> in order to live on
The Pirate Bay needs to stop pirating... 'scuse me while I get back on my chair...
Pirate Bay sells out to Swedish software firm for $7.7m
Global Gaming Factory X AB (GGF) has agreed to buy BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay for $7.7m (60m Swedish Crowns), according to a statement on the company's website. The Swedish software outfit confirmed the acquisition this morning. Under the deal GGF has also bought file sharing tech firm Peerialism. "We would like …
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Why would you buy a court case?
Are these chaps utterly dumb?
Why would you buy a court case waiting to happen?
They seem to think that the users of PB will purchase stuff .... err dumbest idea I heard for a while, these users are career criminals who already do not wish to pay for things they leech from fellow PB criminals.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Profit?
Just goes to show their real colours - screw everyone for money, no 'this should all be free for everyone' when a big wodge of cash is on the table. With any luck, they'll get found guilty on appeal and the fine will be increased to match any profit that they've collectively made.
Oh and don't bang on about them having a right to sell their service, that right was given away when they made other's work available for free. And no, it wasn't just a search engine, if it was they wouldn't have hosted the trackers and they wouldn't have sent abusive emails back to people who asked for their IP to be removed.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm sure...
...that the new owners will be highly successful at retaining TPB's strident, vocal user base, ho detest any connection to the music and film industries, and convincing them to buy DRM'd music at a buck a track.
'WTF' this time. 'FAIL' next time. Unless, of course, this is a joke - that is, a -literal- joke.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:02 GMT James Smith 3
Allowed to profit?
I've always thought that the difference between a bunch of harmless freetarding and terrorist-funding serious crime was when those involved started to make money out of it.
They've just gone down in my estimation. Selling your business on so that the buyers can make a legitimate business out of it suggests that they didn't think it was legitimate in the first place!
Why on earth should they be allowed to profit from knowingly setting up an illegitimate enterprise and then selling it on? I hope the year in jail is worth it.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:18 GMT Kjetil
Deathsentence for piratebay
Do these people really think you can make money from piratebay in a way that the contentowners appreciate? The brand name, the technology and the userbase are all compeletely worthless as soon as the users realize they won't get stuff for free anymore. If this report is true, piratebay will go the way of napster.
Peer-to-peer works when distributing free stuff. If you're asking for money, you'll have to provide the bandwidth. Don't know why this is so difficult to realize.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:18 GMT adrianww
Title goes here
I can understand why they've done this, but I do think it's a bit of a shame. These statements could be seen as some kind of admission that TPB was originally doing something wrong in and of itself. I'm sure that the RI Ass of America and their cronies will spin it that way. Which is a pity, since I still reckon that the whole case against TPB didn't really stack up and it was only a complete lack of technical understanding on the part of the authorities (possibly with a side order of industrial or political leverage??) that allowed them to be found guilty in the first place.
Pirate icon 'cos, well, it's obvious innit?
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
all talk no trousers
Wow! For years I've been reading comments from the TPB founders, banging on about their ideals and how they were liberating everyone to have access to free stuff.
Then in a flash it's "screw you, we took the money, pissed on our ideals and sod you all".
Thanks for the bullshit boys, you really had me going there for a while.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hmmm
Hmm lets all quieten down and think this through....
A mysterious company pops up and says there buying the pirate bay for $7million or about, remember the pirate bay is not owned by the 4 guys sued AND the pirate bay was not sued in court only the 4 guys so anything the pirate bay does is not related to the court unless they can prove cash from the acquisition of the company went to the four.
Hmmm something is happening behind the scenes, think about these guys they did not brake down at the first hurdle but continued on through the court cases.
Hmmm i think one of the following two things has happened....
1: The four or some of the four members of the pirate bay made this company up, they release the news that the pirate bay is sold, the stock of this company goes through the roof they use the cash from selling the stock to buy the pirate bay FROM the current owners who are not the original four as they stated it is in someone else's hands.
