Most people who follow internet news know by now that The Pirate Bay has been purchased and that the new owners are looking to go legit. It’s also been stated that the site won’t change enough to drive those who want to download premium content for free away. How might you ask? Well, pay them of course!
That seems to be the plan according to the company’s new owner. The plan would require ISPs to pay TPB for the bandwidth they would be saving. Home Theater Magazine has a quote stating:
“Let’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site—which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP—we can take that song and put it out on P2P. The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn’t have a million people all grabbing a file and—for the users who share that song—a payment [is given] for putting that file on the P2P network.”
I’m not sure how much sense this makes. So, I have to pay to download the track or movie but then I’ll be compensated if I continue to upload? I guess it could work, but that depends on ISPs not upping the price of my internet for uploading all of that data.
If this would allow me to maintain an account with TPB to which credits would be given for uploading then I’m all in. P2P works and works well. Leveraging the technology for good instead of what people think it’s for now would be a good thing. While I doubt it would end piracy, it may take a big bite out of it.
