News written by Matti Robinson (June, 2009)

As we reported earlier today, The Pirate Bay is being sold to another Swedish company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF). The publicly listed software company stated that the acquisition will have an effect on the business model of The Pirate Bay which has been known to be the most popular BitTorrent site on the Internet. In addition to these changes some less expected changes are going to happen too.

Peter Sunde, co-founder of TPB, has told TorrentFreak that The Pirate Bay will be shutting down their tracker and remove torrent files from their servers. After closing the tracker The Pirate Bay will use the torrents of an upcoming third party service which will introduce an API accessible by other torrent sites as well.

It's still unclear how GGF intends to compensate the content providers and copyright owners. Neither has the company revealed further information how the acquisited Peerialism and its file-sharing technology will affect The Pirate Bay.

Software company Global Gaming Factory X is about to acquire The Pirate Bay for 60,000,000 SEK or 7,8 million USD, says GGF press release. The acquisition which is deemed to be completed in August will have an effect on the business model of one of the most visited sites on the Internet, says GGF.

GGF, a publicly listed company, will "launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners," states the press release.

"The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers need faster downloads and better quality," GGF CEO Hans Pandeya added.

Half of the 60,000,000 SEK will be paid in cash and the rest in newly issued shares. GGF will take over the sites and domains of TPB, including hugely popular thepiratebay.org.