Daily Filter: Mass Effect 3, Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Blizzard files opposition to Valve's Dota trademark
Twisted Metal promotion blows up Sweet Tooth's truck
Demon's Souls 'underestimated' by Sony
Shack PSA: Skyrim PS3 players should create new manual save
Star Trek to be co-published by Namco Bandai in 2013
MobyGames Classic: Syndicate community stories
Steam hack exposed 2004-2008 transactions
Report: Unreal Engine 4 to be revealed in 2012
Frictional teasing new Amnesia
File-sharing Site 'The Pirate Bay' Acquired, Going Legit
by Nick Breckon, Jun 30, 2009 11:42am PDTLike Napster before it, torrent site The Pirate Bay--notorious for its use as a hub for online piracy--has been acquired by a legitimate company, and its traffic will now be leveraged to sell legitimate content.
Internet cafe company Global Gaming Factory paid $7.8 million for the site. The company will "introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," according to CEO Hans Pandeya.
Following a highly publicized court battle in Sweden, the owners of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in prison and fines of $905,000 each in April.
According to the Pirate Bay blog, profits from the sale will "go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets."
"We've been working on this project for many years," wrote the owners. "It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die."
Comments
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 9 replies.
How many of them were there exactly ? enough to still make a profit ?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 5 replies.
There's the torrent tracker and a few servers but anyone could set that up for a tiny fraction of that $7.8million.
There's the user base, but given the nature of the site I suspect that most of the users would dissapear if they start charging. A user base of customers who don't want to pay is prbably worth a value much closer to $0 than $7.8million.
That leaves only the brand name but given that The Pirate Bay isn't exactly popular with large entertainment and software companies I suspect owning that name will be more of a hinderance in trying to set up a legitimate business.
So what part of The Pirate Bay is worth $7.8million?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 16 replies.
Don't ever EVER start a filesharing site, get arrested, only spend 1 year in jail, only pay 900k in damages then RAKE IN 7.8 million dollars.
DON'T DO IT!
grats to them. The best way to become rich is to break a law or 3.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 5 replies.
"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."
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
I'm not sure who the hell really believes the massive userbase PirateBay had is the kind of userbase you want for your x commercial endeavor. What you sell is nigh irrelevant, you're selling. That's almost ironical if not paradoxical considering your clientele.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thats stupid. Freedom of speech and freedom of information has nothing to do with stealing work from other fellow developers/artists.
I would have liked to see how the owners of the site would react if someone stole their source code and entire page layout and made a copy of Pirate Bay that became more popular.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Is this something that hasn't actually happened yet?
Also, throw me in the "this will never work as a legitimate commercial endeavor" category. People use TPB to download stuff for free...they're not going to use it if they have to pay to do so, when dozens, if not hundreds of other sites with similar content exist.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
piratebay shuts down
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Now the fat cats rule the intarwebz!
(being sarcastic here, if you couldn't tell)