Sweden Considers Police Action Against File-Sharers
Written by enigmax on January 20, 2009Swedish file-sharers have previously been protected from police action, since any offenses they commit do not generally carry a prison sentence. Now, the government is considering new legislation which will give the police powers to go after regular file-sharers, even if their actions were previously only punishable by a fine.
Swedish file-sharers have traditionally enjoyed a certain amount of freedom, but that could all change if the government gets its way. At the moment, the police can’t go after uploaders of copyright works, unless their activities could attract a jail sentence of two years or more.
Now, according to a Dagbladet report, Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask will receive a report from the police this Friday, which will recommend that they should be able to investigate file-sharers whose actions would have previously only been punishable by a fine.
The proposed legislation, based on the controversial Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) we previously reported on, will give the police (and private companies) more power to go after individual file-sharers. It would also enable the police to find out who sent an email to who, along with details of telephone calls. The IPRED proposals, which have faced widespread opposition, aim to increase penalties and criminalize breaches of intellectual property law inside the EU.
The new law was already heavily opposed by Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge, who told TorrentFreak: “These laws are written by digital illiterates who behave like blindfolded, drunken elephants trumpeting about in an egg packaging facility. They have no idea how much damage they’re causing, because they lack today’s literacy: an understanding of how the Internet is reshaping the power structures at their core.”
Addressing fears that any legislation could be applied retroactively, i.e file-sharers could be pursued for previous breaches, Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask already asked for the deletion from the proposals of any such provisions. She further told Dagbladet that her ministry wont comment before they receive the interim report from the police on Friday. However, they are clear on one thing – there will definitely be new legislation.
Previously: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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In other News:
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http://torrentfreak.com/young-pirates-get-government-funding-090117/
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DO IT! GO AFTER THEM! Make this the hardest crackdown in history, arresting, abusing, and jailing citizens. I want this to be the law in EVERY COUNTRY. I want it on the news on every TV screen around the world.
Maybe then the public would wake up and quit giving their money to the content owners? I mean, what will it take?
I think that one problem is that many people think that copyright is not a big deal. I say that it is. Here is why.
Using common sense, you should know what culture and society are. It is common sense that culture affects society, especially mass media. Mass media especially affects people's behavior in reality, whether it applies to the education system, or to the economy, or to the government, or to international relations. Culture, after all, and mass media by extension, is the "public consciousness," or the "public thought" by which people act, in addition to the public perception of the world.
Copyright obviously has a massive effect on culture. Its effect is absolutely and completely negative. It introduces the idea that the work is all about benefiting the rights holder, economically or otherwise – that it makes them in charge of this culture for their benefit only, regardless of the public good. It makes the culture all about greed. It makes it so that culture in general has no concern over what is good, or people in general. It does not enable people to make money from culture, because it could be done with or without copyright. But what it does do is that it makes the purpose of culture itself to be nothing more than that, it makes the purpose of culture to be nothing more than greed, and mandates that money is all of what culture is about, and nothing else. It takes away everything else away from it, leaving only the greed in culture. It has a corrupting influence on culture, pure and simple.
Since culture (and mass media) has this massive effect on society, influencing things like the education system, the economy, the government, international relations, and other things, whatever influence copyright has on culture, copyright also has the same influence on society. It strips culture bare of nothing more than greed, and in this way it affects all of society to be corrupt. Copyright corrupts culture, and in the same way, it corrupts society, whether it is the education system, the businesses and economy, the government, or international relations – and for this reason, copyright as it stands must be eliminated, or we shall continue down the path of a decay of society.
The day I facepalmed.
So fucking gay… why do women always come up with shit….?
I dont think gender has much to do with it, fool.
sweden is the bastion of free culture and free filesharing! organise extreme opposition!
What's the use… The new legislation will come through anyway.
Damn it!
The Pirate Bay needs to focus on creating an anonymous BitTorrent tracker. The technology is there and if the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world embraces it, anonymous file sharing will catch on quick.
There where?
That's the only future-proof in my opinion! I can't understand why they don't do so! As you said: The technology is there! And when TPB starts using one of these anonymity tools so many people will follow and of cause many other torrentsites! I'll keep my fingers crossed!!
The use is to make change. Even under extreme oppression, people have been able to eresist as long as there was extreme opposition.
The use is to make change. Even under extreme oppression, people have been able to resist as long as there was extreme opposition.
Water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots!
And men. Men and women come up with this shit. Blame humans for this. Yet humans are all there are. Will you be more satisfied with beetles than humans?
Lol! How many are they going to arrest. I'm sure their jails won't have space for the whole population!
http://stuckinframes.blogspot.com
At first I2PSnark (for I2PNet)! Or StealthNet, OFF System and so on… Google is your friend :)
Nope, this woman was a slut a looong time before this, just google Beatrice Ask and see.
A disgrace to us living in Sweden.
http://www.eZee.se
Retard. The police report wasn't written by a women.
The problem is that by doing this, we do not take enough revenge. We must TAKE VENGENCE for everything that the industry has wrong us with.
NOW is the time to take revenge and take them down! Their impure blood shall water our fields.
The Swedish Anti-Piracy building and the RIAA building ought to be bombed and destroyed and demolished completely.
Well, at least the prison system will overload.
They had a hearing about the IPRED law/directive today in the swedish "Riksdag" (parliament).
Epic lulz commenced, they didn't know shit about what they were talking about etc.
