The operators of The Pirate Bay will allow users to delete their accounts on the torrent-tracking site, a feature many users have requested since a deal to sell the site was announced Tuesday.
Swedish Internet cafe operator Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) announced on Tuesday that it plans to buy The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish kronor (US$7.8 million), prompting negative reactions from many of the site’s users.
“Many people have asked about having their account removed and we will not force anyone to stay on,” The Pirate Bay’s operators wrote in a posting to the site’s blog on Tuesday.
The operators planned to build a user deletion interface later Tuesday, according to the posting.
Users should not worry about their personal data falling into the wrong hands, they said.
“We have no logs of anything, no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept). So no need to be worried for safety,” they wrote.
While the question of logs is important in some European countries, Sweden has yet to adopt into national law a European directive requiring telecommunications and Internet operators to retain data about their customers’ online activities for law enforcement purposes.
Comments on the deal were not confined to requests for the account deletion feature. Other users called the site operators sellouts and said the deal will kill The Pirate Bay.
The operators wrote, however, that The Pirate Bay couldn’t afford to develop its services further without outside help.
“We cannot finance the growth of the site anymore,” they wrote, adding that the deal with GGF was the only available option.
Many users are still upset over that deal, but there also more understanding comments to the blog posting. “You will always have my support!” user blake324 wrote, while MassExodus said: “Thank you The Pirate Bay for all you’ve provided over the years – we’ll see how it pans out over the next few months”.