enough money to complete the sale. Global Gaming has yet to produce the required documentation. Until officials get the proof they need, they said they won't allow the stock to be traded again."

Comments

Stocks ROSE?

[h4rm0ny]

Okay, I can believe in insider trading, it happens. But why on Earth would stocks rise on the news of such a numbskulled idea as buying the The Pirate Bay. Are investors that daft that they think this is a good idea? The Pirate Bay made money, not huge amounts but enough to make it worthwhile, by selling advertising without having to charge for product (they co-ordinated the downloading of other people's). How can this potential buyer possibly expect to make money from the site when they're no longer facillitating the downloading of copyrighted material? If they try to charge for their service, which is what elsewhere has been said is the intention, then they'll find the users of the Pirate Bay vanish in short order. People used it because they got stuff for free that they'd otherwise have had to pay for. That's not a market that you can suddenly slap a paid service on top of.

Buying the Pirate Bay is a terrible business decision. They're better off being blocked from it by the courts if they don't have the sense not to themselves! ;)

Re:Stocks ROSE?

[mrbcs]

It's the same as the Napster fiasco. They're buying the name in hopes of turning it into a legit operation. Umm.. good luck with that.

Other people have pointed out that the summary tells us that their stock rose before they actually announced intentions to buy it. That's obviously stock manipulation from my point of view. Get the price high, dump the shit stock, then let the company go broke.

Re:Stocks ROSE?

[Xemu]

Buying the Pirate Bay is a terrible business decision.

Not so terrible if they bought the Pirate Bay for the purposes of manipulating the share price. The share price went up significantly, and for the "lucky" souls who bought before the announcement and sold on the news, this has been good business.

However it didn't soar as much as the CEO expected. Part of the payment would be in the company's own stock, and that payment assumed a valuation of the company at 1 billion SEK. It's magnitudes less, around 60 million. And even that valuation is crazy, because the company is so poor that it doesn't even pay its debts.

The company is very suspicous and the investors are either stupid or blind. At least one of the board members have left GGF since the deal was announced. The last two auditors left a "tainted" audit that they were not satisfied. The auditors also had to go to the government collection agency to even get paid. These are not signs of a healthy company.

Classic pump and dump scam, I think.

Re:Stocks ROSE?

[dkleinsc]

Are investors that daft that they think this is a good idea?

I'd say investors who engaged in the stock bump are either:
1. Uninformed suckers who think that this is actually a good idea. (Most likely non-techies, probably older investors)
2. People who think that they can make a bundle by selling the stock off to people in group 1. (i.e. people who know financial markets well)

If you don't think that investors aren't often completely daft, I invite you to take a look at the wreckage of the thousands of VC-funded online businesses who never made a dime.

Re:Stocks ROSE?

[Runaway1956]

"They're buying the name in hopes of turning it into a legit operation. Umm.. good luck with that."

Actually, I'm sort of cheering for them. I don't hold out much hope, but I'm cheering all the same. Go ahead, ask me "WHY?" Well, since you asked, I'll tell you!

Bit Torrent is nothing more, and nothing less, than a protocol. It shouldn't have a legal status, or an illegal status, any more than verbally enunciating ideas should have a legal status. No form of communication should be make illegal.

If these people can actually make torrents work for a legal, reputable company, then we have less to fear from ISP's throttling or even stopping torrents. We, the WWW of internet users, NEED someone to adopt this technological protocol to lend it credibility. More generally, P2P needs to be recognized as an acceptable means of communications. As things stand right now, if you and your family & freinds are amateur photographers, and you have extensive libraries that you like to share between your households, the ISP can claim that you are all pirates, and shut you down.

Yes, we need this.

Re:Stocks ROSE?

[Q-Hack!]

World of Wacrarft already uses bitorrent to handle updates. No ISP would block it outright so long as that's the case.

And yet Comcast did exactly that...

Plans for profit on Web 3.0

[nostriluu]

Their plan is to make money off the residue of what TPB was. Their projection is that bots and spiders alone will generate enough advertising dollars to pay for the sale. Also they are working on a co venture with The Onion to expand on http://thepiratebay.org/legal

PS why is comment posting so horrible (Using Firefox on Linux). its laggy and loses focus (not me, the comment box). Just give me plain text, please.

Re:RTFA

[chill]

Try again, this time with the right emphasis.

"Authorities are looking for possible insider trading after Global Gaming's jumped a week before Global Gaming announced plans to acquire The Pirate Bay"

Before is implied by insider trading. The point is, someone with that info before the public thought it was a good idea, and was willing to pay more for the company stock based off of -- possibly -- the idea that they were acquiring TPB. The original poster's argument was "WTF? Are they all morons?", and that still stands.

Truth stranger than fiction

[Futurepower(R)]

The story as I understand it:

Business model: Arrange the free distribution of other people's intellectual property.

Company name: Don't hide the business model. Call it "Pirate" Bay.

Operation: Facilitate the distribution of pirated software, for years.

Income: Sell advertising to companies that are not concerned about the business model. Make $3,000,000 U.S. per year.

Arrange a sale of the company: Sale of what?

The story today: The Swedish government investigates possible illegal activity by the buyer.

The discussion today: We're discussing possible illegal activity by the buyer.

Re:RTFA

[jonbryce]

Is knowing that the company is about to blow however many millions of Krona on a domain name that has nothing to do with your business really inside information that could cause the share price to rise.

If I had that information, I would probably think about shorting the shares rather than buying them. And seemingly I would have made a loss on the deal.

Re:Funny, Sweden did not investigate the judge...

[itsanx]

Oh, they did investigate it. The investigation resulted in a 14 page document practically redefining the very meaning of "jÃv" (conflict of interest). The verdict is that there are several minor reasons to doubt the judge's neutrality but no single large enough reason. I think this type of reasoning proves that juridics is, at its worst, nothing more than word bending - building a seemingly coherent chain of logic, stating the severity for a set of non-absolute definitions, sum things up in a way that's favorable to your position while possibly excluding the opposing side's likewise arbitrary set of non-absolute definitions. In the end, it seems like it's mostly about making a convincing presentation?