They use the money to fund more projects and the pirate bay becomes public domain been able to be bought and sold by the people who use it look at the logo a block version of the pirate ship with a sign "your share" that could be there aim.
They are not dumping the site or selling out just using the publicity to raise cash outside of themselves i.e. unclaimable by the courts and making ownership of the pirate bay public for all pirates.
Nice sceme
OR
The industry has taken them up on there offer to sell out remember when they offered to sell the pirate bay to them so they could do what they want with it?
Hmmm knowing how these guys think and operate what do you think the reason behind all this is?
-Jay
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
I smell bullsh*t
Well, well..... the saviours of internet freedom seem to have donned suits. LOL.
Judging by the wrath that can be seen from their unhappy members (blogging at the speed of light), most people feel completely cheated by the sell-out.
If I were them, I'd make sure I kept my cars in the garage just in case some of the many, many people who donated actual-real-proper money to them arrive at the inevitable conclusion that their messiahs were actually normal pirates after all.
Question: What smells stronger?....... Money or bullsh*t?
I'll leave it to you to decide who is smelling what at this time......
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
daftness
One of the big attractions of P2P is that anyone can upload anything and anyone can get at it.
Take that away by enforcing the legal (and reasonable) rules about not abusing copyright, and you don't need the P2P bit, you just need a managed content delivery service with access control and payment mechanisms. Content delivery networks are here today, even ones with payment mechanisms, in various flavours from iTunes to Amazon to the payTV one which Channel 4 use in the UK.
I think TPB have done very nicely to find themselves a buyer. I think the buyer hasn't got such a good deal.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:23 GMT Antoinette Lacroix
Well
The new owners "Would like to introduce models . . . " I can imagine how that'll work out. As said in PBs blog: "If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it", which is, indeed, very true. Take the money and run, seems like a sensible approach. Goodbye Piratebay, and thanks for all the fish..
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:23 GMT Juillen 1
Win win, it looks like..
Gaming company gets a nice distribution system built in for anything they want to do (think server infrastructure, not name).
TPB owners get money they're probably desperately in need of, and hey, they can set up from scratch again in no time, following exactly the same model as TPB used to have. Methinks some of the purchase money would go to fund that.
I'd definitely drink to that!
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 12:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Pirate Bay sells out to Swedish software firm for $7.7m
For $ 7.7 Million
@ James Smith
"Why on earth should they be allowed to profit from knowingly setting up an illegitimate enterprise and then selling it on? I hope the year in jail is worth it."
I would glady spend an all expenses paid year in jail for a healthy share of $7.7 Million, where do I sign up?
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 13:38 GMT gautam
Life goes on!
So what other alternate sites are there, comparable to TPB in terms of offerings? This is necessary in the silly game of cat n mouse with RIAA's cocaine lifestyle mobs.
Any suggestions/Links, please?
Mines the one with bullet proof innards and an anonymous IP browser client built in.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 13:38 GMT Mike 61
Good on them
They know they can no longer safely run the site without getting constantly sued and fined so they sell out to some corporate n00bz who have no idea what the site is really all about. grab the quick cash and move on. I hope they open a different site with all that cash. Now all we need to do is have a naming contest for the new site. I suggest BitOverlords.com ;)
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 14:06 GMT Thomas 18
@ Hang on lads, I've got a great idea
As long as stage 4 is "go directly to jail & be miserable for 1 year" I don't have a problem with it. It's either sell out to pay fine + some compensation or get all your servers and code repossessed by the RIAA.
I guess you can't put off paying fines until an appeal has been heard or something.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 14:06 GMT wolfmeister
arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. but wait!
i think you guys arent thinking straight & jumping the gun - why would someone pay 7 mill for a site that in theory cant make money, and if it's format is changed "will die"
think about it? no-one throws 7 mill around for no reason - there's more to this than meets the eye.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 14:07 GMT MrWeetabix
Nice spot of business there.....
