Hans Pandeya, CEO of Pirate Bay acquirers Global Gaming Factory, is still insisting the sale is good-to-go and restates his goals to legitimize the company in a recent interview with Torrent Freak. In fact, his talks to make agreements with US labels have gone so swimmingly, he thinks the notorious Swedish file-sharing site could be traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Which sounds kind of crazy and impossible:
“We are looking into the possibility to get the operation listed on the NASDAQ Small Cap Index,” Pandeya told TorrentFreak, adding that the first priority is to get the major music labels and movie studios on board. “The Pirate Bay is a strong brand in the US and most parties who have showed interest in the project are based there,” Pandeya said.
GGF is currently wrapping up the funding for the Pirate Bay acquisition and most of the investors are from the US, which is another argument in favor of moving operations from their current base in Sweden. Despite these ambitious plans, GGF will still have to move a few mountains to get copyright holders on board without losing the current visitors.
Without an unlimited library of music, movies and software the current users will leave the ship and move on to the next torrent site. With copyright infringing links still present, none of the copyright holders will agree to enter. The pirate’s dilemma.
Pandeya agreed that this is not an easy task to complete, but assured us that GGF is confident that they can pull it off, and that a NASDAQ listing is realistic once agreements with the major music and movie studios are in place.
Take all of this optimism with a grain of salt, as former executive Wayne Rosso has called shenanigans on Pandeya with cries of false promises and shady business. Obviously, legitimizing and monetizing a one-time illegal file-sharing site has yet to work (see: Napster, LimeWire et al), and those didn’t carry the notoriously indignant, shit-starting image of The Pirate Bay.
