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Pirate Bay suitor: ‘Deal done next week’

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) insists it will seal a deal to take over file sharing Site before the end of next week despite questions from financial regulators about how it intends to finance the purchase.

Pirate Bay suitor: 'Deal done next week'

GGF chief executive Hans Pandeya told a press conference in Stockholm he expected the deal would go through “within the next eight days” once authorities allow trading to resume.

But Peter Gönzci, the vice-president of the equity market Aktietorget, told AFP that the Stockholm-based company had failed to provide details on who was backing its 60 million kronor ($8.4 million dollar) bid for the site.

“We are sceptical as he (Pandeya) couldn’t deliver the answers that we want: where the money is (to fund the takeover),” Gönzci said.

“They have not been able to show us any written agreements made with their investors,” he added.

GGF’s share price was suspended on August 21 after doubts surfaced over how it would fund its proposed purchase of The Pirate Bay.

Swedish media have suggested that the acquisition announcement on June 30

was merely a bluff to boost Global Gaming Factory’s share price.

Pandeya previously told AFP the sale would be completed on Thursday.

“Nothing can stop it,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

But Gönzci said the Aktietorget disciplinary committee was investigating whether GGF should continue to be listed.

“You can’t trade in the market if you can’t tell the market the correct information,” he added.

Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay makes it possible to skirt copyright fees and share music, film and computer game files using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site.

It claims to have some 22 million users worldwide.

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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.

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.