Fair-play in my eyes, TBP becomes worthless once its becomes "legit" anyway, so take the cash and start again! Watch out for new domain registrations...
TheNewPirateBay.org
Piratebay2.org
Nice bit of business and no doubt they have a nice backup of data to help them start from scratch elsewhere.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 15:33 GMT Henry Wertz 1
I'm sure it'll work out...
I'm sure it'll work out for them just as well as it did for napster. Look how popular they are now!
(In all seriousness I was surprised to see napster even still exists, I assumed "new napster" folded years ago.)
Now Thepiratebay's new owners can find the *joys* of trying to do things legit... the movie and music cos lay on the licensing red tape so thick, NO-ONE has been able to get a service running in more than 1 or 2 countries. They have not figured out the internet is global.
Of course that'd still beat the *0* countries thepiratebay is probably working in now (checking from 2 different networks it appears it's down right now.)
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 15:33 GMT imposter
So they're just like the users then?
It's all about principles, smite the capitalists. Not about getting free stuff. Oh no.
It's huge blow to the music industry's chance of reforming, and hollywood can keep churning pointless remakes, franchise tainting sequels and dross out for that much longer too.
Lastly there's a lot of talk of rewarding copyright owners around at the moment, I hope I'm not the only one who notes the distinction from "rewarding the artists"?
Paris because she too is just after easy money and free stuff.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 15:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
How does this affect The Pirate Party?
Wasn't The Pirate Bay a poster child for The Pirate Party? You've actually got some people elected into parliament in Sweden and Germany who are members of that political organization.
Also, just because they got money to cover their fines, the founders still have been sentenced to prison.
I don't see how this helps anyone.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 15:33 GMT Stephen 5
Re: arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. but wait!
" i think you guys arent thinking straight & jumping the gun - why would someone pay 7 mill for a site that in theory cant make money, and if it's format is changed "will die"
think about it? no-one throws 7 mill around for no reason - there's more to this than meets the eye."
Exactly, the real question here is "How much money would the RIAA and MPAA be willing to spend to dismantle the Pirate Bay?" $7 mil is pocket change to get rid of such a defiant thorn in their side.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 15:50 GMT Brian Witham
Well, they have seen the road ahead...
It could be a wild stab here but maybe since the appeal isn't going so well they realised the entire legal system and not just one corrupt judge in the initial trial doesn't understand their defence. When the road ahead is so clearly leading to destruction they've taken the sensible approach - find some sucker and bail out now.
I await the days when true freedom comes, when we don't need sites like TPB becasue the entertainment industry stops raping the consumer with region coding, price discrimination and price exploitation.
If they let go of old marketing, embrace the low marginal cost of digital media and give legitamate users the freedom to use the media they've bought - the freetards will be manageable. Acceptance that people will breach copyright - and adjusting to support the "right" way is the only long term strategy.
You strike this one down and another will grow back - must like the damn weeds in the garden - time to get the flamethrower out
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 15:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
$7.7 million for a domain name?
All they have got for thier $7.7 million dollars is a Domain name and some servers
The users and uploaders who made TPB what it is today will all move to somewhere else.
The only way to make money on TPB now would be to sell IP addresses to RIAA or MPAA for them to go after people who use TPB to Upload/Download Pirate Music and Movies!
Lets be honest, why on earth would a company that makes Cybercafe control software want TPB unless it was a front for some sinister plan!
Expect emails from your ISP very soon people!
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 16:23 GMT ElReg!comments!Pierre
It's funny
I am always amazed by the amounts of clueless people who still believe that TPB ever did anything even remotely illegal. The "copyright holder" leeches managed to get a few individuals convinced (in an obviously flawed trial, btw. Hope Sweden gets it's arse kicked by the EU over that), but the tracker remains clean.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 17:01 GMT vivaelamor
To all the 'in it for the money' crowd.
For those claiming that the guys running the site are making a big profit for themselves, please read their blog post which was conveniently linked in this article. I quote:
"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."
