Copyright Law

Has the Pirate Bay Deal Been ?Blown Up??

By soulxtc

“Strong doubts” surface that Global Gaming Factory will have sufficient funds in place to acquire the Swedish BitTorrent tracker site.

The Pirate Bay saga gets stranger and stranger by the day. The Swedish BitTorrent tracker site was convicted for the facilitation of copyright infringement this past April and so it appeared that the site would inevitably be gone for good.

Then things changed dramatically when it was reported late last month that it was going to be acquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB (GGF) for $7.8 million USD in cash and $7.8 million USD in shares to be issued by GGF after the acquisition.

Many lamented that the Pirate Bay had “sold out” and that it’s loss jeopardized more than half of all trackers that exist, but for others it represented a curious shift into a business model where seeders would be paid and which could perhaps be a model for future content distribution.

So the latest news comes with a touch of sadness, that being that the GGF deal has been “blown up” and that there’s “very strong doubts” that the GGF will have the funding in place to acquire the Pirate Bay.

“I and my colleagues have very strong doubts that the funding is in place,” said Wayne Rosso, the former CEO of Grokster who had been brought in to negotiate deals with the entertainment industry. “And there are other issues regarding Mr. Pandeya’s credibility that trouble us greatly.”

Rosso has even go so far as to apparently quit in order to protect his reputation. He also claims that GGF has failed to keep a number of promises, one of which being payments to his partners and he.

?The more time we spent with Mr. Pandeya, the less confident we were,? he told TF. “I don?t think there?s going to be any money raised with GGF?s current (lack of) plans.?

GGF CEO Hans Pandeya denies Rosso claims and insists that Rosso would be paid soon.

“Everything is going to plan,” Pandeya said. “We have plenty of investors that are interested in this and Wayne is just one of our many consultants…he might have been too impatient. We pay everyone we do business with.”

A Pirate Bay “insider” says GGF has a week to get the deal figured out or it’s off.

Either way, the Pirate Bay saga gets stranger by the day.

After all the drama over the years I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything less.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on July 29, 2009 (boomark / email).