Pirates donate $8 Million
By Techgirl

Swedish website ‘Pirate Bay’ is used by tens of millions of people to search and track down film and music videos.  As the most popular BitTorrent tracker site in the world, Pirate Bay earns substantial advertising revenue from companies.

While there is absolutely no doubt that many of the music/video files sourced from searches at Pirate Bay infringe copyright,  the website itself developed a cult following.   

Big movie and music companies stayed away from Pirate Bay till 2006. But they were hurting, and after an official complaint, the Swedish Police raided Pirate Bay.  A very public trail, started on Feb 16, 2009 to prosecute the men behind Pirate Bay.  As you can imagine there is lots of sympathy and public support for the Pirate Bay.  Many feel that Big Business can be a bully sometimes.  Big business says that only by protecting copyright they can ensure that artists get their due rights.  Some merit on both sides of the argument.

On April 17, 2009, the Stockholm Court found The Pirate Bay crew guilty of copyright infringement.  They were sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay a hefty fine.

The Pirate Bay has huge support in Europe.  The case was appealed on the grounds that one Judge was biased. On June 25, 2009 the Swedish Court of Appeal ruled the Judge was not biased. 

There will be more appeals and court battles. The Pirate Bay has substantial political support as well.

In the meantime, Global Gaming Factory X AB had approached The Pirate Bay with an offer of approximately $8 million to buy their popular site. The sale has gone through.  The Pirate Bay crew has blogged that most of the money will be donated to projects which support freedom of speech and openness of the internet.

“
The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!
“

The pirates got their loot.  But gave most of the money back to society.  So some pirates do have a big heart.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com