You may or may not believe him, but you should not ignore him.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 17:01 GMT Gav
Dubious Business
Nice how the freetards show their true colours. All that posturing about how information wants to be free comes to nothing. It was always all about making money on TPB's side and getting free stuff on their user's side.
What's just as pleasant is all the people who are cheerfully concluding that TPB have, in fact, just shafted Global Gaming Factory by selling them something worthless for millions. If this were an accurate reflection of the matter (which I doubt), does nobody care that its just a little dishonest? I guess if you're a TPB fanboy anything they do, no matter how morally suspect, is ok.
And all those comparing it to the "demise" of Napster. Napster has annual revenue in the tens of millions and was recently sold for $121 million. If that's demise, I'm sure GGF will be happy to have some of it. Just because it's not interested in attracting freetards anymore doesn't mean it's not successful.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 17:01 GMT Jamie Jones
Why blame them?
Whilst I agree that it's crazy for a company to pay any amount for this site, I don't see how you can criticise the people who sold it.
If I had some website, or something, that I didn't create for the money, and used it to promote some sort of agenda for the people, I'd still sell out if offered this kind of cash.
Am I a sellout? Well for millions, YES!
Just 'cos they sold out, it doesn't mean that this was always some kind of gameplan. Leave them alone, unless you can honestly say that you'd refuse this level of cash offer yourselves!
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 23:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
It will create a vacume which a new site will quickly fill.
If you get rid of TPB another site will pop up in its place. There are probably dozens of other candidates which are help back solely by TPB's success.
Personally I prefer avoiding the hassles of software piracy and simply using free/open source software whenever possible. Asside from Windows I have maybe 2 or 3 non-free programs running on my system.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 23:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
whingers
(1) You have the opportunity to take a liability off your "books" and hand if off to someone else.
(2) You can get paid handsomely for it.
(3) You have the opportunity to reinvest your money in a bigger, better TPB.
(4) You have the further opportunity to give all the whingers a stiff finger.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 23:44 GMT Heff
Hooray!
Frankly, If this is true, its the best encouragement for piracy I've ever seen.
Look, Freetards. I Pirate. Napster went legit. Napster makes money. Shawn now probably sleeps well at night knowing hes not about to be arrested. Im sure Sunde and Co will be very happy in that respect, and thats a good thing.
Why?
Napster Pirate -> Napster Legit -> Napster Money
TPB Pirate -> TPB Legit -> TPB Money.
Let the trend continue until its a risky but attractive business model. till it ends up like Pirate radio; Get Cred, build a brand, build a userbase, sell out to consortium. rinse, repeat. Frankly Im glad to see this, its better than the cold freezeout which led to the downfall of places like Lokitorrent.
As for the conspiracy theorists... really? cry more, can you. you sound like the apoplectic teenagers when Napster went legit, yelling that their doors were going to be smashed in and mommy and daddys precious computer was going to be taken by the big bad Po-lice. You're not that important. Piracy does not make you that cool. the RIAA does not care about you, and you are not sticking it to the man. Freetards as a 'lifestyle' or a 'rebellious phase' are just this generations beatniks at woodstock; just as deluded, just as discardable, just as pointless.
I dont see what the remaining freetards are crying about. Your 'heros' just made a pack of cash. another torrent site will step up and fill the space. The people interested in Scene releases for copyright protection, in advance movie leaks, in torrenting massive libraries of music : they are still out there. If anything, this result makes Piracy more legitimate , it states it can be a pathway to legal money. And well... I'd rather people like Shawn Fanning and Sunde &co get a bucket of money. Its hard to have principals and no money. With a lot of money... what can you do?
