Sometime over the next 16 months, one-quarter of the Internet will go on sale. But you shouldn’t be suckered into this deal…
Before we get into the ins and outs of this sale, we need to clarify what it means to actually buy one-fourth of the Internet. Of course, you can’t just own something as large and independent as the Internet. But you can buy a portion of its traffic.
We’ve been recently writing about international telecoms. If you bought up enough of these Internet Service Providers you could potentially own enough Internet traffic to constitute a quarter. But there will soon be another way you can invest in the traffic with just a single click.
About 50% of all Internet traffic is from file sharing– people sharing music, videos, games, and every other type of file you can think of. Regardless of how you feel about Internet piracy, 50% of all bandwidth on the net is made up of this type of activity.
Here’s where the story really starts heating up…
The Pirate Bay: 2009 Has Already Been One Hectic Year
Half of all file-sharing traffic is hosted on a single website. That’s a fourth of all Internet traffic in one place. That site is called The Pirate Bay.
TPB was launched in 2003, less than one and a half years after Napster (NASDAQ:NAPS) —the pioneer in music file sharing— was forced to shut down because of court rulings.
TPB operates in Sweden, free from initial U.S. laws. But over the past several years, the European Union and many individual member-countries have cracked down on e-piracy.
In 2006, Swedish police raided TPB’s headquarters, temporarily shutting down its server. April of this year was an even worse time for the organization. Founders Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundstrom were sent to prison for one year and slapped with a $3.6 million fine.
TPB’s Next Giant Step Forward
With the founders in jail and facing serious fines, another Sweden-based company, Global Gaming Factory, announced plans to purchase TPB for $7.8 million. GGF intends to turn TPB into a legal, fee-based website. Users would have to pay a monthly fee to share files. This money would then be used to pay copyright fees for each file transfer.
This, again, might conjure up images of Napster, which was bought by Roxio Inc at bankruptcy auction. Roxio rebranded it as Napster 2.0, which began to offer legal, paid transfers. Best Buy (NYSE: ) acquired Napster last year for $121 million, but is struggling to see profits.
GGF’s plans for TPB, however, aren’t as small as Best Buy’s were for Napster.
