MiniNova turned down ‘millions’: story
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- Thanks to unrelenting pressure from the vested-interest corporate entertainment cartels, Dutch site MiniNova was last November forced to close its traditional indexing service, switching to content distribution.
The cartels do, however, allow the world’s largest and, some argue, most effective and profitable indexing site, to continue unscathed and untroubled.
It’s called Google.
According to TorrentFreak “Global Gaming Factory’s planned acquisition of The Pirate Bay last summer surprised BitTorrent’s friends and foes alike”. But, it goes on:
“The Pirate Bay was not the only site the company was after. It also put in a massive 20 million euro offer for fellow BitTorrent site Mininova.”
TorrentFreak apparently has an inside track to GGF and was among the first to break the news the “Swedish internet cafe giant” was after TPB.
But the deal was “fraught with problems with P2P pioneer Wayne Rosso walking almost on day one, and other top level figures such as Johan Sellstrom — described by The Local as a “Swedish IT pioneer and former board member of GGF” — making not waves, but tsunamis which threaten to swamp the acquisition plans, and GGF CEO Hans Pandeya”, said p2pnet.
TorrentFreak, however, continued to report the ‘acquisition’ as plausible long after the rest of the world had recognised it for what it apparently was — wishful thinking on the part of GGF, to put it in its best light.
Now, “TorrentFreak has learned that GGF and Mininova already finalized a contract last summer to sell the torrent index for no less than 20 million Euros”, it says in a shock report, going on:
“This deal and the amount have been confirmed by several independent sources close to Mininova and GGF. One of the sources who confirmed the Mininova buyout plans was Hans Pandeya himself.
“One of our sources further said that the deal had already been signed off by Mininova, and that GGF would wait for the verdict in Mininova’s appeal with the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. This verdict was due one day before the GGF shareholders were set to give the green light on the Pirate Bay deal.”
However, there may be more schlock than shock.
“We didn’t have a signed contract or anything like that”, MiniNova president and co-founder Erik Dubbelboer tells p2pnet.
“There was no deal”, he states simply.
What’s happening to MiniNova these days?
“We’re working on getting some more interesting content, mainly”, says Dubbelboer. “Some will be released pretty soon.
“We are also focusing on our other projects. We have some new exiting improvements coming to Snotr , and we launched Dispostable not long ago.”
Stay tuned.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
unscathed and untroubled – Cartel-proof P2P indexing site, July 29, 2009
The Local – Debt collector hunts Pirate Bay buyer, August 21, 2009
fraught with problems – Global Gaming debts threaten Pirate Bay deal, August 22, 2009
The Local – Debt collector hunts Pirate Bay buyer, August 21, 2009
p2pnet – GGF boss Pandeya ’subject of smear campaign’, August 26, 2009
March, 2010
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March 4th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
“What’s happening to MiniNova these days?”
Just ignore than flushing sound you hear…
March 4th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
With the cartels and TF pulling the chain …
March 4th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Hollywood and Big Music are like a big jelly fish, enveloping everything they can reach.
But you know what happens to jelly fish when they’re beached.
Cheers!
March 4th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
I’m not sure you read the entire piece Jon, but just to be clear i’ll quote the final key section that you omitted:
“Sources from within Mininova deny that a contract was already signed on their part. Instead, Mininova would have liked to see some proof that GGF could pay the proposed sum before signing.”
So to offer a summary: Some said there was a signed deal, others confirmed that point of view. We reported that.
We spoke to Mininova, they said there was no deal, we reported that too.
Cheers
March 4th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
@ enigmax:
“I’m not sure you read the entire piece Jon, but just to be clear i’ll quote the final key section that you omitted:”
“Omitted” means failed to include or mention. I didn’t fail to include it. I chose not to. I preferred to ask one of the principals directly, which I did.
You add, “So to offer a summary: Some said there was a signed deal, others confirmed that point of view. We reported that.”
You did. And I quoted what I thought were the relevant references.
“We spoke to Mininova, they said there was no deal, we reported that too.”
As did I.
However, after posting this story I was told about an item by Wayne Rosso in The Music Void [ http://www.themusicvoid.com/2010/03/he%E2%80%99s-baaaaaack-hans-pandeya/ ].
As I say in my post, early on, Wayne decided he didn’t want to be involved in the GGF / Pirate Bay deal. On that, in Music Void, he says in part:
We were in London at the time meeting with several labels about licensing. In the middle of a meeting with several senior executives at one of the majors, a question came up concerning some traffic metrics that we did not have at our fingertips and were wondering where we could find the pertinent data. Hans piped up and said that he knew where we could get the numbers we needed. He then picked up his mobile phone, put it on speaker, and called some unidentified phone number in the Netherlands. A voice answered on the other end and Hans and the rest of us in the room proceeded to ask the gentleman some questions. The mysterious voice joined out conversation for about tens minutes and then signed off. We all asked Hans who was on the other end of the call and he said that it was a company of his located a couple of hours outside of Amsterdam — “a real company with a real CEO and real offices”. He then said that we could get all of the data we needed there and insisted that one of the senior label execs go to the Netherlands the following week with us to visit the company for some due diligence and to run whatever diagnostics that he may need to look at. We made tentative plans to spend a day there.
I was a bit puzzled though, because Hans had never mentioned that he had a company in the Netherlands. It was all very new to me and I had no idea what was going on. But we went on with the rest of our busy day and I didn’t revisit the subject until the next morning when Hans and I were on our way to our attorney’s office for a big meeting.
I asked Hans what was up with the Dutch company. He started to grin like a Cheshire cat. “It’s Mininova. I’m going to buy Mininova too and eliminate all the competition.”
Needless to say, I freaked out. But Hans evidently didn’t see a problem with walking an unwitting major label executive into a company in a foreign country that his employers just happen to be suing to high heaven, let alone letting the CEO of Mininova anonymously sit in on a meeting with a content owner. Hans’ reply: “What’s the big deal?”
So I was wrong. It wasn’t schlock. It was shock.
Cheers!