Pirate Bay Acquired for $7.8 million, Content Providers to Get Paid
According to their blog and a recent BusinessWire release, controversial Swedish bit torrent tracker the Pirate Bay, is being acquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB for roughly $7.8 million in cash and shares (or $60 million SEK).
On the blog, the group hopes to alleviate concerns by saying:
"If the new owners screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want it to. And - you can now not only share files, but shares, with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat off us."
And the heat has certainly been on The Pirate Bay. For the last year, the group has been in and out of court battles and has continued to take a strong stance against legal threats regarding copyright violations.
Judging by blog comments, it's obvious that users are extremely concerned. Global Gaming Factory will be taking over operation of the site in August 2009. As part of this acquisition, GGF can now incorporate the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science's new data distribution technology - Peerialism. Presumably the service will increase torrent speeds.
Additionally, says GGF CEO, Hans Pandeya, "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site."
It will be interesting to see if fans will stick with the service and how the company's revenue program will differ from predecessors like Grooveshark's compensation service for file uploaders.
Thanks to Steven for the tip!
UPDATE: According to TorrentFreak, The Pirate Bay will be using a 3rd party tracker and host for torrents. We'll just have to wait and see if this has to do with GGF's move with Peerialism.
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
I cannot believe this is true. If it is then I am shocked.
TPB sold eh? Nice chunk of change they got for it. Time to reinvest 25% of it in another venture and invest the rest safely.
Good luck fellas.
The 4,6 million euros is actually 6.4 million dollars. At least in my country and I'm pretty sure it's the same rate in the whole Europe.
This guy on reddit claims to be the co-founder of TPB and says it's not as bad as it sounds.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8wwkp/they_they_sold_the_pirate_bay/c0aow1t
How can something that seems illegal or at least not completely legit be sold legitimately and legally? If Pirate Bay can sell it's torrent site for $7.8 million, then Madoff's ponzi scheme must be worth billions. He should sell it.
All they really did was sell a domain name. They have given a lot over the past few years; including their freedom. The least we can do is to wish them luck.
besides; their are plenty of other torrent sites out there.
Nothing illegal about selling a domain name. It is what they do with it once they own it that matters.
Goodbye PirateBay. It's been fun while it lasted.
I read an article about this. Apparently, users are deleting their accounts like crazy.
Vote on the future of The Pirate Bay you would like to see! http://www.votetheday.com/pirate-bay/the-future-of-the-pirate-bay-413/
first i want to say to pirate bay...for make my life is easier. Fantastic price...
What is one of the main revenue streams for GGF? They help gaming companies sell licenses to internet cafes where GGF has their software installed (that's more than 200,000 computers around the world). Now, if they acquired the biggest torrent site that lists thousands of cracked games, what is going to happen?
I think 3 things:
1) They'll just shut it down. The US exports of software in 2007 was 60 Bln usd. That's just exports. If I was from BFA I'd also pay 6 Mln bucks for TPB – it's less than 0.1% of my market...
2) They'll offer their clients to erase all torrent files featuring their software for an extra fee or as a part of the deal when they sell their licenses to internet cafes.
3) They'll do something crazy and use the 200,000 computers that work under their software to host torrent files because the software companies will finally realize that the real money is in servicing, not selling the software.