The legislation came into force on April 1st this year, and the very next day the Netnod Internet Exchange reported a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This dramatic reduction in data transfers was attributed to file-sharers reigning in their activities on fears of being identified by anti-piracy companies.

In response to the news, Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that most experts believed that the initial “scare effect” would wear off in time. They were absolutely right.

Current data from Netnod reveals that traffic levels in Sweden have not only returned to normal, pre-IPRED levels, but actually seem on track to surpass them. This increase is partly natural, but the relatively steep climb in recent months seems to suggest that P2P traffic is on the rise again.

While anti-piracy and copyright groups are working hard to clock up successes in getting governments to implement increasingly tougher laws to deal with online file-sharers, they too aren’t sitting back and accepting defeat in the face of these new challenges. Many are turning to services which enable them to hide their identities.

Recently the Cyber Norms sociological research project reported that 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 were taking measures to neutralize online surveillance, with as many as 500,000 of their countrymen following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

In this cat and mouse game, the cats have to spend millions of dollars and years of effort to achieve their aims of getting new legislation to protect their interests. However, in a crushing response, the mice spend just a few minutes in thought deciding how to spend a few dollars in order to instantly neutralize the threat.

As people around the world look forward to the festive season, it must seem like Christmas every day for VPN suppliers.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

On April 1st this year the new law became active and immediately there was a reported dramatic drop in Internet traffic, which many believed could be attributed to file-sharers becoming more cautious about being identified by anti-piracy and entertainment companies.

While many forecasted that file-sharing lawsuits would quickly follow, in fact the reverse is true. So far, no action has been taken against music pirates at all – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming, it is, albeit somewhat later than expected.

But at this point and in the absence of lawsuits, how has the introduction and awareness of IPRED affected file-sharing activities?

According to new research carried out by SIFO on behalf of TV operator Viasat – who earlier this year said that although affected by piracy would not use the new legislation at all – 11 % of Swedes continue to download copyright works using the Internet.

When split between the sexes, 16% of men said they are continuing to download compared to 5% of women.

Of the traditionally download-intensive 15 to 29 year olds, 25% of those questioned said they are carrying on their activities regardless of the law.

While 76% of the file-sharers questioned said that they aren’t intimidated by IPRED, 16% of all respondents said they had stopped illicit downloading completely.

Overall, a significant 46% said that they could be encouraged to stop illicit sharing if provided with better legal alternatives. Just over a quarter of respondents said they are happy with existing ‘legitimate’ services through which they can buy music and movies.

“We need more good, reasonably priced legal alternatives to prevent illegal downloading,” said Viasat CEO Hans Skarplöth. “Only 27 percent think that the alternatives are good enough today. The commercial operators must therefore act more vigorously to attract more people to become legal while we must become better at information about the options that actually exist.”

Bonver, a company providing bricks and mortar stores with DVD movies, said that since the introduction of IPRED, rental has increased by a massive 40%.

According to CEO Gerard Versteegh, online movie downloads have benefited the most, with a reported increase of 115%.

These digital sales figures should be interpreted with caution though. Movie downloads are on the rise worldwide and the reported 115% increase might very well be attributed to other factors.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, Pirate Bay’s spokesman Peter Sunde says that they will not give up that easily. On his blog he writes, “When people think you’re down and out, that you’ve lost and have no way to win… that’s the perfect time to hit them harder than ever before.”

On Twitter Peter announces that their next step is to “file charges against Sweden for violation for Human Rights.”

In order to do so they will have take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, who will then conduct a review to see if the Swedish legal system did indeed violate the rights of the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial.

Peter also points out that Anders Eka, the judge responsible for reviewing the bias case, was biased himself. He is referring to his connection to The Stockholm Center for Commercial law, together with movie industry lawyers Monique Wasted and Peter Danowsky who represented the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial.

The appeal court was well aware of this connection, but said before that there was no reason to take Eka off the case.

“The group Anders Eka is a member of has no connection to copyright issues and the interests that are present in the case. I cannot see how this specific connection could lead to that Anders Eka isn’t suitable to try the question of bias,” Fredrik Wersäll, the president of the appeal court has said.

The exact nature of the charges against Sweden remain unclear. Peter Sunde was not available to comment but we guess it wont take long before we find out. Stay tuned for updates.

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With 99.9% of the districts counted the Pirates have 7.1 percent of the votes, beating several established parties. This means that the Pirate Party will get at least one, but most likely two of the 18 (+2) available seats Sweden has at the European Parliament.

