The prospective buyer of the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay is planning to implement a system that lets copyright owners remove content from the site in a quest to make it legal, Global Gaming Factory X said on Wednesday.
Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) announced plans to acquire The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish kronor (US$8.25 million) in June. GGF shareholders will decide at an Aug. 27 meeting whether the deal should go through or not.
GGF detailed some of its plans in documents prepared for the shareholders' meeting. It hopes to turn The Pirate Bay into a legal service by signing license deals with copyright owners.
Until the necessary deals are signed, the company will use a system, which will be in place on Aug. 27, that can identify copyright-protected content. Copyright owners can then either leave the content on the site and receive compensation or instruct to have it removed. But they will have to get in contact with GGF otherwise the content will still be available for download, according to CEO Hans Pandeya. GGF will not remove content on its own, he said.
There is no risk that all content will be removed on Aug. 27, according to GGF. Talks with the entertainment industry have led GGF to believe that a majority of the content will remain available. The company is convinced it will be able to sign deals with a majority of the world's major record labels within three months of the acquisition of The Pirate Bay being approved, and the movie industry will be onboard within a year, it says.
Users will be charged a monthly fee to access content on the new Pirate Bay or earn "frequent file sharing points" by sharing storing capacity on their computers and paying for content that way, according to Pandeya. He wasn't ready to say what the monthly fee will be.
No personal data about users will be shared, GGF said.
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