The Pirate Bay needs to stop pirating... 'scuse me while I get back on my chair...

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, PB - it tolls for thee.

Are these chaps utterly dumb?

Why would you buy a court case waiting to happen?

They seem to think that the users of PB will purchase stuff .... err dumbest idea I heard for a while, these users are career criminals who already do not wish to pay for things they leech from fellow PB criminals.

It's not April the 1st, is it? :-(

So long Pirate Bay...

...that the new owners will be highly successful at retaining TPB's strident, vocal user base, ho detest any connection to the music and film industries, and convincing them to buy DRM'd music at a buck a track.

'WTF' this time. 'FAIL' next time. Unless, of course, this is a joke - that is, a -literal- joke.

"Sells out" is right.

RiP TPB x

Pirate bay becoming a pay-site ...

LOL, all those people who stood with them only for this to happen LMAO

the end of an era?

Mines the one walking sadly into the sunset...

Well, it's been good - but the dream has ended...

PB saved me plenty of beer money though :)

They get to pay off their fine and sit back on a nice profit.

I wonder what TPB will become? Not that I've ever used it... I get my US tv shows from another place...

I've always thought that the difference between a bunch of harmless freetarding and terrorist-funding serious crime was when those involved started to make money out of it.

They've just gone down in my estimation. Selling your business on so that the buyers can make a legitimate business out of it suggests that they didn't think it was legitimate in the first place!

Why on earth should they be allowed to profit from knowingly setting up an illegitimate enterprise and then selling it on? I hope the year in jail is worth it.

Less of this dollars nonsense -- this is a .co.uk site I'm at, so I'd prefer Euros or pounds as my comparison. It shouldn't be too hard to script a little routine to localise currency conversions based on whether the reader's at Reg US or Reg UK, surely?

and that ladies and gentlemen, marks the end of the piratebay........

good for the original creators that they can make serious money from their work, but this will be the end for them. good thing there's plenty of others around.

I'm sure they weren't in it for the money to begin with, it just developed as it did to become profitable.

Wouldn't you accept 7 million if you owed 2 million?

So I don't get why the heckle in the end.

Im wondering. Has any of there software been pirated on TPB?

I just think this is a big and expensive torrent honeypot now.

This will kill TPB

Heh yeah NOW the site will prosber and attract numerous new users and the mobsters ehmm I meen the recording industri will be happy to make deals with them to bring out music out to the users at fair rates..... HAHAHAHAHA

The bay is dead.

Is this a backlogged headline from 1 April?

Ah well, now we can see all the posturing and talk of freedom of speech for what it was. Take the money and run, I say. So long and thanks for all the torrents.

I wonder if the new buyers have ever heard of the name Napster?

Do these people really think you can make money from piratebay in a way that the contentowners appreciate? The brand name, the technology and the userbase are all compeletely worthless as soon as the users realize they won't get stuff for free anymore. If this report is true, piratebay will go the way of napster.

Peer-to-peer works when distributing free stuff. If you're asking for money, you'll have to provide the bandwidth. Don't know why this is so difficult to realize.

Fucking way, dude.

"On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn't evolve. We don't want that to happen."

This just counds like corportat b*******t. Tell me this is a wind up?

sorry but I just do not undertsand what

a teh compnay who bought them are going to do

b why they sold out to "the man"

c how I missed that today was the first of april

The Pirate Bay has been bought, and will be operating with copyright holders?

Look! An MP offering to work for free for the good of mankind!

MJ's back from the dead after 3 days - turns out he's the Second Coming!

I can understand why they've done this, but I do think it's a bit of a shame. These statements could be seen as some kind of admission that TPB was originally doing something wrong in and of itself. I'm sure that the RI Ass of America and their cronies will spin it that way. Which is a pity, since I still reckon that the whole case against TPB didn't really stack up and it was only a complete lack of technical understanding on the part of the authorities (possibly with a side order of industrial or political leverage??) that allowed them to be found guilty in the first place.

Pirate icon 'cos, well, it's obvious innit?

Mine's the coat, I'm outta here......

as long it remain "international" and not just for "selected countries".

although.... who among us will trust PirateBay with their credit card number?!

Wow! For years I've been reading comments from the TPB founders, banging on about their ideals and how they were liberating everyone to have access to free stuff.

Then in a flash it's "screw you, we took the money, pissed on our ideals and sod you all".

Thanks for the bullshit boys, you really had me going there for a while.

something a bit weird going on here...

I suspect there's less to this than meets the eye.

Hmm lets all quieten down and think this through....

A mysterious company pops up and says there buying the pirate bay for $7million or about, remember the pirate bay is not owned by the 4 guys sued AND the pirate bay was not sued in court only the 4 guys so anything the pirate bay does is not related to the court unless they can prove cash from the acquisition of the company went to the four.

Hmmm something is happening behind the scenes, think about these guys they did not brake down at the first hurdle but continued on through the court cases.

Hmmm i think one of the following two things has happened....

1: The four or some of the four members of the pirate bay made this company up, they release the news that the pirate bay is sold, the stock of this company goes through the roof they use the cash from selling the stock to buy the pirate bay FROM the current owners who are not the original four as they stated it is in someone else's hands.

They use the money to fund more projects and the pirate bay becomes public domain been able to be bought and sold by the people who use it look at the logo a block version of the pirate ship with a sign "your share" that could be there aim.

They are not dumping the site or selling out just using the publicity to raise cash outside of themselves i.e. unclaimable by the courts and making ownership of the pirate bay public for all pirates.

Nice sceme

OR

The industry has taken them up on there offer to sell out remember when they offered to sell the pirate bay to them so they could do what they want with it?

Hmmm knowing how these guys think and operate what do you think the reason behind all this is?

-Jay

Seems like a relatively cheap way to take down the site.

Well, well..... the saviours of internet freedom seem to have donned suits. LOL.

Judging by the wrath that can be seen from their unhappy members (blogging at the speed of light), most people feel completely cheated by the sell-out.

If I were them, I'd make sure I kept my cars in the garage just in case some of the many, many people who donated actual-real-proper money to them arrive at the inevitable conclusion that their messiahs were actually normal pirates after all.

Question: What smells stronger?....... Money or bullsh*t?

I'll leave it to you to decide who is smelling what at this time......

That is news. People sell out for filthy lucre. Gosh. Story right there...

icon for lame pirate?

What happened to "we cannot and wouldn't pay"? Sounds like even someone's most staunch principles can be bought if the money is right...

One of the big attractions of P2P is that anyone can upload anything and anyone can get at it.

Take that away by enforcing the legal (and reasonable) rules about not abusing copyright, and you don't need the P2P bit, you just need a managed content delivery service with access control and payment mechanisms. Content delivery networks are here today, even ones with payment mechanisms, in various flavours from iTunes to Amazon to the payTV one which Channel 4 use in the UK.

I think TPB have done very nicely to find themselves a buyer. I think the buyer hasn't got such a good deal.

That'll be the death of TPB then!!!!

Gaming company gets a nice distribution system built in for anything they want to do (think server infrastructure, not name).

TPB owners get money they're probably desperately in need of, and hey, they can set up from scratch again in no time, following exactly the same model as TPB used to have. Methinks some of the purchase money would go to fund that.

I'd definitely drink to that!

For $ 7.7 Million

@ James Smith

"Why on earth should they be allowed to profit from knowingly setting up an illegitimate enterprise and then selling it on? I hope the year in jail is worth it."

I would glady spend an all expenses paid year in jail for a healthy share of $7.7 Million, where do I sign up?