Norwegian Police Deal Massive Blow to MPAA Lawyer
Pirate-chasing lawyer Espen Tøndel has been told by the police that they will not spend their valuable resources chasing file-sharers. Undeterred, Tøndel wrote to the Department of Justice demanding a meeting about the police’s decision. They responded all right - and denied him a meeting.
Today, Norway appears to be a much safer country for petty file sharers. The Hollywood lawyer Espen Tøndel has been told by Kripos (serious crime police) that they will not be spending time investigating small-time pirates.
Like many lawyers in the anti-piracy arena, Tøndel tries to blur civil and criminal law to obtain leverage. The police are clear - their priority is investigating real crimes, such as murder and robbery and sadly for him, file-sharing does not fall into those categories. Tøndel must now make his claims against alleged pirates in a civil court.
Following this major setback, Tøndel wrote to the Department of Justice and demanded a meeting with them. He complained that copyright holders need to go through the criminal system as without the help of the police, all they have is an IP address. They cannot sue an IP address, they need a real name and identity.
Unfortunately for Tøndel, the response wasn’t what he’d been hoping for -the Department of Justice completely refused him a meeting- leaving him to start suing IP addresses, which he’s not allowed to do. Ouch.
On Sunday, Trond Giske, Minister of Culture in Norway told VG.no: “We have no plans to do anything similar to the Brits. To identify the users is quite a substantial process, so we plan to focus on only those who upload movies and music illegally. We are cooperating closely with the industry, and are well aware of the money they are loosing because of the illegal downloading.”
Norwegian political commentators are suggesting that Norway’s biggest political party and government, Arbeiderpartiet, aren`t going to change their policy on this because they are afraid of losing votes amongst the 18 to 30 year olds.
So can Norwegian file-sharers feel safe from prosecution now? “No, they can’t. I’m just saying that we will use most of our resources on those who uploads illegally” said Giske in a tone suggesting it’s only serious uploaders who need to take care.
Back in November 2007, Tøndel reported 14 people to the police for sharing the movie, ‘Kill Buljo’, even though the director of the movie didn’t agree with this course of action. I expect there are at least 14 BitTorrent fans smiling today, shortly to be joined by thousands more.
Norway joins Canada in a growing group of common-sense countries which refuse to waste public resources on petty file-sharers. Other countries - such as Germany and the UK are particularly weak. Although they don’t directly involve the police, they allow lawyers to blatantly (ab)use the system by claiming they are prosecuting a criminal case, simply in order to obtain a file-sharer’s identity. They then drop the criminal case, only to pursue a financially lucrative civil one, a tactic favored by lawyers Davenport Lyons to un-mask alleged BitTorrent pirates in the UK.
It’s uncertain at this point if the imminent raids suggested by Tøndel back in October 2007, will become more or less imminent following this statement by the police. Even though the Department of Justice won’t speak to Tøndel, we did, but sadly he doesn’t seem to have a statement for us right now.
Special thanks to RayJoha who made this article possible
Previously: EU Invests $22 Million in Next-Generation BitTorrent Client
Next: Buying The DVD: Unhelpful And Unethical
78 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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OH SNAP SON! This is great!
Nice, than I can download without thinking about the police:P
Like I normally do, NOT
Greit det her, Tøndel kan jo bare stikke dit peppern gror uansett.
And I thought the police were stupid!
this must be a great day :D
Yeah—–> it`s a new Viking age:)Scandinavians will never surrender to the “illuminatus”…now, if only the damn Danes could join the parade.
Great news day for Europe!
Hoho, I’ll be downloading more than ever now :p
LoL, i am downloading like 4 years :)
Fuck MPAA & other anti piracy, they are trying to make $ from us.
Music and movie industries making enough money, they even didn’t ask these assholes to investigate, they are doing them self to make $.
Don’t run like dogs after file-sharers.
Get a life assholes ( MPAA / RIAA)
Ops, sorry i forgot to mention:
FUCK YOU Espen Tøndel :))))
another clear voice of sanity is heard over MAFIAA hogwash. good to hear
on another issue: i can live with the distinction of “petty filesharers” altho there is still a blatant confusion in terms of “illegal downloads”. for example, in Nederland there is no such thing as an “illegal download”, but there is a civil issue with illegal uploading
you can see the contradiction in the article between the Culture Minister’s use of the term “illegal downloads” and the Department of Justice’s position that there is nothing illegal happening for them to prosecute
torrentfreak should learn the distinction and help educate the people who dont
I smell pwnt toast.
Sweet.
Seems Vikings are idd tough on this. Just needs the German and British wimps to finally become men now (leave alone the French).
