New Anti-Piracy Task Force Set To Pressure File-Sharers
In order to step up the pressure on illicit file-sharers and others that violate intellectual property laws, Swedish police and prosecutors are heading up a new specialist team of investigators to deal with infringements. Team members will be designated their own areas but will also be able to operate nationally.
During the last two years, Sweden has created a number of posts with responsibility for dealing with violations of intellectual property. In 2010 the resources dedicated by the authorities to this seemingly unwinnable battle are set to increase.
In the spring a new task force will go into operation dealing with file-sharing and other intellectual property violations.
The new unit will consist of nine specially trained investigators forming three groups operating out of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, working under Paul Pinter, Stockholm County Police’s National Coordinator in the Intellectual Property Crime division.
The team will also consist of two prosecutors, Frederick Ingblad and Henrik Rasmusson who were both involved in the nine recent raids against Direct Connect users.
Pinter, who previously worked as a computer crime and forensics investigator with the Stockholm County Police, said that the idea is to streamline law enforcement in this area. His role will be to act as coordinator between the various investigators and locations.
“The idea is that groups should only focus on his own territory, but it should also be able to operate nationally. In the case of raids this may facilitate a certain degree of coordination,” he told SvD.se.
Due to the distributed nature of the Internet and its users, Pinter said that nationwide collaboration will become increasingly important.
“In the case of such fraud, so much of that takes place over the Internet. It is difficult to know where a crime will fall and it’s possible to be spread too thinly over many places,” he adds.
Swedish media are reporting that the chances of getting away with illicit file-sharing are set to decrease as a result of this new unit’s work. From a current position of virtually zero that shouldn’t be a particularly difficult task, but as pointed out this week by file-sharing researcher Daniel Westman, getting enough evidence to raid a BitTorrent user can be very tricky. Expect Direct Connect users to stay in the spotlight.
