CUPERTINO, California – 

Netflix, one of the world’s largest media companies, has just announced that they have purchased the popular illegal torrent website The Pirate Bay. TPB, as its commonly known, is one of the biggest sources of illegal online traffic, providing links for downloads of movies, music, pornography, and even textbooks.

Of the top 200 links on the website, 40 of them are Netflix properties, including the lastest film in the Child’s Play series, as well as Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, and several stand-up comedy specials. With the knowledge that many of their owned works were being bootlegged, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said he decided the best course of action was to buy the site.

“A lot of these websites, they claim to have some sort of principles, like they aren’t in it for the money, but for the freedom of information,” said Hastings. “Frankly, that’s bullshit. Of course they’re in it for the money. No one does anything without an endgame, and theirs was to get rich on someone else’s work – in this case movies, music, and TV. Knowing that, I went to them with an offer, and they accepted.”

Although the details of the deal were not made public, sources speculate that the purchase probably cost Netflix somewhere in the nature of $250 million. Their plans are to keep the site active, and charge users on a per-download basis.

“No use shutting it down entirely, that would be stupid,” said Hastings. “Instead, we’re going to keep it going, but no one will be taking our product anymore. They can pay for it like everyone else.”