Rick Falkvinge (Pirate Party party leader) did a blogging on it as many other swedish blogs but I haven't seen anything about it on english yet (Thinking it's good to spread the word of incompetent politicians that is supposed to decide about important things they don't know shit about).
http://rickfalkvinge.se/2009/01/20/monumental-pol...<—
/Obsi
The underlying fundaments of all this were never "free speech" or "free culture' or "free information" Rather, they have always been TAKING something for free that was created for sale and intended to be sold. Even Sweden, especially Sweden, with its high moral standing and fair handed, generous approach to living, sees the value in paying properly for what is created through hard work and intended to be sold.
Piracy is and has always been on the wrong side of history. Watch and learn.
Actually, in some cases…. it does. Not often, but in some cases it very well does.
Thanks to Piracy, culture, information, technology or art has never been more free and advanced.
You must be stupid not to know that, or never have downloaded a single file, wich is stupid too.
Hahahahaha Women?
So only women are against piracy?
Last time I checked, the head of the MPAA is a man. The heads of the major labels are mostly men.
Gender has nothing to do with this. I urge you to reassess your attitude towards gender.
agreed. we cant just go on hiding. perhaps we will eventually prevail that way but the time for slow reform is over. We need to be vocal about our opposition to draconian copyright laws and our support of file sharing.
Copyright is on the wrong side of history. It's a more recent invention than you think, and today's laws are even harsher than what copyright was supposed to be. The laws do not conform to reality, where data is data and anything that exists as digital information can be copied over and over at practically no cost. We still support creators. We filesharers attend more concerts, listen to more bands, and that means more money and support for artists. We don't support the broken copyright system, and we don't support the record companies that have outlived their purpose, and resort to taking our culture's music hostage.
I totally agree, but the odds of protests stopping the legislation from coming through are … Well, slim. I'm not saying that it is impossible, I most certainly hope that people succeed in it, but we have to be more realistic, and expect that things might not turn out the way we want them to.
Maybe I'm just being over-pessimistic, but either way, good luck to the Swedish people.
The way I see it is simple, the current companies and groups "protecting copyrights" like thr RIAA and Web Straff are in it just for the money. Do the math, they collect millions of dollars off people who are too afraid to fight in court with them and quietly pay up.
That needs to stop. Now the only way to stop that is to show the gov's that they are only in it for the money, and cant be trusted. This can be donw several ways, but they all add up to the same thing. Once this law passes and they start arresting people, all filesharers must allow themselves to be caught. As dxtr hit on, the jail system will overload. Once the swedish gov sees for themselves just how many people all this involves, they might be more willing to listen to why they do it, and the pros it can have.
Until something like this happens, they gov's will keep their ears shut, and we'll keep getting fined/jailled.
Well Darn…..
http://thepiratebay.org/lovetpb.php
Beatrice Ask is at it again!
No changes have ever come from pessimism.
Touche. :)
I don't think this will go through, it's just a too big waste of police's time.
"that was created for sale and intended to be sold"
Clearly a misunderstanding of the nature of art from an industry idiot. YOU are clearly on the wrong side of history, you dimwit.
Now jump off of a cliff or something. It would do humanity a big favor.
Hey, Delusional Mind. When this legislation gets shot down, and TorrentFreak reports on it, I'm going to copy & paste your comment in verbatim.
Then we're all going to just sit back and laugh, and laugh, and laugh at you.
Moreso than we already do, I mean.
Doomed to fail.
It would appear the very deep pockets of RIAA have reached out and "lubed" the right Swede pockets!
RD
http://www.privacy-web.us.tc
siqq
This law will push file sharing underground making distribution companies pay more to proscute file shares. Reducing thier profits even more.
Dont try to beat us. Join us :)
Apparently you've completely missed the fact that men have been coming up with this legislation in other countries – almost exclusively men. Is it that your just retarded enough to notice a female name and then make a comment like that…?
Stupid twat.
ROFL… that's a funny comment to make considering how pessimisstic you have been :P
I have no experience of anything other than I2P and Tor but both of those networks are totally unsuitable for P2P, except relatively small files. They are so, so goddamn slow.
"It would also enable the police to find out who sent an email to who, along with details of telephone calls."
Am I the only one who thinks this is getting, well, not very cool? I mean, if some randomm dude can listen to my phonecalls and read my mail, I want to be able to listen and read his.
Also, this is not gonna work. AFAIK there's a lot of P2P-users, and not so much place in jail.
Structural fail.
You can say that about anything you knob. Little misogynistic boys should avoid making comments on the internet until they've had a girlfriend.
This is what you get when you have a corrupt US friendly government.
This only proves that govts. only care about money and not about public safety, etc.
So many important issues to be worried about.
Why wont they let the P2Pers alone. We dont hurt anybody, except the mafias who control the music/movie industry.
They will have to learn how to cope with this. Nothing can stop P2P/file sharing.
I am only pessimistic about the chances that anything good could happen when people do nothing. Nothing comes from nothing. But by doing something, people can make a difference.
tried to send my love but failed for me. anyone else try?
Says the person calling themselves "s3pu1chr4v3".
Tbh, the guy is completely wrong, sex or gender (and remember, the two are different: gender is the role, sex is what you are physically) don't have too much of an impact upon the decisions made. I would like to debate the stupidity of the previous posters, but you haven't done much to redeem this thread.
This will be (Moderaternas) Republikens fall in Sweden.
They had a good run, but with this law theyre fucked.
Good luck Sweden, may your sharing continue.
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