Newssup

The strange case of The Pirate Bay has taken another turn this week. The Swedish web site that was taken to court for offering illegal torrents for use on P2P networks has announced that it’s going legal.

Historically, a letter of marque was given by a country to a seafarer and authorized them to search and attack foreign individuals who had committed crimes against the country. These ‘privateers’ were frequently former pirates who used the letter of marque as a way to continue their activities under the guise of nationalism.

In this case, The Pirate Bay hasn’t been given a reprieve by the Swedish government, but has announced that it will be bought by the Global Gaming Factory company (also Swedish). The price? 60 million kronor – that’s roughly $7.8 million and $4 million more than the fine imposed by the courts.

With over six million registered users and a billion page views per month, The Pirate Bay is probably the entertainment industry’s biggest enemy. Links to TV shows go up within hours of airing on the networks, music albums are made available minutes after release and movies appear on the day they première – or in some cases, such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, they appear as a work-print before their release.

Presumably, once the deal is signed, all illegal content torrents will be removed from the site. Most observers feel this will signal the end of the site – since the vast majority of the content is illegal and an equally vast majority of visitors are there for precisely that reason, going legal spells the end.

Hollywood will be happy, though – and so will the Bay’s founders. $4 million isn’t bad, after all.

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