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Founders of The Pirate Bay have made a deal to sell off "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker" to a Swedish gaming company for about $7.8 million.
More than 20 million visitors use the site each month. This April, TPB's three founders and a representative of their ISP were sentenced to a year in prison and damages of about $4 million over allegations of copyright violation.
A week before the news was announced, I interviewed Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde at the Open Video Conference in New York City, about that lawsuit, and about their plans for the future. He mentioned that "huge, huge news" was coming up, but refused to disclose the news at that time. An edited version of our conversation above, including Peter's explanation of why he believes filesharing and anonymity are good for democracy, is above.
(Special thanks to OVC organizers Elizabeth Stark Dean Jansen, Eddie Codel, and Intelligent TV for production assistance).
Related: My former colleague Ben Fritz at the LA Times has this piece up about the sale, analyzing the news from Hollywood's perspective.
- Pirate Bay to sell to private company, go legit (?) (!)
- Pirate Bay founders launch beta of "The Video Bay" – Boing Boing
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- Pirate Bay retrial over judge bias denied – Boing Boing
- Swedish Pirate Party membership surges after Pirate Bay verdict …
- Pirate Bay judge had conflict of interest: mistrial? – Boing Boing
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