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gmb45
30th June, 2009, 07:12 AM
The Video Bay
The new video streaming service is set to feature music and film

The world's most high-profile file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay (TPB), has lifted the lid on its new video sharing website, The Video Bay.

Billed as a rival to YouTube, the service will offer unrestricted video content, in violation of copyright law.

It is not clear when the service will actually go live; the site's founders said "it will be done when it's done".

In April, a court in Sweden jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay and ordered them to pay $4.5m (?3m) in damages.

TBP founder, Peter Sunde, announced The Video Bay to the Open Video Conference in New York.

In a statement on the site, Mr Sunde said the service would use the latest HTML 5 features.

"More specifically the audio and video tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats.

"This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk encoding, so please don't bug us too much if the site isn't working properly," he said.


If you thought the people behind the Pirate Bay were going to keep a low profile after losing that epic court battle over copyright, think again.
Although the site is in its early stages, a preview showed a number of copyright music videos available for viewing in the navigation sidebar.

The move will be seen by some as provocative, given that the founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail in April, though they are currently still free men.

Piracy battle

Speaking to the BBC, the head of Sweden's Pirate Party, Rickard Falkvinge, said this was another step in a "prolonged legal battle with the record industry".

"It's obvious that, given enough time, The Pirate Bay will win this war which will go on as long as the record industry has yet another penny to file a lawsuit.

"I think they [The Pirate Bay] are taking an important part in that battle, fighting for freedom of expression and culture against monopolistic companies," he added.

A spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said they were monitoring developments but declined to comment at this time.

gmb45
1st July, 2009, 08:14 AM
File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been sold to a Swedish gaming company.

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.

In April, The Pirate Bay owners were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement, fined 30m kronor and were sentenced to one year in jail.

The four men behind the site, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, said they planned to appeal against the sentence.

The Pirate Bay is one of the most well-known file-sharing sites on the web. Many people use it to find copyrighted material such as TV shows, games and music tracks. The Pirate Bay does not host any of the pirated material itself.

"We feel that we can't take The Pirate Bay any further," Mr Sunde told the Swedish news agency TT. "We're in a bit of a frozen situation where there's not much happening and there are neither people nor money to develop things."

Half the money GGF will pay for the site will be in cash and the remainder in shares in the company.

"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.

It is not clear how the deal affects the Video Bay - a video-sharing site set up by the people behind The Pirate Bay.

GGF specialises in software that helps run and maintain PCs used in cyber cafes and gaming centres.

cunny
1st July, 2009, 05:07 PM
The new owners of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay say users will be paid for sharing files.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8128551.stm)