The message from the Moderate Party MPs to their AntipiratbyrÃ¥n supporting colleagues was “be careful, they will never be satisfied”, drawing parallels to the earlier attempts to ban MP3 players, and VCRs, both areas in which, having failed to ban, industry groups are now making a profit from selling content.

Karl Sigfrid told TorrentFreak that the APB proposals make no practical sense. “I think it could be solved in theory. However, in reality, you would need such a surveillance system to achieve this that it would be all out of proportion. So I don’t think there’s a feasilbe way of stopping individuals copying. The cause for file sharing is basically that it’s possible. People have always done it to the extent that they’ve been able to. With cassette tapes 20 years ago and electronically today. Copyright laws preventing individuals from sharing information have never been legitimate in the eyes of most people.”

When asked about if it was down to content industries being slow to change their business practices, he replied: “It’s hard to say what would have happened if the content industries had been quicker releasing their material online, before the P2P networks grew mainstream. Probably the illegal filesharing would be less extensive, but it’s possible that it would still have been increasingly difficult for iTunes and such services to compete with free downloading. The change needed might be so radical that it’s no longer about selling copies of immaterial products at all.”

Rickard Falkvinge, of the Swedish Pirate Party was understandably upbeat about it. “Karl Sigfrid’s taking a stand marks a major turning point. For the first time, an established politician shows deep-down understanding of the real conflict, instead of cluelessly humming along with a technophobical luddite industry. Some other Swedish mainstream politicians have previously talked in terms of how it’s unreasonable to declare war on an entire generation. Sigfrid is the first to understand why.” His enthusiasm is understandable as, one Swedish torrent user put it “a bunch of members of The Conservative Party have started listening to the policies of The Pirate Party, and they want to jump on their bandwagon, as it’s gaining popularity”.

Gaining popularity it is, as yesterday, thirteen members of Parliament joined in another attack (Swedish only, no English translation at present) on the likes of the APB, and recording industries, saying “The record labels are obviously opposed to a development that makes them obsolete.” However, not everyone has been celebrating. Pirate Bay administrator Brokep was skeptical, saying “I’m intrigued that the debate is sparking up again. There’s been a lot of lies from the politicians. Promises and nothing has happened, so at least this will put the debate back on the map.”

The initial seven MPs were Karl Sigfrid. Margareta Cederfelt. Ulf Berg. Lena Asplund. Staffan Appelros. Lisbeth Grönfeldt Bergman and Göran Montan. Tuesdays additions were Marie Weibull Kornias,Finn Bengtsson, Ann-Charlotte Hammar Johnsson, Sven Yngve Persson, and Anders Hansson.

**UPDATE** Sorry, forgot to add this translation of the second piece, available here

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

We all know that “copyright holders” means “MPAA, RIAA and other anti-piracy groups”, that will claim their representing the copyright owners. So, in effect, if this bill is passed, Swedish legislation has given room for a situation where special interest groups can demand personal information from companies to conduct their own private investigations. So the new law will give the anti-piracy lobby more power, at least in Sweden. On the other hand, not far from Sweden, the Dutch anti-p2p organization BREIN recently lost a case where they demanded personal info about filesharing ip’s.

This new law would be in line with how Sweden has worked before. Last year, the police made a bust on a large Swedish ISP called Bahnhof, after an investigation from the Bureau of Anti-Piracy (a Swedish copyright owner interest group). The interest group filed a report almost immediately after the bust, indicating they had exclusive information from the prosecutor. The ISP then released all their logs, which indicated that it was the interest group that had hired a mole to use their computers to commit copyright crimes. Of course, this didn’t lead anywhere. And the Pirate Bay bust on May 31 should be proof that it did not discourage Swedish police and prosecutors to walk errands for copyright “representatives”.

But what frightens me is the prospect that this kind of behavior is getting legally sanctioned.