When we asked Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge about the outcome, he told TorrentFreak: “We’ve felt the wind blow in our sails. We’ve seen the polls prior to the election. But to stand here, today, and see the figures coming up on that screen… What do you want me to say? I’ll say anything”

“Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it,” Falkvinge said. “This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it’s time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples’ lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities’ mass-surveillance,” he added.

The turnout at the elections is 43 percent, a little higher than the at the 2004 elections. This would mean that roughly 200,000 Swedes have voted for the Pirate Party. This is a huge increase compared to the national elections of 2006 where the party got 34,918 votes.

Both national and international press have gathered in Stockholm where the Pirate Party is celebrating its landmark victory.

At least partially, The Pirate Party puts its increased popularity down to harsh copyright laws and the recent conviction of the people behind The Pirate Bay. After the Pirate Bay verdict, Pirate Party membership more than tripled and they now have over 48,000 registered members, more than the total number of votes they received in 2006.

With their presence in Brussels, the Pirate Party hopes to reduce the abuses of power and copyright at the hands of the entertainment industries, and make those activities illegal instead. On the other hand they hope to legalize file-sharing for personal use.

“It’s great fun to be a pirate right now”, Christian Engström, Vice Chairman of the Pirate Party told the press when he arrived.

Update: Sweden has 20 seats, but until the Lisbon treaty passes only 18 with voting rights. This means that the Pirate Party will have 2 seats.

Update: In Germany the Pirate Party got approximately 1 percent of the votes, not enough for a seat in the European Parliament. Andreas Popp, lead candidate for the German Pirate Party is pleased and told TorrentFreak: “This was the first time, we ran for the European elections. And although many voters have hardly known us, we got a great result. This shows, that many citizens identify themselves with our goals. I want to thank all people who supported us, we could not have done that without them. We have fulfilled our minimal goal of 0,5%. Now we can start up for real!”

Update: Here’s a feature article on the election night and outcome.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Two men, both aged 29, are alleged to have shared copyright infringing files. The police seized their computers and other equipment in the city of Skövde, according to an Aftonbladet report.

Fredrik Ingblad, the prosecutor assigned to the case said in a response to the arrests, “The two people in Sweden are suspected of having been part of an international network that have made a large amount of movies available.” When the prosecutor refers to an ‘international network’ he means the Scene. So far he has provided no information on how many files were shared.

In addition to sharing copyrighted works, the two are also suspected of operating a so called ‘rip box’, a high powered computer where movies can be quickly decoded and ripped into the appropriate format.

The prosecutor further said that the case was part of an international police operation against illegal file-sharing, codenamed Operation Carbonite. The operation is headed by Europol and law enforcement agencies from the USA, UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden are involved.

The two were questioned at a local police station, but at this point it is not known how they responded to the accusations. They will be questioned further, and if IFPI operating manager Lars Gustafsson is to be believed, this is only one of many file-sharing related cases this year.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The law has been controversial from the start, with over 50,000 people signing up to the “Stop IPRED” group on Facebook. Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge has been most vocal on the issue.

“These laws are written by digital illiterates who behave like blindfolded, drunken elephants trumpeting about in an egg packaging facility,” he told TorrentFreak. “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.”

Nevertheless, Sweden will go ahead with the introduction of the law and, as we predicted back in October last year, the objections to it continue. E24.se reports that a new poll from Sifo indicates that nearly half of all Swedes (48% of those questioned) believe that the IPRED law is wrong.

The group showing the strongest opposition are the typical file-sharers – 15-29 year old men – with a huge 79 percent of those rejecting the new law. In Sweden, 56 percent of men aged between 26 and 35 engage in file-sharing.

From the over 65 years old group, who will generally have less interest in the Internet, 27 percent of them were against IPRED, while 34 percent demonstrated support. The narrow 50-54 year olds group showed a 45 percent opposition to the law.

Overall, just 32 per cent of respondents were in favor of the legislation.

In response to the new law and the heated copyright debate, the National Library of Sweden has closed its open Wi-Fi network. They have thereby disabled online access to a lot of research material, which can now only be accessed upon request -just like in the olden days.

IPRED will come into effect April 1st 2009.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The national board for youth affairs (Ungdomstyrelsen) awards money to organizations, in order to ensure that they have access in influence, to promote the next generation of politicians; indeed possibly the current generation. At least two of the board members of Ung Pirat are listed on the Pirate Party’s list of candidates for June’s EU elections.

