Pirate Bay's New Owners Reveal Novel Business Plan

The new owners of Pirate Bay have revealed an ambitious plan to run the torrent site legitimately.

As previously reported, the site was brought for £4.7m earlier this week by Global Gaming Factor X AB.

Speaking about their plans for the site, the new owners' CEO Hans Pandeya explained the site will follow a unique business model.

Users will be paid for joining the service and sharing files, while copyright holders will be paid royalties when their material is shared.

Where Pirate Bay will now make money is by selling on the collective capacity of all the site's users to Internet Service Providers to help them cope when there is exceptional demand online, reports Business Week.

"Let''s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site - which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP - we can take that song and put it out on P2P," explained Pandeya of the new model.

"The technology will use the community of file-sharers to cut costs of data traffic for ISPs by more than a half," he added. "Users will earn money by joining, which can be spent on Pirate Bay's other services [such as an expected online music store] or transferred to their bank accounts."

Although novel, the business model is not entirely unprecedented online, with peer to peer networks like Skype using a similar plan.

The acquisition of Pirate Bay is expected to be completed in August.

Thanks for the reoprt to Nme.com.

Comments

[\m/[-_-]\m/]

itll be interesting how all this ends up and if itll work at all

[CFH Hateph34r]

Wow... this defeats the purpose of torrenting. I torrent so I can find new bands to listen to, try out cds and games before I buy them, and get higer quality mp3s of albums that I personally own and tried to rip for my Zune. The Pirate Bay may have had a lot of news coverage, but they were still the most reliable and safe torrenting website to use. Mininova was second for me, and I never got an inventation code for Demonoid. This comes as a gret dissapointment and shock to us pirates everywhere. Oh well, I guess it was bound to happen with all the negative press coverage TPB has recieved in the last few years.

[koikomoru]

R.I.P. Pirate bay

[Mx023]

maybe it will be a good thing? dunno untill i try it really.

[_A.D.I.D.A.S._]

Sounds like an interesting idea but they have to rename The Pirate Bay. After all, it is no longer Piracy if you're downloading legally. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

[RemainingTruth]

I like the idea of being rewarded for helping ISPs, and helping ISPs, and then being able to use that towards downloads. I think these new people have found a system that works. The only question is if were ready for it.

[chrisdazzo]

Enjoy your Isohunt and Demonoid, suckas! Get into a private site and keep that shit free!

[transplants182]

it's just not The Pirate Bay if you can't pirate anymore

[nesveikuolis]

They said that it will be not a pay to leech site. F*** them. Isohunt is my homeboy now

[Rokeman]

^ Looks like you last few people are the ones ruining the music industy going by your comments.

[Lacebad]

Rokeman wrote:

^ Looks like you last few people are the ones ruining the music industy going by your comments.

looks like your a condescending prick ... going by your comments

[Wakisazhi]

Sorry but I'm not really following this business model. So essentially if you sign up and share files you get paid, I get that but do you have to now pay a fee to sign up or is it going to remain free?

[UnaLaguna]

If I understand it, TPB will pay filesharers to share files. TPB will also pay artists royalties when their work is shared.

The money for this will come from ISPs. The ISPs will pay TPB to share a file as it will be more desirable to use P2P than regular bandwidth to share popular songs.

This makes sense, providing the ISPs are interested in this. However, the downside is that this model only works for popular songs e.g. Pokerface. More obscure stuff e.g. Chroma Key will suffer, and many filesharers will argue that they pirate to sample more obscure artists.

TPB currently has a bias to mainstream music (more people will share popular music than obscure music). But that wouldn't stop people sharing obscure stuff. However, with this new model the danger is that there will be an even greater bias to mainstream music.

[Freedomfight3r]

koikomoru wrote:

R.I.P. Pirate bay

I agree.
I never thought this day would come...

[southern_stylin]

Does this mean the bitching will stop?

[hawkdude9]

this is a slap in the face to all the people who supported them and how they had the "**** you" attitude. this takes the pirate out of pirate bay. dont make me go back to mininova...

[southern_stylin]

Anybody remember actually going to the music shop to BUY an album? Remember when all you may have heard was a single on the radio or one tune on a buddy's mix-tape and that was all you had to guage a band with before you purchased their album? Remember the fear of buying an album for one song, the frustration of spending $20 on 9 shitty tunes, the elation of finding a completely unknown gem? I used to go into the record store every payday and buy two albums.... one by a band which I knew would compliment my collection and one by a band I had never heard of. That's how I found Rise Against 'The Unraveling', Fear Factory 'Soul of a New Machine', and Pantera 'Cowboys From Hell'. Mind you, there were some stinkers but it was worth it.

[kyngofhearts]

demonoid ftk.

[rocker222]

Rokeman wrote:

^ Looks like you last few people are the ones ruining the music industy going by your comments.

no the music indistry is runied by overpriced cds and fat corprate idiots