Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay 348
mlingojones writes "TorrentFreak breaks the news of The Pirate Bay's acquisition by Warner Bros: 'After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.'"
Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that's the end of that.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
In the agreement, TPB will pay RIAA/MPAA a licensing fee for every song they sell. RIAA/MPAA lawyers hailed the deal as ground breaking.
TPB managed to keep a straight face long enough to get out of the room before laughing themselves silly at the RIAA/MPAA stupidity!
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Agree to pay the RIAA/MPAA's "protection" fees (retroactively, of course)
Step 2: Agree to the deal where WB takes control of your company (both assets and liabilities)
Step 3: Profit?!!
(As WB now has to pay out all of it's cash-on-hand to the RIAA/MPAA)
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Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
Haha, yes, I fell for it. Would you believe the "I haven't had my coffee yet" defense?
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
Huh? Are you sayign it's a joke? I just went to http://thepiratebay.org/ [thepiratebay.org] and it's confirmed there...I don't think an april fooler could hack into their site and change it.
and they said (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm living on the wrong land mass.
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Well, yes and no.
YOu can now hook in to PB for torrents and download what you wish.
The downside is that since Warner bought the Pirate BAy.....there will no longer be any Warner Bros. titles offered there. Only stuff from the other guys.....
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
See, back in the day, /. used to come up with one really good original April Fool's joke. It was like they crafted it over the course of a month or two, then popped it on an unsuspecting crowd. It was elegant, it was funny and it suckered lots and lots of people.
That evolved into the new philosophy of the past few years which is "if one really good joke was great, how about a bunch of really lame ones?" It's quantity over quality which, I guess, is what we want now.
I miss the old /.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
I miss the ponies!
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
With this extension [mozilla.org] you can relive OMG!!! Ponies!!! every day. Just go into the options and change the default style to OMG!!! Ponies!!!
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Me too. I was an AC here for years before I bothered to register, and the AF jokes back then were much, much better.
I'm laid up with a sprained ankle right now, and I was looking forward to today, for the laughs - could use some. This is lame. A lot of comments have been funny, but the stories just haven't been.
Even OMG PONIES was better than this :(
SB
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
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Remember "OMG PONIES!!"?
I do... I still do.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
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well for one thing, this the torrentfreak aprilfools, not the /. april fools...
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Agreed. The Evil Bit one was pretty good!
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The "Evil Bit" isn't a slashdot original, they were reporting on RFC 3514 [rfc-editor.org].
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LOL, whatever! This is an April fools joke just like the one about Ted Stevens getting his 7 federal crimes completely dropped! Ha, ha!
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Hate to break your heart dude, but unlike this story the Ted Stevens story is *not* an April Fools Day joke.
That's not the end of that... (Score:2)
... because now we'll get more Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
you believe this?
Why not, in order to be an april fools joke, humor would have to be involved, therefore I can only conclude that this is seriousness.
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if you have the cash, ive got this bridge up for sale...
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Duh! The point of an April fool's is to play along, not to show how "clever" you are by spotting it (playing along is much cleverer than that...)
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
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Seriously, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seriously, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
Gotta ask...what the hell does that mean? Something is 'pants'?? Never heard that one before.
Re:Seriously, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
Crap. Shit. Stupid. Boring. Onanistic. Take your pick.
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Re:Seriously, guys... (Score:4, Informative)
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I thought "pants" was a good thing. Maybe it's in the usage.
Oh man! That's the pants!
-like-
Oh man! That's the shit!
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I believe it stems from British English. They call pants trousers, and underwear pants. I also believe that pants is used as a somewhat general derogatory there.
Re:Seriously, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah..that explains it.
Even if I knew British English....I'd not get it, since I go 'commando'.
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I believe pants to be an evil dichotomy. Pants are like morals, and they just get in the way. We should go without pants of any form.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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A societal division between those who wear pants and those who don't.
Regardless, the comment was facetious and meant to be interpreted as one from a mad man.
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go 'commando' (Score:2)
Do Commandos go commando?
I used to know a Royal Marine Commando but I never had the nerve to ask him!
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"Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants."
Gotta ask...what the hell does that mean? Something is 'pants'?? Never heard that one before.
The word pants is a British term akin to "rubbish." I believe the British also use the word pants to mean underwear and trousers to mean pants.
Re:Seriously, guys... (Score:5, Informative)
"Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants."
Gotta ask...what the hell does that mean? Something is 'pants'?? Never heard that one before.
It's a colloquialism in British English that's used as a rough synonym for bollocks\crap\rubbish\arse.
Pants in British English are underwear instead of trousers, hence the negative connotations.
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Re:Seriously, guys... (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop it. Please. April Fools is pants.
That's what I love about the Brits. Yes, we Yanks/Americans get all the crap for not speaking English properly. Yet somehow our Canadian friends to the north, who except for a few odd British spellings (colour) and a few strange words (ever sat on a Winchester? It's not a gun.) say almost the same thing as we do with an accent that's close to ours, yet they escape condemnation. And don't get me started on the Aussies, who would probably say some crap like this:
Apfo pan
and we'd be expected to know that means "April Fools is pants".
