File sharing site The Pirate Bay sold

July 1, 2009

Popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay was sold yesterday for 60 million Swedish krona (£4.7 million). Swedish gaming company Global Gaming Factory (GGF) was the purchaser, paying half the price in cash and the rest in shares of the company.

In April 2009, the owners of The Pirate Bay, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, were found guilty of copyright infringement, fined SEK30 million and sentenced to a year in jail. They are currently appealing the sentence, with allegations the judge, being a member of various copyright protection lobbies, was not impartial.

GGF has plans to start paying for copyright content linked from the site, although it is unclear exactly how this will work at the moment.

Peter Sunde was quoted as saying, "We feel that we can't take The Pirate Bay any further. 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."

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

It is also unclear what will happen to the newly launched site, The Video Bay. Launched by The Pirate Bay founders, it will offer streaming of copyrighted content.