Not everyone has been pleased about the government funding though, with the IFPI chief among them. IFPI’s Swedish director Lars Gustafsson wasn’t happy at all, saying “It is surprising. Ung Pirat works in principle to encourage something illegal. That they then receive money from a state institution is remarkable.”

This is of course, the same Gustafsson who last year urged ISPs to spy on its customers, which is of course completely illegal – not that hypocrisy from the IFPI is anything new. The board dismissed the complaints though, with Director-General Per Nilsson saying “It is our understanding that they want to change legislation around copyright issues and that is an opinion that they are entitled to.”

UP, at just over two years old, has seen a fantastic growth rate. It is now the third biggest political youth organization in Sweden, behind those of the Moderate and Social Democrat parties, and ahead of the Christian Democrats – all parties with representatives in the Swedish Parliament.

Per Nilsson recognized this as well, saying, “It is positive that the organization in a short time has managed to build a large nation-wide activities on issues involving many young people.” With this money and constantly growing support, it’s quite likely that come the next election, the Pirate Party will be voted into parliament.

“The growth of the Young Pirates in Sweden heralds the coming of a new dimension in European politics,” Ung Pirat’s Mattias Bjärnemalm told TorrentFreak, “The communication revolution has made the life of the younger generations into something altogether different from how their parents grew up, and now that cultural change will alter the very core today’s political landscape.” We wish them all the best of course.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In a recent poll, 21 percent of all Swedes indicated that they would consider voting for the Pirate Party in the upcoming European Parliament elections. Among men in the 18-29 age group, this number goes up to a massive 55% – an unprecedented statistic.

Aside from the support in this poll, more people have joined the party recently. During the last quarter the membership count increased by 50% – from 6000 to 9000 – which makes the party larger than the Green Party which currently holds 19 seats in the Swedish parliament.

Swedish Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the Internet played a big part in the recent successes of the party. “We couldn’t have done this without the dialog infrastructure that the Net provides. Oldmedia has lost control of the discourse,” he said. With all the controversy surrounding the new anti-piracy and wiretapping legislation, the Pirate Party was often mentioned on blogs, since they are the most outspoken opponent.

For the upcoming European election, the Pirate Party requires 100,000 Swedish votes to get a seat, a goal that is within reach in the current political climate. Falkvinge is optimistic too, and said “We need to grow by another 50%, counting from the Swedish election two years ago, to get seats in the EU parliament and shake the political copyright world at its core. It’s hard, it’s supposed to be hard, but the numbers show we can do it. We can do this, and the charts are going stratospheric.”

The Internet will probably play a big role in this election for the Pirate Party, and recent history has shown that this is not only true for parties that carry “pirate” in their name. Elections to the European Parliament will be held in June 2009, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the Pirate Party fares.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In recent times, the Pirate Party has been more concerned with government actions that affect ordinary citizens. The wiretapping law (FRA) for example, as well as the likes of IPRED, which will give companies chasing an alleged copyright infringer more powers than the police. Worrying for anyone that has followed our stories on Davenport Lyons in the UK. “If IPRED becomes law, then drug dealers will have greater rights and protection than file-sharers,” wrote one news site.

On Monday, the PiratPartiet released their list of candidates for the EU parliamentary election taking place in June. Heading the list is party vice-chairman Christian Engstrom, but the other 19 candidates cover a wide age-range and are of roughly equal gender. This is not a party dominated by geeky teenage boys, but one that’s growing quickly; the Swedish Pirate Party now has only a few hundred members less than the Green Party.

Other countries aren’t so lucky. Spain, Poland and France, are among those with parties that hope to run in the election, but are having difficulty getting supporters. “It’s a sad state of affairs globally,” says Andrew Norton, the coordinator of Pirate Party International. “Most countries have lots of people that just can’t be bothered. They will post on forums to express their anger, but not do anything worthwhile about it.”

However, in Sweden – the home of The Pirate Bay – things are getting better. In the prominent Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, the headline reads “IPRED Favours the Pirate Party.” It goes on to comment on how directives like IPRED are driving people to the Pirate Party in Sweden, people who are concerned over both IPRED and FRA laws.

In their first election The Swedish Pirate Party gathered some 35,000 votes – roughly comparable to a leading 3rd party candidate in a US presidential election, percentage-wise. But, with the heavy public focus on these hot-topic issues, it’s entirely possible they’ll reach 100,000 – the number required in the last EU election in Sweden to get a seat.

