Napster, på Svenska

Soon after announcing the forthcoming launch of The Videobay, a YouTube competitor with rather more lenient copyright standards, the folks at the BitTorrent site PirateBay have announced the sale of the controversial website to a Swedish gaming company for $8 million. Though the site's owners have long claimed the PirateBay was nothing more than a hobby and made no profit, in 2006 a Swedish newspaper calculated that they were earning in excess of €60,000 a month from a single advertising services company. The BBC on the sale:

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) has paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site from its founders.

Once it has taken control, GGF said it would start paying copyright fees for the movies, music and games linked to via the site…

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site" said Hans Pandeya, head of GGF in a statement.

"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it," he said.

GGF has not released details of how it will charge for the content downloaded via the site. The Pirate Bay will be handed over to GGF in August.

Good luck with that. As we have seen when Napster "went legit," those who desire a dodgy looking VHS-to-digital transfer of Get a Life have plenty of other options.