Genius sticker, because most of the comments here so far are incapable of watching a market trend, tracking prosecution-to-record IP statistics, or even keeping up with basic internet revenue models.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 23:47 GMT Aldous
look closer
the website fore the company has not been updated since 2007 and it claims to be listed as a public traded company using the abbrev GGF (http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/Shares.html)
now go to the swedish stock exchange and search http://www.nasdaqomxnordic.com/aktier?q=GGF. again a random broker site that seems to list all stocks on the swedish market http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/exchanges.php?exch=sfb&showcategories=STK&showproducts=&sequence_idx=200&sortproducts=&ib_entity=llc#show
bit suspicious that the links on the companys sites (in the share section) 404 (i can't read swedish so dunno what it all says but clicking an older news items 404) . it does not appear to be listed on the swedish exchange (unless i missed something) . so i dunno wind up or not you decidede
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 23:47 GMT b166er
I can't believe you lot.
They are NOT criminals, but it seems you're all quite happy for them to take the fall for all of YOUR copyright infringments and then have the audacity (or downright short-sightedness) to say they blew you out on the promise of sticking it to the man - WEASELS
They only stood up because they believed Swedish law would agree with them (and it should have). Now because things being what they are, the Swedish legal system rolled over, you're blaming the four (if they receive a penny that is) for taking the money to pay their fines and set up a "foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the nets." - HYPOCRITES
I reckon you've all got moral broomstick handles up your asses, which is OK I guess as long as you remember TPB did NOTHING, NOTHING wrong.
Humanity is doomed I tels ya.
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Tuesday 30th June 2009 23:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
i don't understand it
the piratebay has never been one of the better p2p sites, it's just survived longer than most due to its location.
all it has ever been is a central location for people to post links, unlike the better sites it has never verified or indexed the stuff posted, simply relying on user comments to verify.
before i'm accused of being a freetard, the only stuff i get via piratebay et-al, is stuff that isn't available any other way. note to publishers, If you've withdrawn all copies from cinemas (which is a crappy system anyway in most places, especially if there isn't one handy) don't be surprised if people pirate stuff in the several months it's unavailable any other way. nevermind stuff that isn't ever released officially outside America. The pirate bay does have it's place!
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Wednesday 1st July 2009 04:22 GMT David A
Re: look closer
@Aldous
Interesting observation. GGF is not registered with nasdaqomxnordic.com but with the smaller aktietorget.se, where I believe the Financial Supervisory Authority (fi.se) have less authority.
Unless you noticed other comments. The deal is not closed yet. GGF has to gather the money, and its board of directors must approve.
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Wednesday 1st July 2009 10:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Legal Pirate Bay.
Ok, so taking Spotify as a business model, subscribers to TPB get free downloads in exchange for watching an ad that plays before the download. If they want to avoid the ads, then they pay for premium service. The new owners of the TPB have a revenue source which pays royalties to the content provider (legal copyright owner).
Could work if they can partner deals with every type of copyright owner. Software we develop and which currently has been downloaded say 12,000 times at the moment would at least generate some income.
Here is the BUT, the copyright holder should have the ability to block the pirate copy if the deal is not agreed.
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Wednesday 1st July 2009 18:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Its a CON
lets be honest, the whole point of TPB was to allow people to download Music, Movies and software without paying for it!
Why would anyone who uses TPB carry on using the site if you now have to pay?
Mininova is gimped and now TPB is all but dead, I expect several sites to pop up in thier place!
$7.7 million for a site with no users! HAHAHA they truely are Pirates!
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Friday 3rd July 2009 09:25 GMT Jimboom
It pays to be a pirate
Just goes to show it pays to be a pirate.... as long as your willing to sell out in the end and hoist your scurvy crew up by their garters and leave them for the officials to hang.
Unfortunately TPB has always been about impossible ideals. Even now with the buyout. They will never be able to provide the kind of bandwidth across the globe with prices competitive enough to rival physical media. Think about it. Even if they get bandwidth that everyone is happy with what happens when your hard drive dies on you or the install files get deleted by mistake then your left out however much you spent on the software in the first place?
No, I think if you listen very closely you can hear the bell tolling for TPB..
R.I.P Pirate Bay.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
