Tuesday, Jun 30, 2009    Text size: 

Software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGFX) revealed that they're in the process of buying the torrent-file search engine for about $7.8 million, or 60 million Swedish krona.

Along with the purchase, which is set to go through by August, GGFX said that they plan to invert the Pirate Bay's business model.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” GGFX CEO Hans Pandeya said, later adding, “Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality.”

Meanwhile, the four men behind the Pirate Bay — Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom — are moving forward with a video-sharing site called TheVideoBay.org. The developers are offering a sneak preview of the new site at TheVideoBay.org/20, but the new site is only compatible with browsers like Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5, both of which offer support for HTML 5.

According to Mike Butcher of TechCrunch.com, the new site is designed to do what their previous site did.

"So what’s the big idea?" Butcher wrote. "Well, in common with their stated views the idea is to host and allow users to share video clips without having to worry about getting them taken offline due to copyright violations, in true Pirate Bay-style. Hello, YouTube, hear that?"