TPB becomes a pay site. Its official.

[Sgt. Shotgun]

The new owner of The Pirate Bay, Global Gaming Factory, has outlined some critical changes to how the site will work – with the most interesting being that you will have to pay to use the website.

To make the torrent tracker a legitimate service – quite a feat considering its name – users will have to cough up cash but if they contribute in some way to the running of the site, then they could be in line for some discounts.

Grokster CEO

This is according to the website's newly-recruited deal-maker Wayne Rosso, who used to be CEO of Grokster – a now-defunct P2P website which now just hosts an ominous place-holder page, which states: "The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal.

"Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorised peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

"There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them."

Pay less

Speaking to CNet, Rosso said about The Pirate Bay's new direction: "The more of your computer resources you contribute to the network, the less you pay down to zero. The user is in control."

In essence – if you offer up some of your hard drive space to the Pirate Bay network, you could be in for a discount. Quite how much you will have to pay is uncertain, but it will be a monthly fee.

Via TorrentFreak

I guess this is it for TPB then.

[Malevolent]

Oh, whoa. Fuck that.

[Connor]

R.I.P The Pirate Bay.

[Justin]

It's not like we didn't know it was coming

Now, lets not make this into a place to find new torrent trackers.

[roan]

*just goes to the other available sites*

[Robdog]

TPB is relocating to another site (Not reveled yet).

[Cicero17]

It's not like there aren't plenty of others...

[Sparticus]

I know of one that is even better than the piratebay. It is a shame though. I hope the new owners don't actually plan on making any real money of of what they're doing.

[Ewan]

It's sad, though, because afaik demonoid is one of the better ones and it's a private tracker. Sad. Oh, well. I'm still fine for (a lot) of music and porn, though.

[Ashes]

This reminds me a heck of alot like the Napster shenanigans.

[Vardøger]

Well, there are other sites out there, but it's still sad to see The Pirate Bay go down the tubes. It was iconic.

[Jorge]

It used to be my favorite torrent site.

[Roflcopter out]

Pfft, screw torrents

[Malevolent]

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-s...-water-090728/

[Nas]

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-s...-water-090728/

Awesome! Pirate Bay will be free for at least a little while longer.