I’m sure most of you reading these words are familiar by now, by reputation if not by actual experience, with The Pirate Bay, that Bittorrent resource of highly dubious legality that’s been at the epicenter of the biggest legal battle the Internet has seen since the heyday of Napster and “0-day warez” BBSs.  These are the guys who at one time tried to purchase an abandoned offshore-drilling platform in international waters and set it up as an independent country, one where filesharing was completely legal and the copyright cartels of the world held no sway.  (You can imagine how well that went over with the MPAA and RIAA…)

Word on the street today is that the Pirate Bay, whose founders were recently found guilty of facilitating the spread of illegal copyright-infringing content, is about to strike its Jolly Roger in favor of corporate colors.  Reports are flooding the net today that the Bay’s founders have either sold the domain, website, and all related trademarks to a hitherto-unheralded company called Global Gaming Factory X, or are on the verge of so doing.  If the deal is approved by all parties (assuming it hasn’t already been by the time you read this), it will go into effect beginning in August.

What this means for the future of the Bay is anyone’s guess, though one thing’s almost a gaurantee:  This will mean the end of the Pirate Bay as we’ve come to know it.  No longer will you be able to find torrent links to the latest versions of MS Office, Photoshop, or other obscenely-expensive program on that site.  Gone will be the pointers to MP3 collections and albun rips.  Say good-bye to downloads of hit TV shows and movies currently playing in theaters.  And I’d certainly think more than twice about trying to post porn there.

Curiously, this annonucement comes one day removed from the launch of a new subsidiary site, The Video Bay.  Whether there’s any connection between the two is left to anyone to guess at, though it’s certainly possible that this will be the new name and identity for the Pirate Bay once the sale is finalized and the transition is made, removing the “illegal” connotation from the site’s famous name.

As I write this up, the Pirate Bay is inaccessible, probably because the pirates, spooked by these reports, are trying to grab up everything they can, while they still can.  Of course, there are alternatives to the Bay if you’re really dead-set on defying copyright law, though of course we here at Way of the Geek, being the fine upstanding netizens that we are, wouldn’t dream of suggesting you perform a Google search on them.  Though if your website of choice is fairly well-known outside of tracker communities, I’d probably be worried…

Personally, I can’t say as I’m terribly surprised.  I knew this day would come.  It always does, eventually.

If you liked that, try...

1. Talk Like A Pirate
2. Wolverine’s Anti-Pirate Strategy: Multiple Endings?
3. NaNoStats: Wordpress NaNoWriMo Plugin
4. Upgrades Abound