

Swedish Software Firm Acquires The Pirate Bay For $7.7 Million - ed
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/30/swedish-software-firm-acquires-the-pirate-bay-for-77-million/

======
zacharypinter
One of the guys from TPB shed some more light on the issue over at reddit:

"To clarify a bit..

TPB has been owned by a company for the last years since the raid so nothing
there will really change except the names of the owners. The talk about TPB
are going to be a pay site is wrong, the CEO that said that does not know what
he is talking about.

Now, the BIG change is that the tracker is going to be outsourced to a new
formed company that wont know what they track, just that they connect peers,
and the torrent listings will be handed by an other new company that will have
torrents but they will not know either content or who is using the torrents.
This setup will be practically impossible to take down or find anyone liable
to sue.

The 3d party company services will have APIs, so you can on your blog or
whatever have your own small torrent listings just as you now pull in twitter
feeds. remember how the twitter design totally havoced the iranian attempts to
block it as ppl just used another side that pulled in the feeds and read it
there instead? well that goes for torrents and TPB to.

All in all, this is not the end of the world as some are seeing it but a
rather interesting technical improvement.

And dont worry, not a dime will go to the media industries spectrial prize
money what i know of but a really nice fund for doing cool stuff.

/krs - co.founder of TPB and PB, not involved in TPB anymore and have no stake
in any cash."

~~~
chris11
That does make it seem like it will be an improvement. At the very least, it
will be more private.

Unfortunately, I don't see how any big media company is going to want to do
any major deals with them. I doubt they would sign a contract with someone
when they plan on suing the company or customers. But at least hopefully it
will help out smaller companies and independent artists.

------
mlLK
Apparently traders on the Stockholmsborsen exchange see this buy-out as a good
thing. Their stock is sky-rocketing:
[http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/charts/cha...](http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/charts/charts.asp?ric=GGF.ST)
I wonder if this buy-out will effect how TPB conducts their operation though,
I'm assuming it won't.

------
chris11
It seems like the founders of TPB have had several projects fail because of
lack of funding or support. Their effort to buy Sealand is a good example.

So the foundation could do a lot of good. It has a lot of money now, and the
founders of the TPB probably will be able to give projects more attention.

I don't quite see how the Pirate Bay will stay in business then. Very few
media companies are going to want to deal with it while it is still offering
free downloads of drm free material. Just look at Hulu. While Hulu is a great
site, they have limited the site's usefulness because of pressure from
corporate partners. And I am sure that TPB will drastically change.

~~~
furyg3
Hulu isn't the best example since the corporate 'partners' are really owners.
Still, it's going to be interesting to see if this new organization will
buckle to legal threats and pressure.

------
alexandros
Well, at least now they can pay the fine

~~~
henriklied
"Unfortunately", no. Not a single SEK goes to The Pirate Bay. Peter Sunde and
the rest of the crew has instructed the buyer to put all the money into a
monetary fund overseas.

Source (in Swedish): <http://twitter.com/brokep/status/2400754726>

~~~
bhrgunatha
There is a translation of some of the feed on torrentfreak (emphasis added is
mine - there may be more to this than meets the eye.)

[http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-sold-to-software-
comp...](http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-sold-to-software-company-goes-
legal-090630/#comment-574538)

Daniel Goldberg: @ brokep Is this correct? <http://bit.ly/1YR0m>

Peter S Kolmisoppi: @ danielg0ldberg Yes.

Daniel Goldberg: @ brokep What a thing! Who gets the money? Who owns the TPB?

Peter S Kolmisoppi: @ danielg0ldberg Foreign company, with demands from our
side to finance a fund for internet projects. We get no money.

Daniel Goldberg: @ brokep Cool. What do you mean internet project? Will you
not have to use the money to cover the damages?

Peter S Kolmisoppi: @ danielg0ldberg Internet Project in the form of political
activism, etc. _TPB changed hands in 2006 already to not be sued._

Daniel Goldberg @ brokep Congratulations, the scoop! Who is the owner of TPB
today?

Peter S Kolmisoppi: @ danielg0ldberg _It’s partly why we’ve have been so sure
that lawsuits against us is pointless in the end … :-)_

Peter S Kolmisoppi: @ danielg0ldberg _I do not think that I may say for legal
reasons. But they are people we trust. And have conditioned things too.._

~~~
miracle
One must be a fool to believe that they don't get any money at all...

The foreign company certainly belongs to them, and they are trying to cash out
twice (once by selling their company and by getting donations from their loyal
supporters).

And even if the site belongs to a different party, they are running the site
and are responsible doing the copyright violations. You can also not hide
behind a company when you are commiting murder.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
They committed murder? Providing links to copyrighted material may be
considered bad by a lower court in Sweden, but you really can't compare it
with murder.

