[poisomike87]

Funny, My grandmother uses the pirate bay now

[TankGirl]

11.6.2006

Justice Ministery: "Legalizing filesharing would conflict WIPO, UN and EU treaties." - Pirates: "So be it."

Christoffer Démery from the Swedish Justice Department warns in Sydsvenska's interview that legalizing filesharing would lead Sweden into a legal conflict with WIPO intellectual property treaties, UN copyright conventions and EU directives. While the various international deals would leave some room for interpretation with downloading only (leeching), the conflict will be inevitable when it comes to uploading. Sweden can legalize filesharing nevertheless, which will make the situation legally unambiguous to the citizens; in this case Sweden will have to take whatever heat there is to come from WIPO, UN and EU through the various diplomatic channels.

The leading Swedish pirates are fully aware of this but they think it is worth doing anyway.

Rasmus Fleischer from Piratbyrån says: "I don't think that the Swedish opinion needs any formal legalizing. What we want most is a stop to the furious efforts to control what people are sending to each other over the Internet. The discussion about copyrights can take its time and be conducted internationally."

Richard Falkvinge, the leader of the Pirate Party, says: "The eventual penalties that Sweden will have to pay are much less than what we can win here." As for WTO, UN and EU he says: "There has to come a time when we start to change outdated laws. We will begin it in Sweden but we are also thinking about others at the European level. When Europe has changed, the rest of the world cannot ignore this anymore."


-----

(Great post, Rasta, and a great Granny, Poisomike! )

[vernarial]

I sometimes go too far in my cynicism in regards to politics and corporations.

[TankGirl]

While Pirate Bay was still recovering from the May 31 police raid and the activists in Stockholm and Gothenburg were preparing for their support demonstrations, Piratebyrån's Rasmus Fleischer was at the Reboot Conference in Denmark where he gave an insightful speech, formally titled "Gray Commons", digging deep into what copying, uploading and downloading really mean and imply in the era of filesharing. Here's the speech:

Piratbyran's speech at Reboot


A couple of samples:

Quote

Metadata, not copyrighted material, is the war on piracy's target

...

Pirated copies will be produced, no matter the fate of file-sharing networks. We're all too often today equalising unauthorised digital copying with file-sharing networks, but it's a fact that a lot of the illicit warez arrives at the hard disk from a physical storage medium, like an usb-device, a borrowed cd or a burned dvd.

To the extent that some people may avoid P2P networks, research shows that they just reconnect to other sources of data – be it physical copying from family and friends or files exchanges with mail and chat clients. It's all a piracy performed in a grey zone outside surveillance.

So the question is not piracy or not, nor if darknets are desirable or not, but what infrastructures piracy will take use of. Burning cd's or gmailing files or giving them away with services like Yousendit.com, means quite much that piracy is stuck in the same infrastructure that it had during the era of the cassette tape and the photocopier, only multiplied by digital effectivity. There is still a dependence of finding someone (a friend, a library) with access to the source. File-sharing networks, however, connects every private archive that in one particular moment is connected, into the largest and most accessible archive ever.

Quote

About mental rights management

...

It is essential for the copyright industry to keep the majority of computer users trapped in the belief that the ”window” of their web browser is exactly a window, through which they can look at information located elsewhere, under someone else’s control. Then our job is to clarify that everything you see on your screen or hear through your speakers, is already under your control.

Zeros and ones have no taste, smell or color – be they parts of pirated material or not. Therefore it is impossible to construct a computer that cannot reproduce and manipulate these zeros and ones – as such a machine would no longer be a computer, but something as grotesque as a digital simulation of the machines of the last century.

Rasmus speaking at the Pirate Bay support demonstration in Stockholm 3.3.2006, a day after his speech at Reboot

[TankGirl]

12.6.2006

Here's a bit from the 10.6.2006 editorial of newspaper Expressen, saying a strict "No" to broadband tax, proposed as a method to compensate copyright holders in case Sweden legalizes filesharing.



"Absolute No" to broadband tax

"The police raid against Pirate Bay finally initiated the debate that we should have had already a year ago. At the time we criminalized filesharing, and the only protests we heard were those from the activists. Now that the debate has grown wider, it took only one week until the responsible parties started to bend in the question. This says a whole lot about the quality of legislation work. When a legal proposal comes in an EU directive, we way too often take it as some sort of supernatural force that cannot be influenced on.

It is remarkable that other parties besides Centre Party and Green Party are now starting to realize that we cannot criminalize a whole generation of youth and a whole Internet culture. Downloading films and music from Internet is here to stay. Recording music from radio to cassette tapes and taping films from TV to videotapes cannot be stopped either, even if the content industry really hard tried to do it.

However, it is distressing to see how many Parliamentary parties seem to favor a special broadband tax supposed to compensate artists for the claimed losses of CD sales. The idea is to tax the traffic on Internet so that the state could give money to a particular segment of culture.