The newspaper closed with a comment from political scientist and election researcher Henrik Oscarsson, who identified the Pirate Party as “a classic civil rights movement”. We have to wonder, does this make Brokep and Co. at the Pirate Bay, the digital Rosa Parks?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Peter Sunde (Brokep), one of the co-founders together with TiAMO and Anakata, later said that their initial goal was to build a Scandinavian BitTorrent community. “At this time there was one big torrent site, which was called Suprnova, but they mainly had international content. We and Piratbyrån wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay.”

When the site launched exactly remains a mystery though, as we read on The Pirate Bay blog. “The official birth date of the site is not 100% sure. We’ve been discussing it back and forth the past week and decided that screw it, you don’t need to know which day. We’ll celebrate anyhow!”

The hardware setup was really primitive initially. When the site launched it was hosted in Mexico, where Anakata hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time. The site moved to Sweden later, where Fredrik hosted the tracker on his laptop for a while, But, as the site grew, it had to move on to a more powerful setup.

The Pirate Bay soon became one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was already tracking a million peers and over 60.000 torrent files. Around the same time, the founders also noticed that not only Scandinavians were interested in their site. In fact, 80% of their users case from other parts of the world. Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages from then on.

Due to these changes, The Pirate Bay grew even faster, and the number of peers tracked by the site grew to 2,500,000 in 2005. Its popularity didn’t go by unnoticed in Hollywood either. Copyright holders started to send out takedown notices, which were often mocked by the site’s founders. Eventually, however, The Pirate Bay got raided, following pressure from Hollywood and the USA.

The raid brought the site into mainstream press, not in the least because it came back online within three days. All this publicity consequently resulted in a huge traffic spike, sorting quite the opposite effect of what Hollywood had hoped for. In the years that followed, ISPs in other countries including Denmark and Italy were forced to ban the site, again it only increased The Pirate Bay’s popularity.

Last week the tracker reached another milestone, as it broke the 25 million peers mark. This effectively means that at any given point in time, more than 25 million people actively trade files thought the Pirate Bay tracker. Not worried by the upcoming court case in 2009, the ship sails on, larger than ever before. That is certainly something to celebrate.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In order to obtain the personal details, copyright holders will have to prove that there is “probable cause” that a person, or rather an IP-address, has actually shared copyrighted material with others. With the current state of evidence gathering, where mistakes and false accusations are fairly common, this may not be that easy to achieve.

The many unsecured Wireless routers complicate the evidence gathering even further, and BitTorrent trackers have also implemented countermeasures of their own. Earlier this week we reported that the Pirate Bay tracker software automatically inserts several “random IP addresses” that are not actually downloading data. This is done on purpose, to pollute the evidence gathering of anti-piracy outfits.

The new law is also 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.”

“We have good hope of putting an end to these ridiculous developments. Either the existing politicians start to understand what they’re actually doing at work all day, or they will escalate the conflict to the point where we’re replacing them in office. Either way, copyright will be scaled back,” Falkvinge added.

It is to be expected that opposition against the new anti-piracy law will be great, similar to the public outrage when Sweden introduced a wiretapping law earlier this year, and after the raid on The Pirate Bay in 2006. It wouldn’t surprise us if The Pirate Bay fights this battle at the front, clashing with local politicians and media once again.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Of course, since young readers are used to downloading the TV shows they want to watch, it was natural for Nyheter24 to include not only a top-list of conventional audience ratings on their TV schedules page, but also the top-list of most downloaded TV shows at The Pirate Bay. In addition, the site decided to link the entries in the top-list entries to the respective TV show’s torrent page on The Pirate Bay.

This didn’t fall too well with Henrik Pontén of the Swedish Anti Pirate Bureau. Pontén gathered fame earlier for manufacturing evidence against The Pirate Bay before the controversial raid, and spearheading the copyright lobby as charges were filed against the tracker in January.

“We consider this being ‘assisting copyright infringement’, just like The Pirate Bay itself. I assume this is a mistake and that they will remove the links,” he told Realtid.se. The story didn’t discuss if sites that are linking to Nyheter24.se (or sites that link to sites that link to Nyheter24.se) are also considered to be assisting in copyright infringement by Pontén.

Nyheter24 replied to Pontén’s accusations, and said that the The Pirate Bay admins have not yet been convicted of anything illegal, and that removal of the links only become matter of discussion if they, against all odds, will be. Hours later, however, Nyheter24 revised its position and removed the direct links to the torrent pages. The site kept the top-list on their TV schedules page, with a link to The Pirate Bay’s front page instead.

