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Web Nuggets: The Pirate Bay Sold For $7.8 Million

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  1.  (6259.1)
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    What's really going to happen next?

    The for-profit business running TPB will be slammed with more lawsuits than it can hope to handle, the government will harass the new owners, copyrighted content will start to disappear, and people will just move on to some other torrent aggregator just like they did when Suprnova died.
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    That's it for The Pirate Bay. The sale pays off their fines, the rest will vanish in taxation, and TPB will become one of those toothless old whores like Napster.
  4.  (6259.4)
    History repeats itself, again.
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      CommentAuthorMagnulus
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.5)
    This is very interesting news, not least of all because people still try to make these things work.
    Personally, I found a lot to agree with in the most recent issue of New Scientist in an article about piracy and how capitalism is a system built around scarcity. Here it is.

    What he proposes at the end of the article is very interesting, and something that - if done right, obviously - could work exceedingly well. If everyone pays a little bit of extra tax and that extra tax goes on to fund artists and content providers who basically get tenure to create their content, you more or less take piracy completely out of the picture, as NOBODY is paying for the music or movies they get. Well, they ARE paying for it, but not directly. As with any system, there are weaknesses to it, but it would be a very effective way to take profitability out of the equation of "what artists do we sign?".
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      CommentAuthoroldhat
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.6)
    I think the companies will just do what they did with Napster and decide that it would be a better deal to sue them into oblivion.

    I don't know...considering one of the reasons Peter Sunde is doing this is because he think it's "really funny", I suspect he might have something up his sleeve.
  7.  (6259.7)
    Taxing to provide content is an absolutely despicable idea that cannot possibly work. At that point socialism really does become slavery; content creators would be free to mooch off of everyone else regardless of whether or not they’re any good or anyone wants anything to do with their work. Half of society would be working just to provide for web comic and breakdancers. Really good content creators get screwed and only get the same payment that the hacks get. To keep everyone who doesn’t want to work from just cranking out a regular stream of crap the government would have to set standards for what does and doesn’t deserve to be paid for. That would create an organized crime syndicate of corrupt bureaucrats and artists swapping bribes for the payments, and inevitably some sort of enforcers would arise to ensure that honest creators get roped into the payoff system. Anything offensive to anyone in the government will get censored. I could sit here all day listing way such a system would go wrong. The last time people dreamed up a system like this was in the early days of the Soviet Union, and we all know how well that worked out.
  8.  (6259.8)
    Watching the Internet community (and I mean the endless voices of nonsense, not our local thoughtful community) turn on them is educational as ever.
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      CommentAuthormister86
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.9)
    So, anyone have any idea what will inevitably take its place? This is the internet after all, I don't expect it to take long for the next 'big piracy site' to pop up and take command of center stage before being bought out.
    • CommentAuthoricelandbob
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.10)
    oh well it was good while it lasted.....

    but the King is dead, long live the King! there are still many sites out there, and within the year another site will take it´s place...
  11.  (6259.11)
    I don't even understand what people need with free movies and music. I can't keep up with my netflix queue. Amazon mp3 has nice albums on sale every month. I support community radio. Who needs more? I can no longer even empathize with the idea of stealing media. It's too much work, to have everything for nothing. I have never been to the Pirate Bay. It should have sold for 7.79999 million.
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.12)
    "Taxing to provide content is an absolutely despicable idea that cannot possibly work."

    Ever hear of the Public Lending Right?

    Or television licenses?

    I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea. But it is certainly possible.

    You might also want to read the relevant section of the article:

    Another experiment in post-scarcity capitalism concerns the digitisation of the world's books. One draft of the rules for access to scanned books is currently being written in the US courts as Google settles a class action over its scanning projects. This settlement will make books more searchable and improve access to both out-of-print and "orphaned" books whose copyright holders can't be found. Under the current version, books will only be available in snippets and sections. Some out-of-print books will be available through institutional and individual subscriptions, but we don't yet know whether the prices will be inviting to most of the public, thus making Google Books a true post-scarcity project.

    So here's a challenge to the governments of countries that want to lead the way, whether rich or poor: sit down with Google (or one of its competitors), authors and publishers, and work out a deal that offers a complete, licensed digital library free to your citizens. It would cost taxpayers something, but less than they currently spend on buying scarce books and supporting large paper collections. It would be great news for publishers and authors, who would receive most of the funds and would no longer need to fear piracy.


    link

    Just as you have internet content sites where content providers get a share of ad revenue based on the number of times a work is viewed or downloaded you could base any government subsidy on the number of times a book is accessed.
  13.  (6259.13)
    Taxing to provide content is an absolutely despicable idea that cannot possibly work.

    It doesn't, just like artistic union collections don't work right now: because ultimately all the money gets sent to Paul McCartney and everyone else has to split a tenner.
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      CommentAuthorMagnulus
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009 edited
     (6259.14)
    @Donner Kebab, all I'm saying is that it could pay to be open-minded about solutions for the future. What do YOU think is a commercially viable plan for the future of content?
    • CommentAuthorE0157H7
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.15)
    Shit, I liked The Pirate Bay.

    @BrianMowery - There's a lot of media available online, mostly via torrent, that is not available from Amazon or iTunes. I have a sizable collection of remix and mashup albums that only exist online, and a good potion of them were acquired via torrents from The Pirate Bay.
    • CommentAuthorWinther
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.16)
    @BrianMowrey Re: Who needs torrents... For one thing, I follow a lot of TV shows, primarily from the US. I also live in Denmark, and thus the shows here are often a season behind, at least, if they've even chosen to air them. And even though I buy the DVD's, I like to follow along as "real-time" as I can. And really, if a legal means to watch the episodes was afforded to me, I'd take it if it was anywhere within the neighborhood of reasonably priced. I'd gladly pay a fee to have the episode ready to download at top speed, instead of being dependent on the number of seeders on the torrent. But the local iTunes store doesn't even have a video section, let alone the ability to download TV. It's probably rights issues, and the same problems that've caused the full episodes on the Daily Show website to suddenly be restricted to the US. But I don't really care. This is The Age of the Internet, damnit, and I'm not going to sit around and wait for a year while the Yanks get all the good stuff. Present me with a nice, legal alternative, and I'll fork over the dough with a smile on my face.

    Until then, I'm kind of bummed about the possible threat of closure on a site that constitutes a massive percentage of all torrents.
  17.  (6259.17)
    Until then, I'm kind of bummed about the possible threat of closure on a site that constitutes a massive percentage of all torrents


    It is a portal/tracker, not a data storage center.
    • CommentAuthorWinther
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.18)
    Yeah, but I got the impression that the tracking services provided by TPB are utilized by most other torrent sites as well. Of course, there are other trackers, but the number of torrent sites relying fairly heavily on Pirate Bay for tracking is significant.
    • CommentAuthorE0157H7
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009 edited
     (6259.19)
    @Winther - I too use torrents to get TV shows, mostly ones that don't run any more. It's very difficult to find, say, an obscure sci-fi cartoon on DVD at the local brick-and-mortar. Hulu is a very nice legal means to watch shows online, but it's streaming, it's only for currently-running stuff and the current season is generally the only one that's available in entirety.
    • CommentAuthorWinther
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     (6259.20)
    @E0157H7

    Hell, I'd even be thrilled to have access to Hulu. I know there are ways around that particular international obstruction, but every IP-masking program and proxy site I've ever tried has rendered the site so slow as to be effectively useless.

    Just read the statements on the Pirate Bay's blog. They seem very calm and hopeful, if not entirely convincing, given the circumstances. Also, as always, the comments are good for making you laugh. Or lose further hope in humanity, if you've got any left.

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