Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

Global Gaming Factory, set to take over the Pirate Bay, is seeking the approval from the entertainment industry by installing a torrent removal and approval system. BREIN, however, the Dutch anti-piracy group does not believe that this is a full-proof plan and wants something better if GGF plans on dodging any legality issues.

GGF has planned on giving copyright holders the chance to remove infringing torrents and approve other to be published in hopes of avoiding possible conflicts. Furthermore, users will have to pay to have access to the site.

BREIN issued a release stating that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to appease copyright holders. BREIN director, Tim Kuik, said, “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient.” He further stated, “The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal.”

Global Gaming Factory, set to take over the Pirate Bay, is seeking the approval from the entertainment industry by installing a torrent removal and approval system. BREIN, however, the Dutch anti-piracy group does not believe that this is a full-proof plan and wants something better if GGF plans on dodging any legality issues.

GGF has planned on giving copyright holders the chance to remove infringing torrents and approve other to be published in hopes of avoiding possible conflicts. Furthermore, users will have to pay to have access to the site.

BREIN issued a release stating that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to appease copyright holders. BREIN director, Tim Kuik, said, “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient.” He further stated, “The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal.”

The Pirate Bay acquisition is supposed to take place next week; however, the board of Global Gaming Factory has laid out plans for its shareholders to the site. If the deal works out successfully for all parties involved, Global Gaming Factory has made plans to install a torrent management system for the right’s holders, allowing them to remove infringing files or, in other words, authorize them.

In June, Global Gaming Factory made its surprising announcement that it would obtain the Pirate Bay and make it a legal file-sharing site. As planned, everything is still on schedule and the only obstacle to now overcome is attaining the approval from the company’s shareholders.

Global Gaming Factory just laid out the plans with the shareholders, and next week the definitive decision will be made. The site has confirmed that the new Pirate Bay site will become a pay site. Additionally, to appease the entertainment industry, GGF will also install a system that allows the copyright holders to either authorize the illegal torrent or have it removed from the site. In the first option, the copyright holder will be compensated every single time a file is downloaded. The GGF board stated, “The holder will be able to leave the file and obtain compensation or ask for removal of the file. GGF will also pay any penalties that may arise.”

If the shareholders agree to these plans, GGF will acquire the Pirate Bay on August 27.

Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neg and Gottfrid Svatholm are being sued by the lawyers from Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI) and Federation against Music Piracy (FPM) in Italy. The organizations are seeking damages of over 1 million euro. Nevertheless, the lawyer of the three has explained that there has been no official notification.

After the fallout between of the planned sale to Global Gaming Factory, this lawsuit is the last thing the Pirate Bay was looking to become involved with; along with the loss of a Dutch Court case. The Pirate Bay was then handed the ruling that fines would be imposed in the Netherlands if they did not disable the country’s access to the site within ten days.

In August 2008, the Pirate Bay was made inaccessible in Italy after internet service providers decided to block this domain; nevertheless, the Pirate Bay appealed and won the case. Then in October, the Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement. The current Italian lawsuit is being based on evidence which was collected during this Bergamo case.

The President of FIMI, Enzo Mazza, stated, “The claim is also based on the principle that by selling the site to others, the founders have confirmed that the whole illegal operation of The Pirate Bay was to make a profit and it is therefore unacceptable that someone can take the money and then escape without repairing the damage.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, the file-sharing web sites Pirate Bay and Kazaa made attempts to launch as legal music download sites after the copyright infringement charges both are facing. Hans Pandeya, the CEO of the Swedish company Global Gaming Factory (GGF) explained that his company would acquire the Pirate Bay for nearly $8 million. However, the site would now be subscribed to by users and would be a “give and take” model.

This model would work by having content providers and copyright owners being paid for user uploads, and subscribers might work off subscription fees by sharing content, or by lending PC storage capacities.

Nevertheless, this week, Ricardo Dijkstra, attorney for the GGF announced that GGF would only purchase the Pirate Bay if it could be turned into a legitimate business. He said the business would depend on “whether those assets can be used in a legal manner.” GGF was named along with the Pirate Bay in a civil lawsuit and wants to currently emphasize that they presently do not have control over the BitTorrent site.

Kazaa has now managed to break free of any legal woes. Although they were brought down along with Napster in 2006, they now have become a legitimate business and users can now download unlimited music for $19.98 per month.

The founders of the Pirate Bay recently launched Video Bay, a video-sharing site.  The launch of this site came the same day when the controversial Pirate Bay site was sold to a Swedish software company.  Global Gaming Factory, located out of Sweden, purchased the Pirate Bay website for nearly $8 million.  This news comes recently after the Pirate Bay’s three founders and investor were found guilty of assisting in copyright infringement and ordered to pay a collective fine of nearly $4 million as well as being sentenced to a year in prison.  The founders appealed this judgment and were denied.  Pirate Bay has more than 20 million users and although does not store any copyrighted material, streams its content through its BitTorrent file-sharing technology.  
The new owner of the site is considering utilizing a new model by compensating content providers.  Global Gaming Factory said “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for the content that is downloaded via the site.”  The Video Bay site is comparable to that of Google’s YouTube and comes with the warning “Don’t expect anything to work at all.”  The site offers a variety of music videos and television clips.