The Pirate Bay, which is one of the top one hundred visited web sites in all the world, has been sold to the Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X for £4.6 million. For those of you who aren’t among the 20 million monthly visitors to the Pirate Bay, it is a search engine for Peer-to-Peer file sharing (in other words where you go to download films, games and hacked versions of Windows).
The most interesting thing about this purchase is that in April the founders and owners of the Pirate Bay were sent to prison. The Stockholm district court in Sweden found the defendants guilty of making it easy to download copyrighted material on the Internet. Although the Pirate Bay doesn’t host any illegal material, the Swedish court decided that, “providing a website with sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and a tracker linked to the website that helps users commit copyright violations” is illegal. As a result the four men responsible for the site where give 12 months prison sentences and ordered to pay £2.1 million to a number of entertainment companies.
Now enter the Global Gaming Factory X AB, which has largest network of Internet cafes and game centers and also provides related software, and the Pirate Bay (which wasn’t shutdown by the Swedish courts) has new owners and a new business model. The new business model will be less pirate and more legit. The idea is to create a file sharing service where the content providers get money for the files (meaning films and music) downloaded while retaining the P2P model with fast downloads.
According to a blog post on the Pirate Bay it is business as usual and worried pirates shouldn’t be… “Don’t worry – be happy!”
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.
What do you think? Is this the future for all P2P sites?
Related Links: Offical Press Release.
One thought on “The Pirate Bay Sold; Less Swashbuckling in the Future”
“The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information”
interesting. why don’t the just give the site away as per the practice they’ve been preaching the last few years.