I made a translation of Linander’s blog entry and provide some further arguments on Piracy Unlimited.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Slightly more than a year ago the word was going around that LimeWire, at the time download.com’s most popular commercial p2p file sharing application, was going down.

“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties,” wrote justice David H. Souter for the US Supreme Court in the Grokster / StreamCast v MGM ruling.

Then, “Mark Gorton [left], the chief executive of the Lime Group … said he was likely to stop distributing LimeWire in reaction to the ruling,” said The New York Times. “He said it appeared too difficult to meet the implied standard for inducement. The court, Mr. Gorton said, has ‘handed a tool to judges that they can declare inducement whenever they want to’.”

LimeWire’s answer was what amounted to DRM – a copyright filter – but Warner Music, Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony BMG have, in their ongoing assault on the internet and its users, again targeted LimeWire, together with Gorton and coo Greg Bildson. And once again “inducement” is the hook, the line and, the Big Four hope, the final sinker for LimeWire.

Meanwhile, a community driven project based on source code released by LimeWire LLC aimed to, “create and maintain a Gnutella client according to the open standards of an international community”.

The new application was, and still is, called FrostWire, written to, “keep and maintain the freedoms that LimeWire LLC may be forced to withdraw,” says the site, going on:

“LimeWire LLC has been considering an alternative path to keep them out of any legal situations they could be forced into. From what we understand, LimeWire LLC intends to implement a DRM filtering technology into their client. If LimeWire ever decides to implement this DRM technology, we will be prepared to remove it from our code and distribute the client under our own branding. However, we will continue supporting the LimeWire client development and do not wish to make fundamental or drastic changes to the LimeWire core itself.

“FrostWire will not break with LimeWire’s design philosophy. We will always do our best to maintain a strong relationship with the LimeWire Development Team. FrostWire, although very much like LimeWire, will never offer a paid version or a subscription service for the download or use of the FrostWire application. FrostWire is a not-for-profit project. We will never bundle our software with any type of adware, spyware, malware or collect any personal or private data. FrostWire will always remain free as in both price and freedom.”

However, LimeWire is still under the corporate gun and, “Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site’s corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model that adequately respects copyrights,” says the Big Four’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America),” according to Billboard. “While other services have come productively to the table, LimeWire has sat back and continued to reap profits on the backs of the music community. That is unfortunate and has left us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect the rights and livelihoods of artists, songwriters and record label employees, as well as those companies building legitimate businesses based on music.”

The labels want an injunction and damages of at least $30,000 for every infringement of every recording and at least $150,000 for every willful infringement if each recording, says the story, adding:

“Last week Sharman Networks and others involved with P2P network Kazaa settled with the labels for $115 million and agreed to go legit. A similar deal was struck last year with Grokster.”

Sharman has, of course, been striving for years to reach an agreement with elements of the corporate entertaiment industry and in our humble opinion, the actual amount handed over is unlikely to be $115 million, or anywhere near it, and might in reality be regarded as an admission fee for the cartel good ‘ole boys klub.

p2pnet

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The term was coined by tech pioneer and journalist Oscar Swartz (founder of Swedish ISP Bahnhof) in a blog article from December 15, 2005, called “Bodströmsamhället pÃ¥ väg: Europaparlamentet sa ja.” (“The Bodström Society is on its way: the European parliament said yes”).

From now on I will use the term ‘Bodström society’ instead of “Big Brother society” or similar terms. His visions are infernal and consistent and are aimed at communications being saved, so that authorities can later check it out. Yes, the ideal would be that all operators simply upload their data to a central data base where authorities can lurk around, instead of requesting the data from the operators. And they will also have far reaching possibilities to bug – even against individuals not suspected of a crime. He also suggests that authorities are going to be able to secretly install keyboard loggers, troyans and other stuff on people’s computers. Sure, it’s to fight crime. But all this is very explicitly motivated with the argument of making crime investigations more ‘efficient’.

