Dear Hans Pandeya: Buying A Website Involves More Than Just Saying You're Going To Buy It...
from the just-so-you-know... dept
Hans Pandeya is the guy who, as head of GGF, last year made a big splash by supposedly agreeing to buy The Pirate Bay as part of a plan that never made any sense to try to "legitimize" it. It wasn't long before many folks realized that the whole thing seemed questionable, and there were all sorts of allegations of insider trading and other questionable behavior in the sale. And, of course, as people waited for the one thing that mattered (the money) it became clear that the deal was falling through.A few months back, however, Pandeya showed up again, this time in the US rather than Sweden, with a new company called Business Marketing Services, which was the result of Pandeya taking over the OTC stock symbol of an effectively defunct penny stock. However, he claimed he was still buying The Pirate Bay, supposedly from GGF -- except of course, GGF never actually owned The Pirate Bay, so the whole thing appeared to be a joke. Pandeya took exception to our coverage, demanded we correct the errors in the post, though he refused to explain what was in error. He also told us that he had "put the acquisition on hold," which is a funny thing to say when there's no evidence that there was any actual acquisition in the first place.
It looks like Pandeya's at it again, telling TorrentFreak that he's buying the BitTorrent community Demonoid. But, again, this appears to be wishful thinking. Demonoid hasn't agreed to any deal. Pandeya appears to be representing GGF again, and claims he now has money. It's not clear what happened to "Business Marketing Services," of course. Pandeya still talks big, saying he'd still like to acquire The Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and claims that this time he's got money -- but he's said that before and these things haven't panned out.
So, a basic tip for Mr. Pandeya: talking about buying a website is not the same as actually buying that website. Also, saying you have cash is not the same as actually having the cash. So far, we've seen lots of claims from Mr. Pandeya, but no real follow through, so it's difficult to believe that this time around it will be any different.
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Filed Under: hans pandeya
Companies: business marketing services, demonoid, ggf, the pirate bay
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Look at Mininova for example: regardless of the brand recognition they had, the moment they were forced to purge their database they were history. They truly dropped off the internets.
If that's not what he means by "legalising", then I highly doubt the rights holders would agree to allow their content to appear on an all-you-can-eat torrent website. It'd be totally awesome if they did, but they won't.
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If Techdirt misreports this news, they will be hearing from my lawyers.
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I do... well except for this point:
"I highly doubt the rights holders would agree to allow their content"
Therein lies the problem. The big torrent sites have pretty much everything that most legitimate sites should envy - well-known brand names, massive international customer base, popular design, minimal running costs (since all they host is tiny torrent files).
That's everything a legitimate company should want, except for the fact that only a small proportion of content is authorised. If they could only get the pricing and regional licensing issues sorted out, this would be a great investment for any sane businessman. Sadly, the content owners are still trying to pretend it's the early 90s.
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Uh...
Cuz, wow. Just, wow.
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You will be hearing from my lawyer soon...
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