I am talking about the officials btw, not the file sharers. :o)
Yes, it’s true that in Canada you can’t be charged with petty file sharing, but the ISPs can still cut your line. I’m more interested in seeing the ISP’s position change, so that they are more willing to use logic against idiotic lawyers who seem to think they can abuse the system.
Norwegien look only at what important in life. They have a beuatiful country, beautiful town beautiful sumer and spring and they are a bunch of great people!
No wonder they told these parasites at the MPAA/RIAA to go away. This is what we all should do.
And the Norwegian police is one of the best in the world, trusted and loved by the population because they are really there for them and not for some abusive and corrupted governements or crappy and criminal corporations.
You should take soem vacation in Norway! The place and it’s people is incredible.
I love Norway!
Espen Tondel —> ||| (Wall of fail)
(bang)
“Norway has been awarded the best country to live in for the fifth year in a row by the United Nations”
Immigration time to the cold north!
Tøndel reported 14 people to the police for sharing the movie, ‘Kill Buljo’
Now we are going to share the movie “Kill Tøndel” that will take care of one parasite. More to go next.
“I expect there are at least 14 BitTorrent fans smiling today, shortly to be joined by thousands more.”
No. whoever wnt or need to use BT are already using it. And this will not change whatever hapen to the MPAA/RIAA parasites such as Tøndel or whatever they do.
[quote comment="294273"]
No. whoever wnt or need to use BT are already using it.[/quote]
I find that hard to believe. I find myself explaining torrents to a lot of people every day and some of them end up trying it out for themselves. There are still untapped resources out there for us “pirates”.
Happy to live in Norway. Here we can download without any kind of threat, because:
1. No one can force the ISPs to give out names or anything if there is no prove that he or her has done anything serious (and because p2p illegal sharing is a civil crime, it is not “serious”).
2. The ISPs wont give out names because then they will lose costumers.
So that is why you are 99% safe when downloading illegal. In Norway.
Yippi-kay-ey
[quote comment="294267"]Norwegien look only at what important in life. They have a beuatiful country, beautiful town beautiful sumer and spring and they are a bunch of great people!
No wonder they told these parasites at the MPAA/RIAA to go away. This is what we all should do.
And the Norwegian police is one of the best in the world, trusted and loved by the population because they are really there for them and not for some abusive and corrupted governements or crappy and criminal corporations.
You should take soem vacation in Norway! The place and it’s people is incredible.
I love Norway![/quote]
Not to brag but the UN meant Norway was the greatest country to live in for many years in a row. This year we have to share first place with Iceland though..
Back on topic. Beiing a pirate in Norway is the greatest thing ever. The only thing we can get in trouble for is downloading norwegian movies but that’s it. And now it looks like that has stopped too. Not that many good movies are produced here every year but still. It is just as people said in the comment-box at Dagbladet (major norwegian newspaper): “Use our money on the heavy criminals and let the file-sharers come second.” That was the comment that most people liked, except Tøndel but he is a jerk off.
>Just needs the German and British
>wimps to finally become men now
My estimate is that the British and the Germans are going to deal with this the nazi way (holy trinity: surveillance+censorship+punishments) in case no new party joins the politcal scene. The ruling parties in for example Germany are _no way_ ever going to change their attitudes towards file sharing. The only thing what prevents them from constructing a Fourth Copyright Reich is probably the constitution (Grundgesetz) the Americans helped to create after WW2.
Not even the German Green party, which swedish counterpart recently started pro filesharing campaigns like “I would not steal”, even remotely considers “lagalizing it”. To be even more fun, not even the German Pirate Party seems to be behind filesharers, and bases most of their campaign on non copyright topics. Germany is, regarding copyright, just that fucked up. And I should know it, since I’m living there. Even ordinary cops misuse the fucked up copyright laws and, for example, get house searching for merely seeing an CD-R in ones car. The damages dont get as high as in the states, though, and there are no of their idiotic “punitive damages” to deal with. As of now, there also have not been any mass lawsuits like in the US.
I can imagine that all of this is just a order of magnitude worse in the UK, which seems to be paving ground for a future fascistic giverments through installations of mass surveillance systems.
Well, here in Denmark, no one has gone through court with a bittorrent case. Those who has got some the (in)famous letters from Anti Pirate Group, and who couldn’t just burn the damn letter, all settle, which is a lot cheaper… But yea, we all wait for the damn APG to sue some poor Bittorret users, who will drag them in court.. If it ain’t some corrupt Judge, they don’t have a chance in court..
Ha ha!
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