The Pirate Bay: Holes in the sale?

We find it kind of odd, to say the least, that The Pirate Bay, the most notorious and belligerent BitTorrent tracker and site on the planet, was sold to a Swedish video game company for around $7 million dollars. Call us skeptical, but looking in the past with sites like Napster, piracy-to-legit transformations don't often work out the way the founders' hope, but you never know.

We talk to Doug Aamoth from CrunchGear and JG Mason from Gadgetell.com about the situation. They're as perplexed as we were. Doug maintains the game maker is buying The Pirate Bay to simply gain a marketing foothold with the piracy-friendly 18-34 gaming set. JG thinks it might just be one big shell game, wherein the founders sell off the current company just to prep another on the side. Whatever the case may be, the situation is odd, and it seems like the average pirate's go-to destination is going to be extinct soon enough. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• bittorrent
• guest
• Doug
• Aamoth
• JG
• Mason
• media
• piracy
• software
• pirate
• bay
• video
• games

[utubeb14]

well its still good atm so i shall get all i get before it all sinks

[travelsonic]

"It was 100% pirating site it has no other users lol."

To be fair, the overwhelming use was piracy, but that never means that there aren't other uses. I, albiet with much work, found legal shit up there too.

[biggingeryeti]

I would never use Pirate Bay or anything else these sell outs are connected with.

[CFrostyTheSnowman]

Who will use it? Doesn't make any sense. It was 100% pirating site it has no other users lol.... It's not like pirating users will stick around for a so called legit site when there are other pirating sites out there with good reputations like demonoid. I just don't get how this is supposed to work out?

[anonymees]

i wish i was paid, i kinda need a job right now...

[anonymees]

what's your source on GFF's connection to the copyright lobby?

[awdrifter3]

It's a shell game alright. I bet the people behind GGF is from the RIAA/MPAA/IPFI. They couldn't take down TPB with legal threats so they just bought them out. I don't upload torrents to TPB so I'm not worried, but I bet a lot of the pro-uploaders are worried now.

[anonymees]

The internets are much to quick to judge.

The new 'legit' pirate bay might turn out very well; the new owners have mutual friends with the pirate bay crew, whom they trust, so they are probably sensible progresive thinking people.

The money will go to a fund that is out of reach for IFPI since they technically don't own TPB. The money will be used for political activism for fredom on the nets, as well as new projects.

They have promised they will never pay the fines, even if they could.

[psyentologysux]

Some are accusing them of selling out; I think they just sold the site to pay the legal bills and fund a future resurrection under a new name. But Pirate Bay as we know it is in cardiac arrest, and the new company has basically shelled out millions for a popular domain name. Hopefully they'll do something with it that doesn't make a mockery of the original, ala Napster

[jasnodo]

youtube ans pirate bay are hardly comparable