Pirate Bay Sale Looking Even Less Likely

from the was-it-ever-real? dept

Tue, Jul 28th 2009 5:43pm — Mike Masnick

At the beginning of July, we questioned whether or not the announced purchase of The Pirate Bay by GGF was ever really going to happen. From the statements made by GGF CEO Hans Pandeya, it really seemed quite doubtful. Not only did he do a terrible job of explaining the plan, he contradicted himself multiple times and suggested a few times that the deal could fall through. That may in fact be happening. Two weeks ago, we noted that Pandeya had supposedly hired Wayne Rosso (former Grokster boss) to negotiate with record labels concerning a business model that didn't make much sense to us. Rosso has now admitted that he's no longer working with GGF and doesn't believe the company has the money to make the purchase, and has problems with Pandeya's credibility. So, once again, we're left wondering if this deal will ever happen.

Separately, it should come as little surprise that a bunch of entertainment companies are demanding that the Swedish courts shut The Pirate Bay down. It was noteworthy that in the original ruling against the four people associated with The Pirate Bay, the court did not issue any sort of injunction to stop the site from functioning. The folks at The Pirate Bay are claiming this sudden demand for a shut down is because the entertainment industry is trying to mess with the sale to GGF, but it certainly looks like that's falling apart on its own (as if there was ever any real meat there). Still, for all of the complaining by the entertainment companies, it seems quite premature to shut down the site when the original ruling is still under appeal. But, since when has that ever stopped the industry? In the meantime, it might not matter much even if it is shut down. Since the announcement of the GGF plan, lots of others have stepped up to try to take the place of The Pirate Bay as a key source for torrent searches. It makes you wonder who the entertainment industry will single out next? After all, The Pirate Bay was a relatively small player itself before the US entertainment interests first called it out...

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Filed Under: hans pandeya, wayne rosso
Companies: ggf, the pirate bay

13 Comments

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Tek'a R (profile), 28 Jul 2009 @ 5:55pm

more and more it seems like this entire affair was a complicated prank, serving to both elevate the blood pressure of certain content industry execs and lawyers and help spread the name of TPB around medias again.

And if so.. doubly well done.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Jul 2009 @ 6:10pm

Re:
Actually, it looks more like a two stage deal, first and foremost a massive pump and dump on the stock of GGF, and second a dodge to put the ownership of the site into a neutral postion that would make it harder to shut down.

The sale would never complete because the competition of the sale would reveal the actual beneficial owners of TPB, which they would never want.

The site will go down all by itself.

Pump and dump info: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ric=GGF.ST
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Tristin, 28 Jul 2009 @ 8:58pm

Added benefits
"Since the announcement of the GGF plan, lots of others have stepped up to try to take the place of The Pirate Bay as a key source for torrent searches."

The bittorrent world may never stop singing the praises of that ridiculous court case that The Pirate Bay lost. It seems like every time the P2P community gets a little bit too centralized, the geniuses at the RIAA and MPAA step in and help to redistribute everything perfectly. How else would the system innovate and improve?

What I like best about the latest efforts to replace the Pirate Bay is that they realize it is in everyone's best interest to have redundancy and multiple destinations for data and info. They are all but collaborating to ensure that no one site gets too much of the traffic. There is even a new tracker that hides behind Tor routers! Add that to the VPN trend and soon copyright police are going to have a bloody difficult time bullying people around.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Jul 2009 @ 9:16pm

Re: Added benefits
It's a nice idea Tristan, but the think that kills TPB or any other torrent site is that there are few places you can open them without being easy prey for the RIAA types. Realistically, "illegal" torrent providers are down to eastern block countries and a few other places, otherwise they have very, very short lives online.

Hiding them behind Tor or other services will just get them in the shit too. Yes, it is whack a mole, but with few and few holes for the moles to come out of, the whacking gets easier, not harder, no matter how many moles you have.
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Tek'a R (profile), 28 Jul 2009 @ 11:49pm

Re: Re: Added benefits
not really.
One of the beauties of the BT protocol, but all internet sharing as well, is the infinite nature.

Right now, i could invest a little time in reading, invest $0 in software and, with the internet connection i Already have, become the center of a secret distributed broadway musical sharing site. My henchmen (and henchwomen) will employ the latest and greatest things in cryptography and social engineering and never, ever, get 'busted' by the RIAA.

For every "mole" you manage to whack, you spawn a hundred more. And the funny thing about moles, they find a way to dig new holes All The Time.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2009 @ 5:28am

Re: Re: Re: Added benefits
...and for the short time you are up, congrats, you are a mole. Then you get shut down, probably by your ISP. Unless you are in a eastern block country or maybe china, you won't have that long of a shelf life.

It's just the natural the game.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2009 @ 5:29am

Re: Re: Added benefits
Wait 'til you see the next generation of moles. They don't use holes and stay entirely underground.
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TPBer (profile), 29 Jul 2009 @ 5:46am

What a good laugh
All of the anon posts are funny, are you going to shut down Googles ability to search for torrents, I doubt it, and for that matter ANY search engine.

Maybe you ACs need a search 101 class to freshen up with, because you are showing your true search IQ, and it would be in the range of mentally handicapped.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2009 @ 6:10am

Re: What a good laugh
At some point, if there are enough judgements, it may be much easier to get search engines to filter the content out. It's really in the same manner that you don't easily find child pr0n on Google, you may soon enough not easily find torrents. Again, if the whole thing moves "underground" the first step would be to stop Google and outside sources from indexing (they wouldn't have a password, now would they) and that would lead to self-exclusion en-masse.

It's the real trick that most people just don't get: What the RIAA and MPAA and such would love is for all of the stuff to go underground and out of the public eye. Much of the current infringing is because it is easy to find stuff and easy to trade. Move it underground, and it becomes harder for the vast majority of people to get to the material, and thus much less likely they will infringe. It's the current widely available in the open thing that is making things difficult.

Put it in real life terms: Torrents are like a flea market where every booth is selling (giving away) infringing material, and the flea market is opening promoting it in ads and such. The crowds are huge. Then law enforcement shuts down the flea market. Now the people don't know where to get their free infringing material, so what do they do? They actually go back to buying. There is still signficant number of infringers, but the huge and widescale public infringing disapepars. That is a game changer.
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ikonoclasm (profile), 29 Jul 2009 @ 6:16am

Re: Re:
I assume you're the same AC that's been pushing the pump and dump theory in regards to the TPB buyout for a while. I was skeptical at first, but it now seems the most likely explanation. Kudos for the insight.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2009 @ 4:23pm

Re: Re: Re:
Thank you yes. The stock went way up way fast, based on annoucements made that were less than proper. That GGF may have had some issues with their listing in the past adds to the soup. I am sure that plenty of money was made here, possibly enough to pay off the RIAA fines and for the players to all leave with their offshore holdings.
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