File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been purchased by a Swedish gaming company after its four founders were sentenced to one year in jail for promoting copyright infringement.
The Global Gaming Factory has paid $AU9.6 million to take control of the site from its founders, and said it will now pay copyright fees for all media material linked to from the site.
The Pirate Bay is one of the most popular file-sharing sites on the internet where users can download ‘torrent’ files, in order to download copyrighted material such as films, music and television programs.
“The Pirate Bay site is among the top 100 most visited internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary,” said Hans Pandeya, head of GGF, in a statement.
“Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers need faster downloads and better quality,” he said.
GGF will likely turn The Pirate Bay into an operation similar to Napster, which originated as a peer-to-peer file sharing system that was eventually turned legitimate under a user-pays system.
GGF also said it has acquired Peerialism, a company that specialises in peer-to-peer file sharing technology that could become a part of The Pirate Bay acquisition.
The four founders of The Pirate Bay; Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, were sentenced to one year in jail and fined $AU4.8 million for their operation of the site. They have all said they will appeal the sentence.
“As all of you know, there’s not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It’s the same site essentially. On the internet, stuff dies if it doesn’t evolve. We don’t want that to happen,” Sunde said on the site’s blog.
“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.”
Half the money paid from GGF will be in cash, with the remainder in shares. No other details have been released about any pricing structure the company will implement.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
