Controversial Torrent Sold For $7.7 Million

The owners of Pirate Bay, recently fined $3.62 million for copyright offences, have sold the site for $7.7 million. The site's new owners, Global Gaming Factory (GGF) have hinted that the site will go legit. That's got some users worried, despite reassurances by Pirate Bay staff that its services won't change.

GGF is paying half the purchase price in cash and the rest in the form of three per cent of GGF's company stock. In a separate deal, GGF is buying out Peerialism, a Swedish tech company specializing in the logistics of peer-to-peer-file sharing. The price in that deal is $13 million, again split equally between cash and stock.

Hans Pandeya, Global Gaming Factory's CEO, said today "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site." He added that such a model would mean more cash for content producers and better quality files with quicker downloads for users. (Source: globalgamingfactory.com)

Deal 'Not About The Money'

The Pirate Bay's staff insist the deal isn't about the money and claim they are selling it far below its potential price in order to make sure the right type of people continue running it.

They say the profits from the deal will go to a foundation dedicated to campaigning for Internet freedoms. There's no mention of whether that "profit" would come after paying the fines from their court case, if they fail to get the verdict overturned.

The staff went on to insist that "If the new owners will 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 to." (Source: thepiratebay.org)

That reassurance doesn't seem to have worked however. One user, typifying many of the responses to the Pirate Bay's blog post, writes "Do you realize what you've done? You basically sold THE monument of the free Internet! You lousy sellouts!... I hope you choke on every bit of money you get from this."