Stompyrobot.net

Chances are that anyone who reads this will already be aware of Swedish torrent tracking website, http://www.thepiratebay.org and most of you will already be aware that they are currently in talks about selling the site, http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164.

Interestingly this sale comes not too long after the guilty verdict against some of the men behind the eyepatch and the $3.6 million fine and prison sentences imposed on them (that is currently being appealed).

Below the cut is a nice big stream of thought for anyone who wants to read my opinion on the matter and related topics.

The company hoping to take charge of the site (Global Gaming Factory X, who I had never previously heard of) aim to shift it’s operation to a new business model where content creators are compensated for the downloading of their products. The idea of shifting illegal download sites over to legitimate revenue earning businesses is not a new one; it has been done before with the prime example being Lars Ulrich’s best friend, Napster. The Pirate Bay going legitimate is also a strange one since they are most famous for their blunt style of replying to legal threats from copyright holders. A prime example being their response to Enya’s record label:

Dear whatever-you-are,

thank you for providing us and our users with such great entertainment.

I’m not talking about Enya (hey, Enya fucking sucks), but instead of your

nonsensical email.

You have

- confused us with our ISP

- no knowledge whatsoever about BitTorrent

- no knowledge whatsoever of the appliciable laws (trademark or copyright)

- made very entertaining threats (hey, go ahead and contact RIPE NCC,

please, I beg you)

You have scored 10 out of 10 points on our Legal Threats Entertainment

scale. You win the grand prize: A lifetime of ridicule on our legal

threats section (http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/) !

Congratulations!

Please also note that I’m not currently out of toilet paper, so you may wait a while before sending legal papers.

Can you honestly see the supporters of this site continuing to follow it once it starts asking them for money (I’m assuming that’s what’s coming as the compensation money has to come from somewhere). Another strange thing about the sale of The Pirate Bay is the price it’s going for, a paltry $7.8m. While that is a sum of money I wouldn’t mind having myself we are living in a time where YouTube sells for $1.95 billion and Microsoft purchase 1.6% of Facebook for $240 million.

Napster, as previously mentioned, was the site effectively responsible for making illegal downloading of music mainstream. Napster now operates using a subscription based model where users pay $5 a month or £9.95 in the UK. I remember being introduced to the original, illegal service when I must have been about 12 or 13. I’m not sure that kids that age nowadays would even know of its existence. This somewhat leads me on to my next point, when these services go legitimate people tend to move away from them quicker than you can download and listen to your favourite Venga Boys song (this is a rubbish analogy for me as I never downloaded the Venga Boys and also downloading things was also a fairly slow process in those days thanks to my mighty 56k modem).

Will the same thing happen to the Pirate Bay? I’d say that it is almost certain. Even before I was aware of The Pirate Bay I was aware of bitTorrent and other sites providing near identical functionality, one of these sites was the now Pirate Bay owned Suprnova.org which closed towards the end of 2004. Getting rid of the websites is one thing but getting rid of the technology behind it is a bit tougher.

BitTorrent is used to distribute many legitimate files such as linux distributions (clichéd excuse used by pirates) and also Blizzard use the technology to distribute patches for their massively successful World of Warcraft.

The closure of Napster in 2001 led to a rise in other peer-to-peer file sharing programs such as Kazaa and Limewire. Both of these applications now offer paid for versions.

People are always willing to put time and effort into finding new sources if it means that they can find what they want for a better price, and you can’t get much better than free. I don’t know what the next big thing for illegal file sharing will be but I am certain there will be one.

That’s not to say that there is not a future for paid download services. Valve has had phenomenal success with their Steam platform for downloading games. One thing that Valve do is each weekend they offer a game or multiple games with a hefty discount which almost always results in a huge sales spike for that game. They have managed to hurt my bank account on numerous occasions with this practice, causing me to fork out on things I would not normally have purchased. Over the Festive holiday season they offered sales across whole ranges of games and then revealed some stunning sales figures (that I first saw on http://www.rockpapershotgun.com):

• 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
• 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
• 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
• 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

This means that even when selling at 75% off, they are making 15% more money (in your finest dollars and pounds) than they were at full price. Basically people are willing to pay for things when the prices suit them. While Steam has resulted in good value and sales when they are lower priced they are making mistakes in most new releases in that they are charging the same, if not more in numerous cases than what you would pay if picking up a physical copy of something in a shop. High prices in shops are what led to the collapse of retailers such as Virgin Megastore/Zavvi and Woolworths. Ultimately, the lesson is sell things at a sensible price and people will buy them.