“We are removing the direct links since they may be illegal and it’s not our intention to challenge copyright law. However, half of the Swedish population downloads from the net and I’d love to have a partnership with The Pirate Bay,” said Douglas Roos, chairman of the Nyheter24 board.

If Henrik Pontén decides to pursue the matter, and file charges against Nyheter24 on the same basis as he went for The Pirate Bay, he will have a familiar face to battle in court. Nyheter24’s legal representative is none other than Monique Wadstedt, better known as the MPA’s judicial representative in Sweden and Pontén’s sidekick in their Don Quijote quest against The Pirate Bay.

“These boys will go to jail,” she said in January when charges were filed against The Pirate Bay. “I have no comments. I won’t answer further questions,” she said on Friday when asked for a comment about the criticism from her partner Henrik Pontén about her other partner Nyheter24.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

That’s not all. Google and former public telecoms company Telia moved their servers out of Sweden. Belgium says it will sue Sweden since Belgian citizens may be wiretapped without any apparent reason. Anne Ramberg, secretary-general of the Swedish Bar Association, has called for challenges to the law in Swedish and European courts and similar demands have been heard from several other interest groups, like the Journalist’s Union. It’s FRA hunting season this summer in Sweden!

It is now obvious that the legislation was a deal made between the leaders of the four government parties without full support, even from within their own ranks. Active party members resigned in protest, like Fabian Norlin of the Moderate party who quit on June 24 and instead launched FRApedia, a Wiki covering everything about the law and the authorities.

Meanwhile, the people responsible have not uttered a word in defense of the legislation. They haven’t even tried to justify it. In fact, the few quotes that were made referred in smug terms to the nature of the debate and the debaters. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said “It would be best for everyone if the debate would calm down.” Others have called your-rights-online-bloggers “spirited amateurs”, sparking even more fury.

During the time since the vote, the Members of Parliament have appeared everything from sad through to ridiculously stupid when trying to handle the turbulence. A representative of the “ridiculous” faction was Liberal Party member Gunnar Andrén who wrote a very upset internal email claiming he hadn’t been told by party colleague Camilla Lindberg that she was going to vote against the bill (she was the only member of any of the four government parties that voted against the bill and received much appreciation and media by it). His email was leaked to the press by another party colleague and Andrén was later heard on a recorded phone-call exclaiming that his secrecy of correspondence had been broken and that it was “Gestapo methods”. Dude, you just voted for a bill that allows all emails to be read and all phone calls to be recorded. Live with it!

The big shift in public opinion came at the time of the vote when the blogs, who had pushed on the issue for many weeks before the vote, finally found the mainstream media with them, and with that the power to reach the masses. Some 6.6 million emails were sent to the Members of Parliament through an online petition created by daily newspaper Expressen which allowed easy protests to the members. Göran Petterson of the Moderate Party (until 2006 a military officer and one of those in favor of the FRA legislation) wrote on his blog: “Email is a great way to communicate with my voters but then you can’t do like Expressen has done now. […] Now, normal emails from the citizens are drowning in these.” Clearly, he didn’t understand his voters were trying to communicate with him, sending him a clear message of what they thought of him and his party.

This Thursday, rallies were initiated in Malmö and Stockholm by The Pirate Party which gathered more than 2000 anti-FRA protesters. They were in fact parties rather than protests, celebrating that Sweden has become a banana republic. As in the protests before the vote in June, the parties’ youth organizations stood side by side fighting the FRA, all ideological differences set aside for what may be one of the most important issues in their political careers.

In Malmö, Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay spoke at the rally saying “the FRA bill is unnecessary, ineffective, unwanted and last but not least, expensive. The government should listen to the people, as they cannot replace us. However, we have the power to change the government.” Meanwhile, in Stockholm, Maria Wetterstrand of the Green Party promised that an abolishment of the FRA bill would be one of their demands in order to form government with The Social Democrats after the elections 2010 while Alice Ã…ström of the Left Party promised to motion this fall to give members of the government alliance parties the possibility to break up the legislation.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde at the Malmö rally

Yesterday, the annual Swedish political gathering in Almedalen began, where ministers, parliament members, journalists, pundits, lobbyists and interest groups traditionally meet during a week on the island of Gotland. The government thought that putting the FRA vote at the back of the spring schedule would make it go unnoticed. Instead, it’s the only current political hot topic as the Almedalen week is approaching with the Pirate Party in full presence on site to further push the agenda.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The bill was passed after it was debated in parliament, with 143 votes in favor, 138 opposed and 1 representative abstaining. Before the debate the situation was crystal clear. The four party government alliance would win the vote if all party members voted in favor of the bill, but with the seven seat majority the government currently holds, only four representatives had to vote against the party line in order for the bill to fail.

