An ambitious, if not entirely business-savvy entrepreneur has a great idea for a business: buy The Pirate Bay and re-imagine it as a legal content distribution network. The only minor flaws: he has no money, and the owners of The Pirate Bay have maintained that they are not for sale.

Donald Trump wannabe Hans Pandeya is convinced that users currently paying small amounts to sites distributing illegal copyright material are ripe to be moved over to a level distribution system. Hans had hoped to buy the The Pirate Bay’s site and domain name and simply make the switch.

The Pirate Bay has been a thorn in the sides of the content publishing industries as they struggle to figure out how to move their business models online. International pressure has finally built up, and last year the site was found guilty of copyright infringement in a Swedish court.

Pandeya came up with the idea after the ruling and began trying to raise funds, but wasn’t able to build enough capital. He is now working towards a second attempt.

Users of The Pirate Bay are able to pay $6 per month to hide their IP address, Pandeya’s idea is to simply change the existing business model to pay that money to content providers and make all content legal.

The concept itself isn’t entirely flawed, but the first problem for users would be that a huge percentage of the downloads currently offered would presumably be removed while content agreements were negotiated. Facing similar problems to the iTunes Music Store, material currently available on torrent sites simply aren’t available through legal channels.

Source: Wired