What do Hans Pandeya and Global Gaming Factory, the company that just bought The Pirate Bay for $7.9 million, plan to do with the Web's most notorious destination for illegal file-sharing? In an interview with BusinessWeek's Mark Scott, Pandeya, Global Gaming's CEO, says he intends to pay royalties to the likes of Warner Bros. and Sony BMG for the right to distribute their content. Of course he didn't say how much he's willing to pay-in fact, he hasn't yet entered into negotiations with them. But gaining access to legitimate content is just Phase 1. Pandeya's ambitions for …

A new survey from Webroot, a security solutions firm, shows that 78% of social networking users are concerned about privacy, but most fail to act on it. In fact, the survey says that most users don't even understand how to use the privacy tools already in place on social networks today. Given the concern about privacy, it's surprising to find that 80% of the users surveyed allow all or part of their profiles to be indexed by public search engines like Google, while 66% of users don't restrict any profile information from being publicly searchable. Perhaps even more …

"Stick a fork in it; Joost is done," proclaims GigaOm's Om Malik following the news that the online video startup is shifting its focus to the (crowded) field of white-label video hosting. Malik describes this market as "littered with the carcasses of other failed video hosts." The company is also replacing CEO Mike Volpi with Matt Zelesko, the current VP of engineering, and cutting its workforce by between 70 and 90 employees. It will also shut down its offices in the Netherlands. So, what went wrong? Malik provides a tidy laundry list. "Other startups should learn from the …

According to a new survey from Polachi Inc., "exits" are keeping VCs up at night -- as well they should be, says Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson, because the exit numbers from the second quarter were not good. Citing a report from Dow Jones VentureSource, Carlson notes the following: -Liquidity flowing into venture-backed companies fell 57% from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009, from $6.48 billion to $2.8 billion. -Second quarter liquidiity also fell 60% from the $6.48 billion raised in Q1 2009. -The 67 deals during the quarter was the lowest quarterly total since 2009.

"What's the value of a site with millions of unique visitors, massive press attention and traffic that has doubled over the last year?" asks Forbes writer Andy Greenberg. "If those millions of users are copyright-flouting filesharers who rebel at the site of big media collaboration, surprisingly little." Indeed, on Tuesday, The Pirate Bay, the Web's top directory for indexing and tracking bittorent files, announced that it was selling itself to Swedish gaming firm Global Gaming Factory for $7.7 million. The company's new owners plan to make the site into a legitimate media business that licenses content. If …

Nobody seems to have noticed, but YouTube cofounder Steve Chen vacated his post as chief technology officer last fall, and has yet to be replaced, according to Peter Kafka. However, he remains employed by Google, which bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. "Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. He's still involved with YouTube and invested in its success," YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes said via email. Why hasn't Chen been replaced? Because, sources claim, the job no longer exists. The company's highest-ranking engineer is now Louis Perrochon, Kafka says, who has been …