Goodbye, Pirate Bay Options

[mipadi]

The Pirate Bay is allegedly being sold. Via Torrent Freak:

Software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) says it is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay and file-sharing technology company Peerialism. GGF claims to have the biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world.

The changeover of ownership is scheduled for August 2009, whereby GGF will take over the operation of the site.

The company says that after it has completed the acquisition it will launch new business models so that copyright owners get paid, which is clearly a huge diversion from TPB’s previous modus operandi.

Don't despair yet, though, because I've heard that this article may be incorrect. Via 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.

[sixfive]

Don't worry, no pornography of the game.