Swedish wikipedia says this about the Bodström society: “What differs the Bodström society from other forms of Big Brother systems is the fact that Thomas Bodström is working in a time where communications over the Internet has just received a central position, and that the government that Bodström is part of is participating in the US war on terrorism. The latter fact is a breach against the former social democratic standing doctrine that is taking a distance to the US foreign agenda.” (Source) There is alot of criticism against the US policies on domestic self defense post 9-11, such as the Patriot act and various implementations, as well as other things that leads to monitoring and control, both internally and externally. The same thing is true about the British policies. British policies are often described in Swedish debate as a mix between tender nursing of the population, combined with sometimes harsh methods of discipline, as well as a more and more far-reaching control over what people are doing, in order to protect the population from itself and others. Much of this is of course due to the aftermath of the July 2005 terror attacks.

When Sweden is moving towards more monitoring despite the lack of terror attempts – a strict policy of neutrality almost as dogmatic as the one of Switzerland kept Sweden outside the battles of WWII as well as the Cold War – many seek other explanations. One often described is a ‘follow your leader’ tendency, Sweden is by many perceived as politically moving towards the US and the UK, and major trends in said countries will have a large impact on other Western countries. Sweden is not exception here. Sweden is also a part of the European Union, and if the European Union walks in one direction, Sweden will follow it.

But there are also those that claim that Sweden is not only walking in the same direction as the European Union is walking. They point out that Sweden in many apects is leading taking charge in pointing the direction out.

In June, 2006, Oscar Swartz, the person to have coined the term, published a report named “Marschen mot Bodströmsamhället – Hur justitieministerns dubbelspel hotar vÃ¥ra grundlagsfästa fri- och rättigheter.” (The March towards the Bodström society – How the double-dealings of the minister of justice is threatening our basic freedoms and rights). The report has spun alot of attention in the Swedish blogosphere, has inspired various Swedish groups, such as the journalist trade union, to challenge tendencies in government property, and has given a strong reference collection for those that criticize the government for going towards more monitoring. It can be downloaded in PDF if you read Swedish.

The report concentrates on propositions and government documents concerning the storing and monitoring of communications, primarily on the Internet and through telephones. He points to an evident double-dealing of the minister, where the minister is one of those that are the most aggressive on making the European Union when it comes to carrying through a more far-reaching monitoring legislation, while domestically, said changes is made out to be implemented because Sweden has accepted European legislation, not because he wants it to be that way. The report goes so far as to accuse Bodström of outright lying to parliamentary committees on how he is working in the European council of ministers. At the same time, more subtle changes is made in Swedish law: the European legislation makes it possible to monitor suspects of serious crime, and Swedish legislation is tampered so that more and more people are included in ‘suspects of serious crime’ – and more and more can be done against people ‘related to’ or ‘involved with’ or ‘associated with’ people suspected of these wider and wider definition of serious crime.

In conclusion, Swartz demands that Bodström is brought before the Committee on Constitution, the executive committee of the Swedish parliament that checks to see if decicions and actions of the government are in accordance with the Swedish constitution. When the report was presented, at least one MP was present, who promised to work to this end.

The term Bodström-samhälle was established well before this report was published. The picture below has been seen on more and more Swedish blogs. The text says, ‘Democracy and terrorism is not compatible. Let us therefore abolish democracy.’

But with this report, critics of the current course of Swedish society towards Orwellian heights have now got a black on white arsenal of arguments and facts to use in debates. What will become of the demands to put Bodström before a committee is yet to be seen.

And what of the legislation carried through in Sweden, is it that serious? Well, if all would be carried through, it would be quite possible to install keyboard loggers and bugs on your computer, if a friend of the family was ever suspected of a serious crime – and remember, more and more crimes are being turned into ‘serious’. When the Pirate Bay was raided, their judicial advisor was forced to leave a DNA sample, even if it had no apparent significance to the investigation.

