Music Ally

Yet more bad news for the Pirate Bay acquisition – would-be purchaser Global Gaming Factory X has been delisted from the Swedish Aktietorget exchange for violating its transparency principles – this, after its shares were suspended a couple of weeks ago.

“The alleged infringements have been serious. hey give a systematic impression of a lack of accountability and of an almost casual and unsuspecting approach to the disclosure requirements,” says a statement from the exchange.

With GGF planning to part-pay for The Pirate Bay with shares, the deal looks in even more doubt. CEO Hans Pandeya remains strapped to the wheel, though, telling TorrentFreak that the deal will go through. “We will be closing the deal within the next two weeks,” he says. Righto.

Swedish firm Global Gaming Factory X says its purchase of The Pirate Bay WILL go ahead, having secured the approval of the company’s shareholders. This, despite investors in the deal withdrawing their backing in recent days.

CEO Hans Pandeya told a press conference that it will take 7-10 days for the deal to complete, and that “when the domain name comes over to us, at that moment it will be a legal site.” This may raise eyebrows, given that earlier this week, GGF’s proposed technology partner Peerialism said it had not been paid, nor had it started the necessary preparatory work.

Pandeya seems undaunted: PaidContent reports that he’s still claiming that GGF is “very close to an agreement with a major music company… one of the world’s largest”. Meanwhile, GGF’s shares remain suspended from the Swedish Aktietorget exchange pending a disciplinary committee meeting to decide whether to delist the company – which could prove an obstacle for the acquisition.

Still, GGF has the green light to proceed. Now it’s just got to sort those rights…

Today is the self-imposed deadline for Global Gaming Factory to complete its acquisition of The Pirate Bay. Is it going to happen? The omens aren’t promising, to say the least.

Swedish exchange Aktietorget, on which GGF is listed, has announced plans for a disciplinary hearing to decide whether the company should be delisted after failing yesterday to prove that it had the necessary funds to complete its purchase of the file-sharing site.

“After a meeting with the company on August 26th Aktietorget has concluded that the company can not be considered to have the capability to inform shareholders in a correct, relevant and reliable manner,” read a statement from Aktietorget, translated by Swedish news site TheLocal.

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There were more revelations this weekend about the would-be buyer of The Pirate Bay, Global Gaming Factory. It started with Sweden’s Economic Crimes Bureau launching an investigation into possible insider trading the week before the deal was originally announced.

A sharp spike in the company’s share price in the days before the announcement had raised eyebrows at the time. Meanwhile, Napster co-founder John Fanning has also come forward to say he DIDN’T table a $10 million bid for The Pirate Bay, as was claimed by GGF earlier this month.

“I thought it was harmless, but misleading,” he’s quoted as telling a Swedish newspaper. The issue is whether there was also suspicious trading activity in the days leading up to the press release about Fanning’s bid.

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It’s not looking promising for Global Gaming Factory’s planned relaunch of The Pirate Bay as a legal music service. When it announced the planned acquisition, GGF said it was also buying a company called Peerialism, whose technology would be used for the new Pirate Bay’s distributed file storage plans.

Except now Peerialism CEO Johan Ljungberg has cast doubt on the whole operation, in an interview with CNET. Why? Because he claims GGF hasn’t paid him the agreed amount for the necessary preparations to have the technology in place for launch. “That was two months ago but he hasn’t paid anything,” Ljungberg says.

“We have his signature on the contract, but he hasn’t paid and we haven’t done the work… From the beginning we asked to see a business plan, the names of his investors, or to see some (technical specifications). We still haven’t heard a thing…the question marks are growing bigger by the day. We’re not quite comfortable with the situation. We had really high hopes and ambitions for our technology but I’m not sure if this is the right home for it.”

Add this to the pile of unanswered questions and concerns surrounding GGF’s plans…

Lots of news about The Pirate Bay today, so we thought we’d wrap it into one post. Kicking off with reaction to Global Gaming Factory’s plans for the site, which will involve rightsholders either claiming torrents and getting paid for them, or asking for them to be removed from the site.

Dutch anti-piracy body BREIN isn’t impressed: “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content and remove it. That is insufficient,” says director Tim Kuik.

“This sort of Notice and Take Down system works in case of incidental infringement but not for the structural infringement that happens at The Pirate Bay… It is their site, their business, and so their job is to clean it up and keep it clean.”

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