As if the plans for the Pirate Bay haven’t generated enough publicity and controversy, GGF’s CEO Hans Pandeya is already preparing his next move. Aside from The Pirate Bay, the company aims to take over several other larger torrent sites.
“We will try to buy as many torrent sites as possible,” Pandeya told TorrentFreak. In common with their plans for The Pirate Bay, GGF hopes to turn these sites into large media stores where users can download content with the full permission of copyright holders.
TorrentFreak has confirmation from one of the major torrent sites that they have been approached by GGF. The owner of the site – who prefers to remain anonymous – told us that the contact was informal and that no deals have been closed thus far.
This isn’t the first time a company has targeted torrent sites in the hope of building a large network of traffic and potential customers. Three years ago Searching.com came up with a similar idea, and although they managed to get some advertising partnerships, none of the torrent sites were taken over at the time.
Things will be different this time around though. According to Hans Pandeya there are plenty of investors who are willing to partner with the company, and the entertainment industry is also following the latest developments with great interest.
The real problem for GGF is one of a different nature. They can buy dozens of sites and cut deals with all the big movie studios and record labels, but they have to find a way to keep downloading free, or at least dirt cheap. If they can’t pull this off, their newly acquired userbase will flock to the next torrent site in a snap.
