The Pirate Bay's $7.8 million acquisition by Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory could fall through after all, reports are now saying.
When the acquisition was announced in late May, Global Gaming Factory said it intended to re-launch the Pirate Bay under new business models "that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." Last week, a little more depth was given to the Pirate Bay's potential revenue model by former Grokster CEO Wayne Rosso, who called it the "Resource Supported Model."
But details on this model are still scarce, even though they're being called for in the Dutch civil court case brought about by the anti-piracy group Stichting BREIN (lit: "BRAIN Foundation"), which is demanding an outright ban on The Pirate Bay.
BRAIN's director Tim Kuik doesn't think there will ever be an end to the illegal file sharing on The Pirate Bay, which has more than 20 million users worldwide and indexes more than 2 million torrents, so he has led BRAIN's suit against both The Pirate Bay's founders and Global Gaming Factory.
GGF's lawyer, Ricardo Dijkstra said the entire purchase depends on whether the new model can be used "in a legal manner." According to Dijkstra, it is still "very much the question" of whether the transaction will ever be completed.
Because of their opposition against sites such as The Pirate Bay and Demonoid, Kuik and BRAIN are frequent targets of hacking and ridicule. BRAIN's site has been regularly unreachable due to constant DDoS attacks.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009