According to their blog and a recent BusinessWire release, controversial Swedish bit torrent tracker the Pirate Bay, is being acquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB for roughly $7.8 million in cash and shares (or $60 million SEK).
On the blog, the group hopes to alleviate concerns by saying:
“If the new owners 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 it to. And – you can now not only share files, but shares, with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat off us.”
And the heat has certainly been on The Pirate Bay. For the last year, the group has been in and out of court battles and has continued to take a strong stance against legal threats regarding copyright violations.
Judging by blog comments, it’s obvious that users are extremely concerned. Global Gaming Factory will be taking over operation of the site in August 2009. As part of this acquisition, GGF can now incorporate the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science’s new data distribution technology – Peerialism. Presumably the service will increase torrent speeds.
Additionally, says GGF CEO, Hans Pandeya, “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”
It will be interesting to see if fans will stick with the service and how the company’s revenue program will differ from predecessors like Grooveshark’s compensation service for file uploaders.
Thanks to Steven for the tip!
UPDATE: According to TorrentFreak, The Pirate Bay will be using a 3rd party tracker and host for torrents. We’ll just have to wait and see if this has to do with GGF’s move with Peerialism.