With all the editorials and statements regarding integrity, copyright and online-rights published during the last months by members of these parties, surely there would be four members of the parties that would follow their convictions rather than the party line? In fact, there were four representatives who have been crystal clear in these kinds of issues: Birgitta Ohlsson (Liberal Party), Karl Sigfrid (Moderate Party), Annie Johansson and Fredrick Federley (both Centre Party). They have profiled themselves on these issues and in some cases even campaigned on them. Surely, Fredrick Federley couldn’t let down his everyone of his voters?

Things proved more complex.

Leading up to Tuesday’s debate, the bill had been heavily criticized by journalists, pirates, lawyers, bloggers, all political parties’ youth organizations – as well as the head of the Swedish intelligence agency Säpo. Rick Falkvinge of The Pirate Party was one of the voices that spoke most strongly against the bill. Also, all of the four daily newspapers’ senior political editors were heavily opposed. Rumours had begun circulating that Karl Sigfrid was indeed going to vote against the bill while Fredrick Federley wrote an ambivalent blog post that indicated where this was heading.

The debate was intense with defense minister Sten Tolgfors of the Moderate Party showing his arrogance, ignorance and lack of understanding time and again (if the bill was not passed, he said, parliament would be risking the lives of Swedish UN troops in Afghanistan).

Towards the end of the debate, Fredrick Federley was on the speakers list. He pulled off a tear-filled act (including sentimentalities about his mother) in which he said he had to follow his conviction but at the same time didn’t want to let his party down. He motioned for the bill to be sent back to parliament’s defense committee for expanding the safeguards of individual rights. This was a carefully orchestrated piece of political theater designed to keep the government alliance together while at the same time allow the Centre Party (which until yesterday held high integrity and online rights) not to lose face. At this time, Federley knew that the bill was being reworked on an initiative from the Liberal Party to a new version that had a new authority controlling the controllers.

The original vote was due to be held on Wednesday morning and following an initiative from The Pirate Party, a crowd of hundreds was gathered in front of parliament to protest the bill and try to convince representatives to vote against it. The crowd was a mixture of pirates, the journalists’ union, the political parties’ youth organizations and worried citizens. Following the debate on Tuesday, the morning vote only considered if the bill should be sent back for revision and the vote was in favor.

In a farce of democracy, it was announced that the bill was to be revised in record time and a new vote be taken later in the evening. “I think the law needs to be re-written. It is not enough to create a few checks and balances … It is the law itself there is something wrong with,” Anders Eriksson, former Chief of Swedish intelligence agency Säpo, told Swedish radio before the vote.

By now, Fredrick Federley and Annie Johansson of the Centre Party had put themselves in a position where they could show to their voters that they had “improved” the bill while at the same time they could vote for the revised version to the happiness and joy of their party colleagues. So, what about the other possible nay-sayers?

According to the buzz on the blogs, Karl Sigfrid of the Moderate Party had decided to vote against the bill and was taken into a party meeting where 30 representatives from the Moderate Party along with party leader and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt were on a speech list, bashing him one after the other until he couldn’t take it anymore.

And the remaining? Birgitta Ohlsson of the Liberal Party was as lame as her Centre Party counterparts: She abstained her vote, according to an interview in Dagens Nyheter “with respect to my liberal consciousness and to my voters but also to my party colleagues”.

When the FRA bill version 1.01 was brought back into the chamber on Wednesday evening, the outcome could only go one way. The Government parties along with PM Fredrik Reinfeldt had decided that this bill should go through and with the internal critics effectively silenced the bill was voted through, plunging Sweden into DDR era lack of privacy. How the bill is compatible with Human Rights (The right to respect privacy, family, home and correspondence) will be decided later in the court of the European Union where a number of opposition representatives will bring it to be tried.

The only liberal voting according to her ideology rather than her party line was Camilla Lindberg of the Liberal Party. In an editorial in today’s Expressen she explains why: “My loyalty is with my voters. And with myself and my conviction. I couldn’t get myself to vote in favour of the bill, regardless of the arguments from my colleagues and the last-minutes improvements. [...] If the surveillance poses a threat for integrity and freedom without having a proved positive effect, I can’t support such a bill.”

