UPDATE: The Pirate Bay is taken offline and takeover hits troubled waters

The Pirate Bay

A Swedish court has ordered internet service provider Black Internet to pull the plug on The Pirate Bay website. The court order came as a result of legal action brought against the controversial file sharing website by the film and music industry.

Stockholm district court said Black Internet would be fined 500,000 kronor (£43,000) if it did not comply, so chief executive Victor Moeller said his firm had no choice.

PUBLISHED 24/08/09

The planned takeover of controversial file-sharing website The Pirate Bay by Swedish company Global Gaming Factory (GGF) may be in jeopardy, according to the BBC.

Trading in GGF shares has been suspended and it is thought the firm's chairman, Magnus Bergman, may have resigned.

The Swedish stock market is investigating whether GGF has sufficient funds to complete the sale.

Back in June, GGF agreed to pay 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over The Pirate Bay. Under the terms of the deal, GGF intended to take the site legal and charge users for content.

Users would be charged a monthly fee for legal music downloads, but the fee could be reduced if the user helped The Pirate Bay by giving over some of their own hard disk space to the site. This HDD space would then be sold on to Internet Service Providers (ISPs).