Pirate Bay sale imminent

GGF discuss forthcoming takeover of one of the biggest file-sharing sites

06 August 2009 - Despite rumours casting doubt on the sale of The Pirate Bay, the deal is set to go ahead according to the CEO and founder of the Global Gaming Factory.

Hans Pendaya, the Swedish founder, says so far all is going to plan and it is a matter of when, not if the exchange goes ahead.

"The acquisition is secured," he said. "We're taking over The Pirate Bay on the 27th August."

The deal will go ahead, subject to one last meeting with shareholders on that day.

"It's their approval we're waiting for. We have the legalisation plan in place, we have the funds, we're ready to go," added Hans.

The four Pirate Bay founders - sentenced to a year in jail each back in April - won't be involved in the new version of the site, which will be legal and have to strictly follow Swedish laws.

"We have the legalisation plan in place, we have the funds, we're ready to go."
CEO of GGF

The GGF boss also revealed the online games firm is close to signing a deal with one of the four major record companies - EMI, Universal Music, Sony Music or Warner Music.

"We've been negotiating with one of them and we're quite close, so hopefully we'll have something before the acquisition, or afterwards.

"It's looking quite good, with this legalisation plan and an agreement, it looks promising indeed for the future of this company," explained Hans.

The Pirate Bay claims to have 20 million registered users, making it one of the world's biggest peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

Hans could not give too much away about exactly how they will make the site legal, but he said a "sophisticated" plan is in place to sell the record label's content and back catalogue, through the site, which they agreed to buy at the end of June.

"Legal means that unauthorised content has to be removed so there we have a plan," he explained. "If we removed all content from The Pirate Bay obviously all the file-sharers will go to another site, so we aren't going to do what Napster did, where 90% left and 10% remained."

Former illegal-file-sharing site Napster was shut down in 2001 and then later rebranded and transformed into a legal music service.

Georgie Rogers