Welcome to 1984….

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Next week, the Swedish parliament will vote on a new “wiretapping” law that may severely invade the privacy of Swedish citizens. If the new law is passed, all email, web traffic and phone calls will be monitored by the FRA, the National Defence Radio Establishment, without the need for court orders or similar authorization.

As always, one of the arguments in favor of such legislation is that it will be easier to hunt down terrorists. However, there’s a huge fear this will be used in the wrong way, to track down whistle-blowers for example.

That aside, the law is also a huge invasion of people’s privacy, both online and offline. The Swedish parliament will vote on this proposal on June 17th, and The Pirate Bay is urging their Swedish users to make their voices heard on this issue.

“We want to let you understand more and read up on what this means – and make your voice heard about this! This is a major threat against our civil rights and we must act. We must act now!” they write on the Pirate Bay blog, pointing their users to a website where they can take action.

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party is with the Pirate Bay on this issue, as he told The Local: “Democracy is reliant on the transparency of power, not the transparency of citizens. All places where the opposite has been the case – where it has been impossible to examine the powers that be, while citizens lack any right to a private life – have been really nasty places to live.”

Let’s hope members of Parliament come to their senses, and make the right decision next week. To be continued.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“To many of us in the Left Party, file sharing is something positive in the same obvious way that public libraries are,” the motion read, going on to describe the general opinion on file sharing in Sweden.

In addition, the motion stated that the various measures taken for trying to stop file sharing, such as big brother-like surveillance, or arbitrary sentences against individuals, are unacceptable.

The Pirate Bay, the main reason why piracy is such a hot topic in Sweden, was also mentioned in the motion. “The farce that is the ongoing legal procedures against The Pirate Bay also shows how legal security is in risk of being compromised by those trying to enforce the current ban on file sharing,” it read.

The motion concluded that legalizing piracy is the solution, and that the Left Party should take a stand for opening the possibilities to make copies for personal use.

The congress was split on the issue, and debate was heated before the vote on Sunday, but when the vote was taken it fell in favour of the motion legalizing file sharing.

“We obviously want to be the cultural workers’ party in the future, but legislation which makes the majority of the adult population criminals must be changed,” Elise Norberg Pilhem of the party’s board said.

Today, only a few hours after The Left Party’s new stance on file sharing, another initiative in the same direction was presented from across the aisle. The Swedish Center Party – the third largest party in Sweden, currently in government with four cabinet ministers, has called for an improvement in current copyright legislation.

Earlier this year the party had no success in convincing their colleagues in the government coalition to legalize non-commercial file sharing. Today, the party demands a complete oversight of the copyright legislation, and the appointment of a commission to investigate how a new copyright law could be constructed.

We now see a younger generation questioning copyright more and more, and with that there will be demands for updated copyright legislation. We need a legislation that is accepted by as many as possible, says Annie Johansson, the Center Party’s spokesperson on copyright.

It looks like things are changing for the better in Sweden.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The court decided that for uploading 4,500 music tracks and 30 movies with the filesharing application Direct Connect, the defendant should receive a heavy fine and a suspended prison sentence. Initially the file-sharer had been accused of uploading around 23,000 music tracks, but Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency’s (APB) use of questionable investigative techniques forced the prosecutor to withdraw some of the charges.

In its verdict, the Linköping District Court decided that due to the large number of files involved in the case, handing out just fines wasn’t enough, hence the suspended sentence. This situation of sharing many thousands of files at once affects the BitTorrent user a lot less than those using other methods of sharing, which is probably why the music industry prefers to target users using ‘folder sharing’ clients, such as DirectConnect, LimeWire and KaZaA.

Thankfully, the court denied the prosecutor’s request to have the man thrown in prison and said that this is “a task for the government, that by legislative means or in other ways take the necessary actions” to come to a solution to the problem. In fact, the court implied that the reason it issued only a suspended sentence was because the copyright industry has to take some responsibility for the situation it finds itself in.

Although escaping prison would’ve been his number one aim, the fine received by the file-sharer will hurt. In Sweden there is a system of “day fines” that is regulated by how large an income the guilty party has. In the case of day fines, two figures are given, for example ‘40 day fines of 50 kronor’ (that is to say, 2000 kronor). The first figure shows how seriously the court considers the offense (culpability) and the latter figure is determined depending on the accused’s financial situation.

He was given 40 day fines, amounting to some 10000 kronor ($1650) and must also pay the court costs of 44670 kronor ($7360).

Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, doesn’t want to comment on whether she sees the sentence as positive or negative. However, she commented on its effects:

“A consequence of the court having increased the sanctions in this case is that it will be easier to make ISPs give out information on IP addresses [in the future]. This of course affects the possibilities to act against these kinds of crimes.”

Morgan Gerdin, acting for the defense says the sanctions are too severe: “The District Court hasn’t observed the technical evidence. It is not possible from that evidence to conclude that my client has been filesharing. He should have been found not guilty.”

AntipiratbyrÃ¥n says the case is important: “It is obvious that the court takes the scope of the infringement seriously,” says Sara Lindbäck, a lawyer at Swedish Anti Pirate Bureau.

However, Magnus Eriksson, spokesperson for PiratbyrÃ¥n, doesn’t see any significance at all in the verdict: “The outcome of the verdict is based on the amount of files shared by this person. With more modern filesharing software [BitTorrent], it isn’t possible to see all the files that one person is sharing.”

He went on to say that most filesharers can continue their hobby without risking prosecution.

There were fears that a conviction in this case which resulted in prison time could open up the possibility that in the future, police could be allowed to search file-sharers’ homes in pursuit of evidence, something forbidden up to now. It remains unclear if a suspended sentence is enough to change the position.

In September 2007, the defendant started a fund to cover the fines. He has raised 7300 kronor so far.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

So far, the IFPI has had little success with their lobby, that’s probably why they decided to put legal pressure on the ISPs. “We believe that ISPs have a special part to play in this and must help us. The discussions we’ve tried to have with the ISPs haven’t led anywhere,” IFPI’s Managing Director in Sweden, Lars Gustafsson, said in response to their recent announcement.

The IFPI claims to have studied several ISPs practices, but according to Lars Gustaffson they intend to focus on one particular company which they claim facilitates filesharing on the Internet. One of the services they hope to stop is their nemesis, The Pirate Bay.

Gustafsson was advised by his legal team not to disclose the name of the ISP yet, but many people think the ISP Bahnhof will be the most likely target, since they are recommended by the pirate community because of their high stance on integrity.

“The ISPs don’t believe they have any responsibility to help when it comes to hindering filesharing,” says Lars Gustafsson. IFPI already sent out letters to several service providers, urging them to start monitoring their customers and filtering websites.

Most ISPs refuse to cooperate with the IFPI though. Last month, Telia Sonera, a large Swedish ISP responded to the IFPI’s request by stating that such actions are illegal under EU law. Norwegian ISPs later responded with similar arguments.

On the other hand, the IFPI claims that restricting access to filesharing sites might actually benefit ISPs. “Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth,” they state.

Thus far, the IFPI has won in Denmark. In February, a Danish court ordered the ISP ‘Tele2′ to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The decision is currently under appeal, and the Pirate Bay recently announced that they will demand compensation for the block.

To be continued…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Younger artists that broke through in the era of filesharing are more positive and see it as something that actually helps their career. One of the artists said: “Where I am now, filesharing is positive and makes good PR. If I were to get bigger, I believe it would affect me negatively.”

There are older artists who think that filesharing could benefit them, one of them noted: “You can look upon filesharing as a way of promotion, a way of putting new stuff out there.”

One of the Swedish artists who definitely profited from file-sharing is the Swedish glam rock band “Lamont”. The band was featured on on The Pirate Bay frontpage last year. Not without success, over 100,000 people downloaded their album in less than 24 hours, numbers that other artists can only dream of.

At the time Brokep told TorrentFreak that they love to support bands who are willing to share their music using BitTorrent. And indeed, a little later The Pirate Bay supported Familjen, which resulted in a Grammy win for the band.

Perhaps these might be two extreme examples, but there is ample evidence that most artists actually profit from filesharing, even without The Pirate Bay.

The survey further found, and this might also come as a shock to the record labels, that a majority of the artists, 59%, admit to having downloaded copyrighted music themselves.

Although nearly half of the respondents had a favorable opinion towards filesharing, 58% of the artists still think that that sharing copyrighted material should be illegal.

One of the artists was rooting for a pirate crackdown, as he said: “My wish is that the punishment will be harder and that it will become easier to catch filesharers. I think all musicians should go to parliament and grab those politicians.”

The survey further showed that a majority of the participants in the survey are angry at the record companies. One of the musicians said: “For 50 years, the sole purpose of record companies has been trying to grab as much money away from the artists as possible. Now, suddenly they’ve become some kind of interest group for the artists and that’s not true.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.