July 3, 2009 9:02

Pirate Bay's new owners reveal novel business plan

New business plan could see users paid to share songs

The new owners of Pirate Bay have revealed an ambitious plan to run the torrent site legitimately.

As previously reported, the site was brought for £4.7m earlier this week by Global Gaming Factor X AB.

Speaking about their plans for the site, the new owners' CEO Hans Pandeya explained the site will follow a unique business model.

Users will be paid for joining the service and sharing files, while copyright holders will be paid royalties when their material is shared.

Where Pirate Bay will now make money is by selling on the collective capacity of all the site's users to Internet Service Providers to help them cope when there is exceptional demand online, reports Business Week.

"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," explained Pandeya of the new model.

"The technology will use the community of file-sharers to cut costs of data traffic for ISPs by more than a half," he added. "Users will earn money by joining, which can be spent on Pirate Bay's other services [such as an expected online music store] or transferred to their bank accounts."

Although novel, the business model is not entirely unprecedented online, with peer to peer networks like Skype using a similar plan.

The acquisition of Pirate Bay is expected to be completed in August.