Police Arrest Several In File-Sharing Swoop

enigmax
February 3, 2010
67
IFPI,
sweden
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Following investigations carried out by the IFPI, police carried out several raids across Sweden yesterday, targeting individuals sharing thousands of music tracks via Direct Connect. The alleged operator of the hub was arrested while others admitted to copyright infringement offenses.

Yet again it appears that the music industry in Sweden has used the country’s IPRED legislation to force the police to take action against illicit file-sharers.

Speaking with Swedish Radio, Lars Gustafsson, chief executive of IFPI Sweden, said that recently his group had made 20 complaints against illicit file-sharers, but only five were considered to be on a large enough scale to warrant the police taking action.

The alleged large-scale file-sharers, suspected of making available between 9,000 and 17,000 music tracks each, were raided by police yesterday.

Five different locations including Gothenburg, Docksta, Handen and Upplands Väsby were targeted, resulting in the arrest of a 28 year-old man believed to be the hub owner. According to prosecutor Frederick Ingblad, the man accepted some responsibility but denied the charges.

The others, all accused of copyright infringement offenses, had their equipment confiscated. Ingblad reports that thus far, two have admitted making music available through the hub.

“This business is still too large. There are so many new and good options there is really no reason anymore for people to steal music,” IFPI’s Lars Gustafsson told DN.

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Party, was critical of the raids, and of the IPRED legislation which made them possible.

“When the police go in and take people’s private computers because they have shared music, it’s completely wrong,” he said.

“Record companies are running with the same argument that publishers did when libraries came into being. They warned that no one would continue to write books if it was possible to borrow them for free.”

Sweden continues to be one of the most popular countries in the world when it comes to sharing via Direct Connect. Its users are a perfect target for the IFPI, since individuals tend to share their entire music collection in one place, which makes proving large-scale infringement a breeze.

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From the article: “This business is still too large. There are so many new and good options there is really no reason anymore for people to steal music,” IFPI’s Lars Gustafsson told DN.

1. Music is free, it can’t be stolen.

2. Oh, he meant stealing their precious files? Don’t they have them anymore? C’mon IFPI, if you really lost them, fetch them again via BitTorrent: we file sharers will gladly help you if we have a copy. ;-)

3. IFPI shouldn’t have closed the likes of AllOfMp3 which provided fair and adequate pricing for DRM-unencumbered music. So no: there are NO good options to buy music online (yet).
w00t

Think of the poor Artists being stolen from..
Now They have to buy a private jet WITHOUT DVD Surround sound or have to wait 3 more months before getting their gold plated pool put in.
you should all be ashamed of yourselfs.
liquidmonkey

if i’ve said before, i’ll say it again…STOP USING DC++ YOU ARE JUST ASKING TO GET CAUGHT!!!
Micke

The IPRED-legislation is not relevant in this case. The identities of the hub-owners was not found because of IPRED.

Probably it was some sort of IFPI-snitch who hung around the hub-chat who got to know a little bit to much.
hmmm

It’s “funny” because DC is probably the form of sharing files which is the closest to “friend to friend” or “among relatives” sharing, besides FTP.

And, in case the ifpi doesn’t know yet, filesharing is NOT a business. It’s a hobby.

It’s not a challenger to itunes or whatever. It’s something different.

Entering a DC hub is more like going to the public library than going to a mafia-ran shop selling pirate stuff.

Oh well, soon people will buy burnt pirate dvds instead of downloading.

It looks like the policy they are installing, is to make it safer to hand a 5 bill to a criminal making profit out of counterfeit products, than to download stuff for free and harm no one (still no study showing money losses).

Meanwhile, with the forthcoming massive use of VPN and encryption, ifpi are helping the “save the terrorists and the deviants who rape children” game, which will be much harder to find.
But what are a few raped kids and some bombed people in front of the icon of possible profit ?
It’s a sick world…
AlienDK

WTF?! People still use DC? Anyways, in Soviet Sweden Ipredator terminates IPRED.
AlienDK

