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PIRATE BAY

Pirate Bay buyer faces criminal investigation

Swedish police have launched an investigation into allegations of financial irregularities surrounding Global Gaming Factory X, the firm planning to purchase file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.

Published: 24 August 2009 16:31 CEST

“I have received a complaint about Global Gaming Factory but I can’t say more than that because the preliminary investigation is classified,” the head of the investigation, Anne-Marie Helander of the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, told AFP.

She said the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority “in early July” alerted police to potential irregularities concerning Global Gaming Factory.

According to the Swedish media, the company is suspected of insider trading in connection with its June 30th announcement of its acquisition of The Pirate Bay.

A week earlier, on June 22nd, “trading in the (Global Gaming Factory) share was suspended because of the rise in the share price before the announcement” of the acquisition, the deputy head of equities marketplace Aktietorget, Peter Gönczi, said.

Trading was suspended a second time last Friday, after Aktietorget said it had received insufficient information from Global Gaming Factory about how it planned to finance the 60-million kronor ($ 8.5 million) purchase of The Pirate Bay, Gönczi said.

Swedish media have suggested that the acquisition announcement was merely a bluff to boost Global Gaming Factory’s share price.

The chief executive of Global Gaming Factory, Hans Pandeya, meanwhile insisted on Monday that the investors financing the takeover would be presented on Thursday at the company’s board meeting.

“We will complete the sale on Thursday. Nothing can stop it,” he told AFP.

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PIRATE BAY

Sweden now owns Pirate Bay domain names

The Swedish state became the unlikely new owner of two domain names used by The Pirate Bay after a court ruling on Tuesday.

Published: 19 May 2015 14:31 CEST
Sweden now owns Pirate Bay domain names
The Swedish state now owns two Pirate Bay domain names. Photo: Vilhelm Stokstad/TT

In its ruling the Stockholm district court awarded Sweden the domain names piratebay.se and thepiratebay.se. 

The case marked the first time a Swedish prosecutor had asked for a web address to be wiped off the face of the internet, Dagens Nyheter reports. 

“A domain name assists a website. If the site is used for criminal purposes the domain name is a criminal instrument,” prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad told the Swedish daily earlier this year. 

Sweden’s Internet Infrastructure Foundation, which controls the Swedish top level domain .se, opposed the prosecutor’s move to prohibit any future use of the two Pirate Bay addresses.

The court agreed that the foundation had not done anything wrong and conceded that it could not force the group to block certain domain names, Dagens Nyheter reports. But by awarding the addresses to the Swedish state the court effectively ensured that they will not be sold on to another owner. 

The file-sharing service was temporarily knocked off line in December after police seized servers hosted at a data centre in a nuclear-proof bunker deep in a mountain outside Stockholm.

But seven weeks later the resilient file-sharing behemoth was back on its feet and Tuesday’s ruling is unlikely to knock it off balance for long, as the court cannot prevent The Pirate Bay from continuing to run sites on other domains.

The Pirate Bay, which grew into an international phenomenon after it was founded in Sweden in 2003, allows users to dodge copyright fees and share music, film and other files using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site – resulting in huge losses for music and movie makers.

In 2009 four Swedes connected with The Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to copyright infringement by a Swedish court. 

They were each give one-year jail terms and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in compensation.