Global Gambles On Pirate Bay

Global Gaming Factory has paid 60 million Swedish kronor ($7.75 million) for Pirate Bay and hopes to turn it into a legal source of free music, movies and other content.

The publicly traded Stockholm-based company is trying an untested business model, keeping content free but appeasing content providers and copyright owners by ensuring they get paid for their work.

The secret is in the software, as Global Gaming wants to generate revenue from a new, ultra-fast file-sharing system that uses networks of computers to help move large digital files.

The company already specializes in software that helps run and maintain PCs used in cyber cafes and gaming centers.

Chief exec Hans Pandeya intends to charge Internet service providers, which have complained that file-sharing traffic is clogging up their own networks. Other revenues would come from advertising.

“It has to be legal from day one,” he said. “We are on the stock market; we can’t start playing games,” he explained.

His company has paid double the 60 million Swedish kronor the four Pirate Bay owners were fined for promoting copyright infringement, although lawyers acting for the record companies that brought the action are appealing because they don’t think it’s enough.

The four men behind the site are also planning an appeal. In April Stockholm’s High Court also sentenced them to a year in jail.
Half the money Global is paying will be cash and the rest will be in company shares.