This is the biggest threat of socialism since the employee stock funds. The artists will in practice become state employed culture workers. Free culture life will become a joke.

We should be extremely cautious to give the state any permissions to tax new activities. It will soon become like V.A.T. - first a temporary minor cost but soon the biggest cost in the household.

It is also very worrying that the first question for all the parties has been how the artists and the film industry will get paid. A progressive policy in an active broadband country like Sweden would instead protect freedom in the Internet, totally ditch the present laws on filesharing and leave it to the acting parties to find a way to make their money."

[multi]

TorrentFreak

It looks like The Piratebay is back home again. The Piratebay had to move because the Swedish police raided their servers. But, after a short stay in The Netherlands the torrent tracker returned to their provider “PRQ” in Sweden.

At least, that’s what the ip info tells us.

Another point of interest is the “reverse DNS” that sends out a clear message to the MPAA and their friends:

hey.mpaa.and.apb.bite.my.shiny.metal.ass.thepiratebay.org.

Al the controversy surrounding The Piratebay initially doubled their traffic but it’s now back to normal.
More..

[TankGirl]

Yes, Multi....

14.6.2006

Pirate Bay operating from Sweden since Saturday

Newspaper Aftonbladet reports that Pirate Bay has operated from servers located in Sweden since last Saturday. When Aftonbladet asked for a comment from Håkan Roswall, the prosecutor behind the May 31 raid, it turned out that Roswall was not yet aware of this development. Roswall was sceptical about the news and suspected it to be a 'propagandistic claim' by the filesharers.

"I thought he knew that we are back", says Fredrik Neij from Pirate Bay. "He is welcome to check if he wants." Neij tells that Pirate Bay decided to leave Netherlands after being pressured by the local Justice Department. Their server equipment is partially rented and partially donated by people who want to see the site to get back on its feet. According to Aftonbladet the site remains 20-30 % more popular than what it was before the May 31 raid.

[multi]

Quote

Pirate Bay decided to leave Netherlands after being pressured by the local Justice Department

i thought the Dutch host was like a sure thing
hosted other fairly well known bit torrent indexing sites or something
damnit now i will have to back track and read stuff..

[JackSpratts]

that prosecutor better get busy and order another raid pronto or look for another job (w/the mpaa). can't have reprobates thumbing their noses at authority can we? i should say not.

- js.

[TankGirl]

JackSpratts, on Jun 14 2006, 02:25 PM, said:

that prosecutor better get busy and order another raid pronto or look for another job (w/the mpaa). can't have reprobates thumbing their noses at authority can we? i should say not.

I agree, Jack. In no way should such defiance of the law be tolerated.

[multi]

theres no defiance they have been contained

[TankGirl]

15.6.2006

Swedish Police to propose new actions against filesharers

Expressen reports Swedish police planning "more effective action" against filesharers. What that might imply is yet unclear. "We will present tomorrow some concrete proposals to make our work more effective", promises Stefan Eurenius from the Swedish Police. The request for new copyright law enforcement ideas comes from Justice Minister Thomas Bodström, the leading political figure behind the new stricter Swedish copyright law. The law has since last summer effectively criminalized 1.3 million Swedish filesharers, as estimated by SCB, the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics. Bodström has repeatedly demanded "tough measurers" against filesharers.

The latest hardline action - a raid against world's largest torrent site Pirate Bay - turned into a huge political boost for the new Pirate Party, aiming to the Parliament in the coming September 18 election and now having 6891 members. The party is quickly approaching the size of Green Party (Miljöpartiet) that has presently 7862 members and is an already well-established political force in Sweden with its 17 parliamentary seats. The Pirates will need about 225,000 votes to make it to Riksdag, the 349-seat Parliament of Sweden.

[JackSpratts]

well well. just when you think it couldn't get any more fun, it's gets even funnier.

these authorities apparently never studied political science. this is exactly how governments fall. and here i've been thinking americans were historically challenged.

it's going to be a fascinating summer.

- js.

[TankGirl]

15.6.2006

Expensive collateral damage from the Pirate Bay raid



Aftonbladet reports that already 15 of the approximately 200 innocent third-party businesses who were kicked offline in the Pirate Bay raid have contacted State officials demanding compensation for their downtime. Many of these businesses are small 1-3 person companies to whom even a week of downtime may prove costly or fatal. The individual demands vary between 1,000 USD and 20,000 USD; the total 'collateral damage' costs of the May 31 raid may rise to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"You could compare this to a situation where the police is trying to catch a given car from a parking hall but ends up confiscating and removing every car from the hall.", says Clarence Crafoord from the Centre for Justice whose lawyers are helping the affected businesses pro bono.

[«Kingly»]

with the small businesses demanding money you think the goverment might look back and learn from this but you never know. or they might just take the money from the prosecutor's pay. that would be funny.

