As news spreads of PirateBay going legit via its sale to European cybercafé technology giant Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), fans are seeing the turn of events as a ‘sell-out’ by the popular torrent site and logging off for good.

In a move reminiscent of music-sharing peer-to-peer service Napster turning into a legal music retail store after a lawsuit by Metallica, GGF’s CEO had announced: “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”

Translation: We picked up one of the hottest Web addresses and its amazing peer-to-peer file-sharing technology for a cheap price due to their recent controversy, and we are definitely not going to be dragged down into that battle.

PirateBay’s old owners promise to keep crying themselves hoarse for the causes of freedom of speech and information, and the openness of the Internet. But fans are finding it a bit hard to hear them over the loud KA-CHING!

“I [am] bailing, destroying all the tracks I can and getting the hell out of Dodge… Those who think file sharing can’t go away just witnessed 50% of the torrents on the net get ‘bought’ by a company with an unknown record. If that doesn’t chill you to the bone, then you have no idea how bad this is,” commented The Big JRD on the TorrentFreak discussion about the issue.

It seems that a lot of other people are having the same thoughts, with logs showing that PirateBay has lost almost 2,000 registered users since the announcement.

“I too am upset over this betrayal and I do not believe in the idea they are launching,” said SpearHawk2009 on rival torrent-sharing site, SuprBay. “Before I start trusting the owners, they need to start making sense and they are not. They are living in a dream world of their own and I, for one, doubt they will pull it off.”