In an article in WSJ (7/29/’09) by Sarah McBride (“Studios Sue to Stop Pirate Bay”), the major Hollywood studios are requesting that a Swedish civil court impose an injunction against the operators of Pirate Bay (in the process of being sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB as of August 27th) to stop both its operators and its ISP “from making copyrighted movies and TV shows easily available on the Internet” together with an undisclosed fine. The studios hope to build on their success earlier this year in criminal court against Pirate Bay’s aiding copyright infringement.
I’m holding my breath with a sarcastic “yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it” at Global Gaming’s Hans Pandeya telling the major records labels and studios that he wants to transform Pirate Bay into a legal site paying copyright owners for user-shared media. Until proven otherwise, on the tails of a Swedish court sentencing the Pirate Bay crooks to prison time and three million dollars, Pandeya brings back memories of the professional wrestler offering an apologetic handshake at center ring with a blunt object hidden behind his back. Come on, Pandeya, are you telling me you bought Pirate Bay with an altrusitic business model in mind? Where did Global Gaming’s Wayne Rosso’s confidence go about the plans to bring Pirate Bay to fruition that led him to walk?
Tags: Add new tag, Global Gaming, Global Gaming Factory X AB, Pirate Bay, Sarah McBride, Wall Street Journal, Wayne Rosso, WSJ
July 31st, 2009 at 4:12 am
You don’t think that these free sites can become legitimate?
July 31st, 2009 at 4:44 am
There are historic realities about the lack of success in going from illegit to legit. First of all, there’s the fickleness of the users themselves. Once the freebies go away, so do those who frequent these sites. That migration takes away the bargaining chips of these illicit online service providers who are trying to win over the record industry execs and join the good ole boys. We’ve seen how hard it was for the likes of Napster, iMesh and eDonkey to build profitable business models after branding themselves with free music. Pirate Bay as well as Kazaa and LimeWire face an uphill climb to becoming licensed service providers. There’s more to just declaring, “OK, we’re good guys now. Everything’s fine and we’re legitimate. ”
It takes a whole lot of business savvy to build a competitive online network. We don’t even know yet what fee Global Gaming will charge. I for one, don’t know if I want to give the step parent of Pirate Bay the right to use their computers to store my online data and optimize my bandwidth in exchange for lowering that fee. Nor am I comfortable with Kazaa merging my billing (let alone having access to it) with my mobile carrier. It’s partly a security issue with me, given these providers’ roots, but even more than that it’s an ethical issue. I will not give these suddenly sincere services the time of day until all reparations are made for the royalties they’ve ripped off from the artists.
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:11 am
Well, after his failed attempt at The Pirate Bay, it seems Hans is venturing yet further into the digital media world. Check this article out at The Music Void to see what he is up to – http://bit.ly/choRbr Another failed attempt?