But I digress. Really, you have to love the Brits. According to one source I found, saying that something "is pants" means it's of poor quality. So instead of saying
April Fools is lame
or
April Fools' is tired (note the apostrophe because the day is April Fools' Day with an apostrophe)
they have to tell us that "it's pants", which somehow we non-Brits will all magically know. For shizzle my nizzle.
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No, but I've sat on a Chesterfield (it's a sofa, not a cigarette).
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Everyone seems to forget how memes get started... (Score:2)
hey have to tell us that "it's pants", which somehow we non-Brits will all magically know.
I would like to tell you to turn in your card or something, but nobody else seems to remember how the "ispants" slashdot meme started. First there was this story [slashdot.org] which introduced the crowd to the term. Then people (I bet mostly Americans, since it never happened before) started tagging idle stories as "idleispants."
Basically, the person you replied to might not even be British. He might be one of us Americans, who is using a meme that he expects the slashdot crowd to be familiar with.
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It is?
So I can go to work wearing a pair of "April Fool's"?
That would turn into... (Score:3, Funny)
This is one of the better April Fools jokes I've seen.
It's about time (Score:5, Funny)
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Honestly this is the whole reason for the lawsuits. It was to devalue TPB so that WB or one of the other big media groups could purchase them on the cheap. I can't believe no one saw this coming.
Well, they are a dot com that is borderline legality in its own country, and they don't make any money. I'm surprised they didn't get bought out in 2000.
Next on the block? Sony (Score:5, Funny)
Not a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
13.37 Billion... (Score:3, Informative)
Thats one 1337 way to close the shop!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In an unrelated news, (Score:5, Funny)
In an unrelated news, Stallman has just announced that he's joining Microsoft.
in related news, windows 7 goes open source.
Re:In an unrelated news, (Score:5, Funny)
More breaking news: Darl McBride announced that he's going to throw his weight behind linux; "If you can't beat'em, join'em." he declared in a surprise announcement from amidst the still smoking ruins of SCO's headquarters.
He was hospitalized shortly afterward in critical condition due to what appears to be injuries inflicted by an office chair.
SB
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April Fools banner ads? (Score:2)
bedeebedeebedeeTHAT'S ALL FOLKS! (Score:3, Funny)
Keew da wabbit keew da wabbit...
RS
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I'm starting to miss the omgponies (Score:2)
Bring back the pink omgponies!
posting in the(?) april fools story (Score:2)
Achievement whoring, it has started.
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All right all right, I'll whore for this one achievement. Maybe we can get all us whores to reply to the last reply and set a new reply depth record.
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In related news... (Score:2)
The show features scantily clad women who compete for the affection of pasty sysadmins through a series of challenges, such as completing fibonacci sequences and climbing greased poles.
In a special segment, Peter Sunde from PirateBay will take over as the new CEO of Warner's file sharing site, now aptly named, Freedom's Destroyer with the iconic picture of a masted pirate
Ugh, April Fools overload... (Score:2)
-can't-take-any-more-bad-april-fools-articles--
Gawd, that's not even funny (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one (Score:2)
My work schedule is really killing me (Score:2)
Rickrolled? (Score:2)
Is that Rick Astley I hear humming in the background?
Sigh... (Score:2)
WAFJE
Worst April Fool's Joke EVAH!
An excellent quote (Score:2)
From the wiki entry about Warner Brothers:
Warner Bros. was a pioneer of films with synchronized sound (then known as "talking pictures" or "talkies"). In 1925, at the urging of Sam, the Warners agreed to expand their operations by adding this feature to their productions.[16] Harry, however, opposed it,[17] famously wondering, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
Maybe, like, people who went to plays? The demographic that at the time would likely have been the biggest attendees of moving
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Harry, however, opposed it,[17] famously wondering, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
Actually that's not idiocy at all -- it just shows how ahead of his time he was. I mean, seriously, have you watched E! lately? *shiver*
I freaked out yesterday... (Score:2)
Haha, quote from TFA (Score:2)
Figures (Score:2)
/.fail (Score:2)
Oh wait... some of you did buy it?
Below the fold, (Score:2)
Warner subsequently announced that The Pirate Bay would continue offering movie downloads from competitor Sony Picture Studios.
For real? (Score:2)
I can has achievement naow? (Score:2)
Of all the april fools stories, I thought the achievements one was such.
today's april fool is tomorrow's fact (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when Napster sold itself to the music industry. That was originally an April fool's story, before it became real. Then there was the April fool's story about taxpayers paying off all the mortgages in the world.
Great detective work there (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on now. (Score:2)
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HAPPY ST STUPID'S DAY!!
That's about the best term I've heard for it yet.
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Unrelated aside: Which is the last English-speaking country to experience midnight on 1st April? When does that happen?
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I dont believe you
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You must be new here....
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Do you prefer the OMG Ponies! approach?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6056735-7.html [cnet.com]
Actually, I'd seriously like to know if there is a preserved version of the OMG Ponies Slashdot.
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There are reasons I don't read Slashdot on 4/1. This is only one of them.
Something about your post is... impossible.