You might not be reasoned mind, but you’re still a fag like all you others mocking him. He argues for his case in a nice and polite way, you should learn how to do that instead of just saying “troll troll troll”.
calm down people

he’s right…reasoned mind has the right of expression like any other person.What you are doing in return is exactely what we’ve been fighting against for generations: SEGREGATION.
he has the right to express himself just like any of us, even if we do not always agree with him.that is called,my friends, DEMOCRACY and LIBERTY OF EXPRESSION.
It’s about time some people learn this…
FREE SPEECH FOR ALL!!!
peace…
Cujo

a waste of law inforcment
tech guy

I can tell you all, VPN’S will be licensed because the government are already talking about how much revenue this will bring in for them, because the internet will eventually take over from the TV they must find a new way of taxing people, you see this is all about money and nothing else they know full well that people will all go to VPN’S and they want you to!!! This will give them billions in new tax income, work it out say five million people buying a VPN licence at say a hundred pounds a year each to start and millions of new licences as they go along each year, don’t be fooled they don’t give a blind fu** what you do as long as they get there share of it and they can say and I “quote” WELL WE HAVE SEEN A REAL DROP IN P2P USE IN THIS COUNTRY, NO SHIT LOL, of course they will see a drop in p2p use because going thought a VPN hides that, TAX,TAX,TAX AND MORE TAX, labour will push and push anyone out the way to get there digital economy bill through for the following two reasons,

1, the money for labours election campaign is not coming from the unions this year it is mostly coming from the movie and music industry moguls .

2,they will get a nice BIG NEW TAX out of it at the same time as being able to say we have cured the problem of p2p in this country.

Politicians are the worlds greatest conmen / con-women you will ever see.
True Speech

People have the right to tell the truth and they don’t have a right to lie. furthermore, it is their responsibility to make sure what they are saying is true.
‘Free speech for all’ is rubbish.
=b0|)Y

lol
Police raids against people sharing music? Yep, that sounds reasonable.

Reality check, Sweden, or pay the price.

well said buddy.
someone kill a politician
burek

That’s why I’m moving all my servers to China :) First, I was thinking about Russia, but China is the way to go :)
DefaultUser

They stole my burritos…. and my tacos too! :(
CCC

“9000 and 17,000 music tracks each”

is this number real or just an assumption ? or else this person must be running a business
NDyA

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Party, was critical of the raids, and of the IPRED legislation which made them possible.

“When the police go in and take people’s private computers because they have shared music, it’s completely wrong,” he said.

Well, in Poland every year there is a raid on students dormitories and nobody says a word of complaint (except for students). There are always like 20 computers confiscated. Most students have their projects unfinished and end up being totally screwed.
er….

you know this program named xxxxxx i saw a person sharing over 77,000 songs.. good for them.
meh

“This business is still too large. There are so many new and good options there is really no reason anymore for people to steal music,”

Im sorry what? You have obviously never tried to use said ‘options’.

Please die in a fire.
Rob

@18 But China are starting to totally ban file sharing, you can’t even access TPB from China. North Korea is the way to go if your that desperate. I just use my neighbour, its far closer and much less effort. *cough* aircrack suit *cough*
funny girl

Why listen to modern music at all?

Consider:

- How do you know whether or not record companies are pumping subliminal messages into music?
- How do you know whether or not an unseen random individual with malicious intent isn’t pumping subliminal messages into music and throwing it on file sharing networks?

“I’ll just listen to records, then” But corrupt people existed then, too. The only way to be sure is to compose the music yourself, or reproduce it from sheet music. But even with sheet music how do you know whether or not the music itself is coded to provide some type of effect either realized or vague within your mind?

So then there’s nature, ahhh.. but how do you know whether or not the sounds of nature are tuned to act upon your mind in a certain way beyond our understanding?
Reasoned Mind

Tech Guy @14, thanks for your narrative on government licensed VPN’s, I’ve been posting here about that growing inevitability for just about a year now, but the resident morons gleefully point out “they’ll never stop us!!” while ignoring how their anonymity is inevitably being stripped away. Perhaps coming from a “tech guy” will compel the locals to stop their BS and listen.

As for the “stealing vrs. infringement” debate, it’s time to set that old tired canard aside.
Everyone knows that infringement laws differ from theft, just as everyone knows the argument “the original is left unharmed” is beside the point. Even when cd’s are duplicated and pirated the “original” is safe in some label’s vault somewhere. So get over yourself on that. it’s a non argument.

Technically, until the laws are tightened (and they are already in progress of course) “infringement” is the proper term for the civil infraction that is prosecuted and punished.