[Dr. Avery]

vernarial, on Jun 11 2006, 07:20 AM, said:

I sometimes go too far in my cynicism in regards to politics and corporations.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's just because everyone else doesn't go too far enough

[TankGirl]

15.6.2006

Swedish Police proposal: special p2p prosecutors, p2p investigator teams

The Swedish Criminal Police and Prosecuting Authority left yesterday their proposal for more effective measures to fight illegal filesharing in Sweden, as requested by the Ministery of Justice earlier this spring. The main suggestions are to educate four special prosecutors to handle all filesharing cases and to have dedicated investigator staff to handle filesharing cases, reports newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

So far the filesharing cases have been assigned to whoever online crime investigators have been available in the scarce IT-trained staff investigating also crimes like online pedophilia and online fraud. Same with prosecutors - cases have been assigned to whoever prosecutors have been available. The training of the four special prosecutors (two from Stockholm, one from Göteborg and one from Malmö) is planned to be 10 days long. The p2p investigators will get a five week training to legal and technical issues.

Henrik Pontén from Antipiratbyrån is happy that "the prosecutor understands the complexity of this type of crime and is willing to dedicate resources and get a better competence on it."

Rickard Olsson, one of the candidates of Pirate Party in the coming September 18 parliamentary election, says: "The police and the prosecutors do not understand anything about what is going on, and after their 10 day crash course they will hardly understand anymore. But at least they admit that they don't have any competence on this field today."

[Happy]

File-sharing police 'need better training'

Published: 16th June 2006 12:16 CET

Those who investigate copyright crimes should go back to school for a crash course in how to better deal with illegal file sharing, the Swedish Police and prosecutors have recommended.

Such investigations should also be concentrated to those international prosecutors in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, as well as police with similar capabilities in the same locations, the recommendation said.

The National Criminal Investigation Department suggests coordinating reports of crime, as well as assisting other police agencies in investigating. Certain prosecutors would get a 10 day class.

The head of the Pirate Party, a group advocating file sharing in Sweden, said the class period was much too short to learn so much technical information.

Investigators are recommending a five-week-long class as part of police training.

Read more at The Local

[TankGirl]

19.6.2006

Pirate fleet organizing for the battle ahead

The Swedish parliamentary election is only three months ahead, and the Pirates are tuning up their field organization - or rather their fleet organization - for the crucial political battle ahead. Rather than using the dry conventional terms like 'region', 'electroral district' etc. the Pirates have decided to use in their election work marine terminology fitting better to the pirate theme. So for the Pirates, Sweden is divided into five 'fleets', each having several 'squadrons' (electoral districts), and each squadron in turn consisting of a number of 'ships' (local voting districts).

The membership of Pirate Party has now exceeded 7000 members, and the statistics are already starting to favor the party's aspirations for a parliamentary breakthrough. In previous parliamentary elections a registered party member in Sweden has statistically been worth of 30-34 votes in the election. To reach the 4 % voting thresold the Pirates will need each of their present members to be able to generate about 30.3 votes. The structurally most comparable party is the Green Party who managed to generate 30.8 votes per registered member in the previous election in 2002.

[TankGirl]

20.6.2006

Swedish economist: "Time to get rid of copyright law"

"It is time to get rid of copyright law", writes Karl-Henrik Pettersson, an economist and author, in Swedish newspaper Expressen. "The thought of not having a copyright law may sound unrealistic. But it is not. A copyright law that is already ignored by millions of young people is in practice already half-gone. And it may very well be in society's best interest to get rid of the law also formally."

He goes on to clarify the difference between stealing and copyright infringement, demanding that the right to make copies is legally clearly separated from the ownership of the artists to their works. "Making this distinction between ownership right and copyright leads to an important insight - that the ownership can remain even if the copyright is taken away. For example, as a creator of music I would always have ownership to my works so I could keep on selling them to companies just like today, and they could keep selling them to the market just like today. There would only be this one important difference: copyrights being removed, the company could not set limits to how many copies of the work are being made, how it is further distributed etc."

He emphasizes common good as the correct basis for legislation. "Naturally we cannot let only media industry and their economical interests to determine whether we should have copyrights or not. An increased benefit for the society must be the basis for a copyright law, just like it is the basis for other laws. Why should we maintain laws that do not give citizens back real value for what they are paying for. I have serious doubts whether today's copyright laws bring any increased benefits for the society at all."

The public debate on filesharing is active in Sweden - and it will probably just heat up as the September election gets closer - with many authors, artists and culture workers coming out with their opinions. The overall response of the Swedish culture community to the filesharing issue favors legalization as proposed by the Pirate Party in its election agenda. There are naturally opposing voices as well but they seem to be in clear minority among artists and culture workers. Many artists express their economical worries about the changes ahead but at the same they time give their support to the legalization as the sensible thing to do.

On the political front only Christian Democrats have taken a definite anti-p2p position while all other parties have either bent to support legal filesharing or at least keep a door open for negotiations.


Digg this piece of news?