On my personal blog, Piracy Unlimited, I once made a compilation of laws, proposed laws and laws suggested for future installment, that has our Justice Minister as originator or advocate. Unfortunately, since I wrote it on June 19, there have been some additions to it.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“The RIAA lawsuits pit a small number of very large recording companies against individuals who have paid for an internet access account.

On the plaintiff’s end, the owners of the underlying copyrights in the musical compositions are not involved in the case; neither are many smaller record companies.

As to the defendants, since no investigation is made to ascertain that the defendant is actually someone who engaged in peer to peer file sharing of copyrighted music without authorization, there are many defendants who have no idea why they are being sued and who did nothing even arguably violative of anyone’s copyright. Defendants have included people who have never even used a computer, and many people who although they have used a computer, have never engaged in any peer to peer file sharing.

Sometimes the cases are misleadingly referred to as cases against ‘downloaders’; in fact the RIAA knows nothing of any downloading when it commences suit, and in many instances no downloading ever took place.

It is more accurate to refer to the cases as cases against persons who paid for internet access which the RIAA has reason to believe was used by some person — possibly the defendant, possibly someone else — to engage in peer to peer file sharing.”

Continue Reading

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On Snarf-it.org we read:

A couple of days ago we received this email from Microsoft asking us to remove about 200 torrents from the site that were “offending” their ideas of copyright. This site is run by people who have day time jobs, we don’t make anywhere near the exorbitant amounts of money made by other BitTorrent site admins so we have to have normal day jobs to survive. This means we do not have the time it would take to go through 400,000 sql entries to find and remove the torrents that other companies would like us to remove.

So snarf-it indroduced a ‘delete it yourself” service. Users of the DIY system can select up to 20 infringing torrents per day. The DIY service fully discharges the site’s responsibilities in respect of US DMCA and similar legislation as stated in Snarf’s wiki.

Although most BitTorrent sites comply with DMCA notices, a wise step if you want to keep the MPAA and RIAA off you back. But Snarf’s DIY service is certainly one of the most advanced and time-saving ways to do so.

If we take a look at the deal between BitTorrent.com and the MPAA we learn that all you have to do is comply to DMCA takedown notices, in order to please the MPAA.

Sounds fair enough.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Wired: When did the party start, and who started it?Allison: The party started on June 6, 2006 with two members, myself and my friend Alex English. A couple of days later, I received around 300 e-mails from people I didn’t know expressing interest in joining and helping out. This was thanks to publicity from the original Swedish party, Piratpartiet, who found out about it when I edited their Wikipedia entry to include mention of the U.S. version I founded.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The pirate party has three issues on its agenda, one of these is to reform copyright law:

The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance between the interests of publishers and consumers, in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation.

All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.

The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today’s copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today’s world. If you haven’t made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.

We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers’ legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.

You can read more, and join the party over here

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

BitTorrent spokeswoman Lily Lin confirmed to TorrentFreak

Our MPAA arrangement is strictly about taking down links to infringing content from our search engine, nothing more, nothing less.

As we said, sites like Mininova, Torrentz.com, Torrentportal and Torrentspy have the exact same policy.

Today however, BitTorrent.org changed the design of the frontpage, listing free (and legal) TV-Shows and Game Trials.

The recent deal with Warner is also advertised. Hollywood blockbusters (and DRM?), coming soon on BitTorrent.

But, the pirates can still find their favorite pirated movies, since most of the torrents indexed by BitTorrent.com are still copyrighted. Just try a search for terms like “dvdrip“, and “dvdscr” you will see that there’s a lot of pirated content available. Legal on the outside, pirate heaven on the inside.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to Hong Kong Cable TV the ISP’s have three weeks to comply. The movie companies demanded the user info belonging to 49 IP addresses, but it’s likely that more will follow. The Hong Kong BitTorrent “pirates” have to watch their backs. Hong Kong already had the honor to put the first BitTorrent pirate behind bars last year.

All “offenders” were using BitTorrent to download copyrighted content, including Jet Li’s newest hit Fearless. How ironic.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.