But “stealing” as a colloquial expression is no less accurate and that’s why artists feel they’ve been “stolen” from, labels argue that their properly earned profit has been “stolen”, law enforcement uses “stolen” to describe the digital act of making a copy of something illegally without paying the price is sells for. Anecdotally, “stealing” is just as accurate and just as appropriate as “infringing”, and the terms may be interchanged by either side of this debate with no harm.

Besides.
How long do you think it will take before government upgrades a civil infraction to a crime, with criminal charges, prosecutions and criminal penalties leaving criminal records? At that point “stealing” IS the proper term. And the best part is, you think “freedom of speech’ is the same thing as “freedom to take” so you keep taking, lol, and so I’ll wager upgrading to criminal is simply a manner of when.
anon

all i can say to Lars Gustafsson is :

Your an idiot, instead of you telling people ‘there is really no reason anymore for people to steal music’, you need to hear this exact line form the people you claim to speak for. That was in polite terms, in internet terms i say STFU!
calm down people

quote”People have the right to tell the truth and they don’t have a right to lie. furthermore, it is their responsibility to make sure what they are saying is true.
‘Free speech for all’ is rubbish.” end of quote.
basicaly,for saying that,you’re either right ALL the time or you are stupid…which one is it?
anyone can make mistakes or mislead people,or even think that what they say is the truth ( or right),and you know what? they couldbe wrong as much as YOU could be…think about that,man…
peace.
Anonymous

@Reasoned Mind, yes “stealing” *IS* a less accurate term to use in this case. It describes something completely different.
The reason the industry is using it is to paint a different picture of filesharing to those who are not educated about the difference between the terms. You know this full well, so trying to pretend differently is just poor taste.
prodigydancer

Hey, Swedes, how does being the 51st state feel? You need to learn to FIGHT for your independence or you’ll lose it forever.
Think about it

@11 Feb 03, 2010 at 13:39 by AlienDK

Wrong. He falsely accuses everyone here of theft. Even if you argue that he simply means copyright infringement, then he still falsely accuses everyone of that. He name calls, flames, etc. Have you not read his posts.

I look at it this way, if there were RM impersonators, wouldn’t you think TF would remove them? They definitely know my IP addy and awaiting moderate (but eventually approve) some of my comments.
g4y ninjas dancing through the living room

Have you ever seen a G4Y Ninja?

Think for a moment before you answer..

A g4y ninja.. why, your best friend could be a g4y ninja and you might not even know it.

So what are the signs you have a g4y ninja on your hands?
lotion cuddler

Ever cuddled on a lonely night with a bottle of lotion?

The daytime soaps may fade away, but lotion never ends.
Think about it

“The alleged large-scale file-sharers, suspected of making available between 9,000 and 17,000 music tracks each, were raided by police yesterday.”

That’s not even enough to fill an ipod (6th generation classic). I’ve got more tracks that that on legally purchased vinyl records (so you can just STFU RM with your false accusations).

@ 20 Feb 03, 2010 at 14:42 by CCC

Please tell me that’s sarcasm.
surfer

suspected of making available between 9,000 and 17,000 music tracks each,…

I have that many FOLDERS available for download…
Urination is freedom!

There’s nothing quite like urinating into an empty can of baked beans.

I urinate, you urinate, we all urinate.

What does this have to do with the topic? Not a thing!

This is about enjoying the simple freedom we all have in urination.

Urination can be fun, you can use ice cream containers filled with ice cream and melt it with a nice hot stream, or you can use empty containers.

Some people enjoy “crossing the streams” and urinating together on large piles of marshmellows.

It’s a creative way to enjoy your day.
monkey c monkey dooo

There’s nothing quite like urinating into an empty can of baked beans.

I urinate, you urinate, we all urinate.

What does this have to do with the topic? Not a thing!

This is about enjoying the simple freedom we all have in urination.

Urination can be fun, you can use ice cream containers filled with ice cream and melt it with a nice hot stream, or you can use empty containers.

Some people enjoy “crossing the streams” and urinating together on large piles of marshmellows.

It’s a creative way to enjoy your day.

I agree and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Freaky

Natural selection at its finest!

If u use DC at this time you deserve to be arrested as u where living under a rock.
BSoD

DC is not safe!
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Ninja

Not that this is stopping file sharing at all.

