The founders of Pirate Bay have sold their stakes in the company. The controversial site hit headlines earlier this year when Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg were found guilty of “assistance to copyright infringement”, sentenced to a year in prison, and fined €2.8 million in a Swedish court.
The foursome have apparently solved the problem of the fine by selling Pirate Bay for a reported €5.4 million to Global Gaming Factory XAB. The software maker plans to turn the site (which hosts links to illegal filesharing torrents) into a legitimate entity by paying fees to artists and musicians who supply download links via Pirate Bay.
A report by Reuters claimed that the four will not personally benefit from the sale, but that the money will go towards other “internet projects”. Experts suggest that the site will lose a large portion of its users in the same way that Napster did when it began to charge to download material.
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