The world's largest bit torrent tracker and the symbol of Internet anarchy is going corporate.
The Pirate Bay has confirmed the news it is being acquired by Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB for the equivalent of $7.8 million.
TPB crew claim that this is in the best interest of innovation, an ideal they've always claimed to stand for.
"If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to," says the blog post announcing the decision. "It's win-win-win."
If they seemed naive in fighting for open culture, in court, against the clout of the big media houses, this seems more so.
GGF, in its release, doesn't take long to clarify its intentions: "GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners."
That sounds like the death knell for the steadfast and irreverent pirate stand on the many legal threats they receive, never to take down anything from their site.
Whatever GGF's plan is, it surely isn't the end of file sharing, and TPB founders know this better than anyone.
However, it could well be a blow to the Pirate ideology and everything TPB stood for in the fight for a free Internet. It's been a huge influence in deciding our online culture. 'Sell-out' is a word that's appearing rather frequently in the comments that have greeting TPB's announcement, with the bit torrent loyal threatening to delete their accounts.
The announcement comes at a time when the founders face a huge lawsuit and there are questions still being asked if the judges in the the Pirate Bay trial were biased.
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