But I agree when some1 up there said direct connect is probably one of the closest ways of sharing since you actually ‘know’ who is on the other side and what this person likes (his/her tastes) and so on.

I think I got something around 8k songs here, most of them are just soundtracks that I barely ever listen. But there are a few hundreds – I’d guess around 350 – that I actually listen a lot. And I own over half of those (physically). Point is, they must have all that for the sake of completeness and not because they actually listen or NEED those.

Shows how far from reality those guys are. No matter what they say or do, people will NOT buy everything they see or download (specially if they don’t see at all). For economical reasons or simply because it’s not worth. I was wondering what’s the difference of watching Lost in TV skipping when there are the advertisements and watching what you downloaded… In fact, there is so much advertisement in TV today that I don’t watch TV anymore….

Interesting fact: I have some CDs that I didn’t even care to take out from the plastic wrap. I bought them but I keep listening to what I downloaded via BT…

Anyway, good luck for those guys.
tech guy

I use – ilovefilm.com, just rent and rip like I do I now have over two thousand films, encryption is so easy to get past if you know what you are doing, LOL.
Unauthorized Content Consumer

An absolute waste of publicly funded police enforcement tax dollars.

Total waste….total…..waste.
neostyles

“Record companies are running with the same argument that publishers did when libraries came into being. They warned that no one would continue to write books if it was possible to borrow them for free.”

Uhm, is he on crack? When you get a book from the library, you don’t own it. You are BORROWING it. You are agreeing to a contract that decides how long you can keep the book for and what happens if you don’t return it when it’s due. Obviously, some people want to own things permanently, hence where the difference between buying things and borrowing things comes in.

Libraries only usually have a single copy of a book, which means that you have much greater chance of finding a copy if you buy it.

You know what the difference is? If libraries were adversly affecting the profits of authors, they wouldn’t still be here. Has anyone ever wondered why no one is going after libraries and instead file sharers? Let me guess, people think that there is some elaborate conspiracy where the library is paying off politicians?

In contrast, when you download a piece of music (or whatever copyrighted work), there are no terms you have to agree too. You get to keep it forever and with it as you wish, so there is no motivation to pay for anything. That’s why people are going after file sharers.

1. Music is free, it can’t be stolen.

Time to go learn what copyright is.

What you are stealing is intellectual property.

2. Oh, he meant stealing their precious files? Don’t they have them anymore? C’mon IFPI, if you really lost them, fetch them again via BitTorrent: we file sharers will gladly help you if we have a copy. ;-)
No, you moron. You are stealing their work. They depend on profits to make a living. Just because it isn’t physical theft where the original is depleted, doesn’t mean it’s not theft. It’s digital theft. You are listening to something which has not been payed for. In effect, this is stealing.

3. IFPI shouldn’t have closed the likes of AllOfMp3 which provided fair and adequate pricing for DRM-unencumbered music. So no: there are NO good options to buy music online (yet).

In other words, unless you see music being sold for a price that you approve of, you think you allowed to steal it?

Have you ever heard of itunes?

“When the police go in and take people’s private computers because they have shared music, it’s completely wrong,” he said.

And they should be allowed to continue depriving artists of their work.. why exactly?
DataDuden

This only shows how important it is for p2p software to get some kind of anonymity service installed into it.
thesaint707

That’s right DataDuden get a vpn! Isn’t Sweeden home to pptp based Ipredator and Relakks? Better check the research before buying, here is a list you can peruse http://tinyurl.com/yz9h94n . The answer will be to get your own hopefully constructed with OpenVpn. State sponsored VPN’s will be much like the political statement of their pptp based counterparts great sounding but no substance. Get aware, get protected!
(-] Roar :-) Kinsey :-]

@40 according to the link article: Since the analysis, Microsoft released an upgrade to the protocol. This upgrade is available for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT as DUN 1.3. Microsoft has made the following security upgrades to the protocol.

These changes address most of the major security weaknesses of the orginal protocol. However, the revised protocol is still vulnerable to offline password-guessing attacks from hacker tools such as L0phtcrack. At this point we still do not recommend Microsoft PPTP for applications where security is a factor.