~~~
miracle
Please learn to read before you write (kleiner PB Lemming). I didn't say they
commited murder. I did just say that it doesn't matter if what they did was
under the umbrella of a company or not. It is illegal, as it is illegal to
commit murder, to print money if you have not the autorization, or to haress
somebody etc...

~~~
ErrantX
2 things (just so you know why your getting downmodded :))

Firstly the flow of the original sentence referring to murder read as if you
were suggesting they _were_ quilty of commiting murder.

Secondly, yes you can hide behinda company - to an extent. In actual fact no
one seems ot know the real owners of the site. Brokep and co. maintain it but
since 2006 the owner, and thus the person most likely liable, is unknown.

(I have bets on it being someones dog or something)

------
Flankk
It had to happen eventually. I'd like to know how successful they'll be
monetizing a site people visit specifically because they don't want to pay
anything.

~~~
mkuhn
The other question is the legal ramifications if the continue TPB's current
"illegal" activity and profit from them. I think even in Sweden the legal base
there is questionable (after the judgment against the four founders of TPB)...

~~~
ErrantX
yes this is a bit of a win for the media companies - now there will be a paper
trail to sniff around at and the company is leaps and bounds more open to
legal action.

I suspect some media company execs are getting quite excited at this. I cant
figure it out becuase TPB _MUST_ know that the original model will probably
have to die - unless they havent told the whole story?

------
ErrantX
Ah... check out the <http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/> site

 _and the technology company Peerialism, that has developed next generation
file-sharing technology_

so their going to try and combine TPB traffic with whatever product it is
Peeralism have "developed"?

~~~
w1ntermute
From
[http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Pirate_Bay_Sold_To_Software_Co...](http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Pirate_Bay_Sold_To_Software_Company_Goes_Legal?t=26632403#c26632403)
:

 _Something is very fishy here. I live in Sweden and I checked out this
company.

Global Gaming Factory X AB (Ltd, Co.) never registered for "F-skatt", which is
a basic permit needed for companies in Sweden to operate under corporate tax
laws instead of private laws. Not having this permit usually means that it's a
company 1) run under a mother company or 2) that isn't active.

Furthermore, their website consists of this press release and NOTHING ELSE.
Their turnover has not gone over $ 750,000 any of the past two years and their
total loss for that same time is approx. - $ 2,677,000._

I think this is just TPB playing legal games.

~~~
lucumo
Hmm, I just checked. Their website is there, it's just that the press release
was important enough to serve as splash screen.

See, e.g., <http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/Organisation.html>

------
mmelin
I'd never heard of Global Gaming Factory X before, but apparently they own
both Smartlaunch and CyberCafePro, which are both major products for managing
"cyber cafés".

------
mojonixon
Global Gaming Factory X doesn't appear to be a real company. It seems to just
be some legal maneuvering by TPB crew. The punks fight dirty. I approve. This
is the real news. "TorrentFreak was informed by TPB’s Peter Sunde that the
site will soon decentralize and quit running a properietary BitTorrent
tracker, instead encouraging its user base to use a yet to be launched third
party tracker for their torrents."

------
taitems
The title on oursignal included: "and goes legal". That worked so well for
Napster..

~~~
bretthoerner
So because one company failed, all companies will fail?

~~~
utnick
napster failed?

It got bought by best buy for over 100 million dollars. It is a great service,
I'm listening to the new wilco album on it right now.

~~~
jerf
Brand necromancy had to be performed several times before it saw the success
of the current incarnation, such as it is. (I don't know how successful it
is.) At this point its only connection to the original Napster that
established the name _is_ the name. My point? How you account any current
success that the name may be experiencing is a very debatable point, depending
largely on which of several valid definitions of the relevant terms you
choose.

------
fatdog789
Nobody here finds it the least bit disturbing that these guys got a $7.7
million pay day for helping steal copyrighted works?

At a minimum, they've taken $7.7 million out of the pockets of programmers and
artists.

These guys aren't heroes. They're selfish whores who discovered the secret to
turning downloaders into their willing lemmings.

~~~
zouhair
The same goes for Google

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dark+knight+filetyp...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dark+knight+filetype%3Atorrent&btnG=Search&meta=)

------
miracle
Now the court can finally raise the fine! :)

