Pirate Bay site sold to game firm

ztnap · **Pirate Bay site sold to game firm -** 07-01-2009, 07:20 AM

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been sold to a Swedish gaming company.

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) has paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site from its founders.

Once it has taken control, GGF said it would start paying copyright fees for the movies, music and games linked to via the site.

In April, The Pirate Bay owners were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement, fined 30m kronor and were sentenced to one year in jail.

New owner

The four men behind the site, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, said they planned to appeal against the sentence.

The Pirate Bay is one of the most well-known file-sharing sites on the web. Many people use it to find copyrighted material such as TV shows, games and music tracks. The Pirate Bay does not host any of the pirated material itself.

"We feel that we can't take The Pirate Bay any further," Mr Sunde told the Swedish news agency TT. "We're in a bit of a frozen situation where there's not much happening and there are neither people nor money to develop things."

Half the money GGF will pay for the site will be in cash and the remainder in shares in the company.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site" said Hans Pandeya, head of GGF in a statement.

"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it," he said.

GGF has not released details of how it will charge for the content downloaded via the site. The Pirate Bay will be handed over to GGF in August.

It is not clear how the deal affects the Video Bay - a video-sharing site set up by the people behind The Pirate Bay.

GGF specialises in software that helps run and maintain PCs used in cyber cafes and gaming centres.
(source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8127050.stm)

suki300me · 07-05-2009, 10:49 PM

" TPB might change owner

Yes, it's true.

News reached the press today in Sweden - The Pirate Bay might get aquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB. "

- TPB Blog

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