If someone was to get your offline password, they can only connect to the vpn so not much good unless the op was careless and left it laying around but provided its a vpn, i would doubt they would just leave their password laying around. Also if someone was to get your vpn password, this would just allow them to use it so no harm done. It would actually help them. Anyways, pptp seems as its fixed. Way better than using openvpn and then connection dropping while your sleeping.
Latisha Jackson

oh yeah, I think im going to use dc also. I have tots to share. Thanks tf for telling me about dc. I totally forgot.
http://www.PetFoodz.Info

What a waste of resources!..
Anonymous

Lars Gustafsson is an associal criminal and a parasite who should be eradicated like the tap worm he is.

No justice no peace.
Anonymous

I’ve read a number of Reasoned’s posts. He better be trolling because I hope no one is that stupid. Anyway, don’t read comments. Waste of time.
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Obedient

When any country becomes a place where the government controls everything (aka: spies on everyone), and corporations make the rules (aka: pass laws with the help of politicians) any way they want to benefit their own interests, that country is no longer “free”!
Don’t be surprised if VPN becomes outlawed in the future (by using the excuse of “child porn”, or some such thing), or becomes heavily regulated.
my 2 cent car crash.

Must have been a public hub. This part of the story is always left out.
Think about it

Obviously the industry doesn’t want your business, so stop buying and listening to copyrighted material. Listen to what you got but don’t share. Share only creative commons and insist on it ONLY. Heck, just name Ada Jones songs with the names of current popular songs and when they kick your door down sue the hell out of them.
Soap

How does one make an IPRED accusation? We could each of us launch baseless accusations at the corporations, and get them raided by police, since apparently all it takes is a complaint for police to go rushing.
Whatever

The police must really be bored in Sweden, no crimes to solve, no traffic to regulate and so on… If filesharing is Swedens only problem it must be a great country.

As for getting information on a DC-hub, one can only get on a hub by sharing quite huge collection and allow uploading (because of the many rules and not really anything usefull there what can be found elsewhere not worth the trouble though). So did they share files ? Even if it is legal for them to distribute, they allow it to be shared again as that is the idea of DC and can be assumed to be the case. Will there be a disclosure of what they shared ?

@16
Very common numbers and can be much higher. It’s easy enough to get there. Just leech a (music) newsgroup upto a year back you’ll find you have a few times more than 17000 within days. If you want all of it is another matter.
Anonymous

@neotyles, ignoring the stuff where I cringe every time I hear “intellectual property” and further ignoring the twisting of terms to mean something different than they actually mean, I’ll reply to this one:

“In other words, unless you see music being sold for a price that you approve of, you think you allowed to steal it?”

No matter what people think regarding being “allowed”, they’ll do it anyway. For various reasons. Want to stop them? Adapt. Give them what they want. Supply and demand, you know.

Itunes is not the answer. It’s part of the answer but not a complete solution. What if my portable music player can’t handle AAC audio? What if my operating system can’t run the iTunes app? What if I simply don’t like Apple?

But I guess it’s easier to spend millions to lobby politicians, spend millions in litigation to ruin the lives of a few single mothers and college students… instead of opening up an AllOfMp3-like store, that would give you the choice of format and bitrate at an affordable price.
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pirateprideWW

Why is uTorrent being dumbed down with each new version? At best, this “network shaping” stuff should be optional and not the default with version 2.0. Don’t force this crap on us.

20% reduction in speed, and some of you are cheering about it? C’mon.
Zen

It’s wery simply after all, just many didn’t figure that (yet)

1. If Movies, Music, etc.. is art, than it must be free. Art is free and it’s priceless.

2. If they aren’t art, then they must be a product with price. If somebody sell you some product, he lose anu rights to tell you what to do with taht product, because you are rightfull owner of that. What you will do with that is ONLY your bussines.

Can you imagine something like… weapon seller sue somebody because he shoot from gun?
Yes he share bullets (through gun barrel) with someone (usually enemy) and that is copyright :D

LOL bulletsharing

Even god can’t find any logical in any copyright law.
kenny_lex

At the same time a big pedophile scandal is revealed in Sweden when a high ranked police is arrested for sex abuse against a underage girl. But the punishment for that is slightly lower than the file sharing crime just now, so the police must prior the file sharing cases before investigation of suspected pedophiles.

Pedobear sure loves the music industry.
Random internet asshole

That’s okay, I’ll still use DC++.
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Police Arrest Several In File-Sharing Swoop

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