The above is just one of the many examples which show that there are many positive sides to the act of ‘copying’. Despite these nuances, piracy is often referred to as theft. This is a problem according to Stefan Larsson, lawyer and socio-legal researcher at Lund University in Sweden.

Larsson addresses the issue in his thesis “Metaphors and Norms – Understanding Copyright Law in a Digital Society,” for which he just received his doctorate. Talking to TorrentFreak, he explains why copyright infringement isn’t theft, and how this problematic metaphor keeps the gap between public norms and the law intact.

“The theft-metaphor is problematic in the sense that a key element of stealing is that the one stolen from loses the object, which is not the case in file sharing since it is copied. There is no loss when something is copied, or the loss is radically different from losing something like your bike,” Larsson explains.

One of the obvious problems is that it suggests that every “stolen copy” is a lost sale.

“Following this conception, some iPods could be valued at millions of dollars and a file sharing service could aid in copyright infringements representing more value than the Gross Domestic Product of entire countries,” Larsson says.

And indeed, if we look at the court case against The Pirate Bay in Sweden, the renumeration model of the entertainment industry would mistakenly put the “value” of the site at billions of dollars.

“I think that one important aspect lies in that the legal regulation is built on fundamentally different conceptions of reality,” Larsson told TorrentFreak.

The researcher explains that the public perception of the law, or social norms, is out of line with what the law actually says. In part this is because the “theft” metaphor is built into law, while there is no such thing as theft where piracy is concerned.

“In other words, this means that legal concepts can become metaphorical if their meaning expands into new areas, and the fixed conceptions that once ensured their legitimacy may seem unjust in the eyes of a reality that has moved on. This supports the gap between legal and social norms regarding parts of copyright today.”

This gap between the law and what people see, feel and experience in real life is a problem, one that lawmakers are now trying to address with even more draconian laws based on the same nonsense metaphors.

But are tougher laws the best solution? Will these change people’s norms? Larsson is not convinced.

“There are naturally many examples of when tougher laws change behavior, and there are also even examples of when tougher laws have made a substantial contribution in changing social norms. However, there are a few possible drawbacks when law turns repressive.”

He explains that these laws “would need to make everyone think differently about reality,” something that’s easier said than done. Another problem according to Larsson is that may people will simply find ways to hide what they do, such as using VPN services or proxies when downloading via BitTorrent.

Larsson doesn’t think that the current trends of stronger copyright laws and more surveillance of Internet users is the right path to take. These measures often violate the rights of the masses to benefit the interests of a few, which can never be a good solution.

Instead of changing people’s norms and twisting reality, perhaps society might be better off when copyright law adapts to the digital age?

Source: Piracy is NOT Theft: Problems of a Nonsense Metaphor

Relentless pressure from Hollywood and the US recording industry has ensured that a steady stream of Swedish citizens have been hauled up in court for an activity that in recent years has simply been a part of their culture.

Today a court heard the case against an individual accused of sharing around 45,000 music tracks online, a record-breaking amount for Sweden.

“The copyright industry keeps harassing ordinary citizens, in this case a 58-year-old Swedish woman,” Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

The accusations stem from the woman’s alleged file-sharing activities back in October 2007.

Rick, a regular TorrentFreak contributor, was at the hearing and reported back on this important case. He believes that the prosecution and copyright holders will use this case to set an increased level of punishment for file-sharers.

From the courtroom Rick reported that interest in the case was high and the public seating area filled to capacity.

Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad claimed that the defendant is guilty of sharing thousands of tracks either deliberately or through criminal negligence.

Although the defendant denied these charges, she did admit to having downloaded some tracks. But the important question remained – was she aware that the tracks she downloaded were subsequently being shared?

“Looking at the panel of four judges, the outlook appears bleak,” Rick explained.

“Estimating their ages, the four appear aged 75, 45, 40 (the law judge) and 60. In particular, the older lay judge looks puzzled and absolutely lost in space when the prosecutor explains sharing, hubs and DC++ [Direct Connect].”

The prosecution’s claim, that 45,000 tracks were being shared, was apparently agreed to by the defense, an admission described as a “major fuck up” by Rick. Indeed, it later transpired that the prosecution only had evidence to show that “about 50″ tracks had been shared.

It appears that a search of the defendant’s house took place a full year after IFPI carried out its initial investigation and it failed to turn up any of the music tracks in question. However, a Direct Connect client was found complete with logs which are said to contain data matching that from IFPI’s investigation.

The defense stated its case quickly. The seized computer carrying the logs does not belong to the defendant, and the defendant does not have the technical knowledge to know that sharing of music had taken place, despite installing the Direct Connect software and despite holding the job of a systems administrator.

The defense went on to remind the court that the accused had not acted with intent nor been criminally negligent, and that the prosecution had not shown anything to the contrary.

“It is interesting that the defense tries the ‘no active consent to sharing’ defense that was successfully used in the Göteborg trial against the 15-year-old who was ratted out by his headmaster,” Rick told us.

“Just as Denmark has established that ‘open wireless’ is a silver bullet against the copyright industry, perhaps this can become an equally strong defense until the laws are changed to stop these goons.”

After initially talking along the lines of a five months prison sentence, the prosecutor settled for a conditional sentence and an income-based fine. Nevertheless, that could be substantial – the biggest conviction previously related to the sharing of around 3,000 tracks.

“Seeing the inertia in the system gives us a feel for how long it will take to reverse this corporativist trend,” says Rick.

“This trial was for events that transpired in 2007. Four years ago. If we learn from today, it will have effects on trials that take place in 2015. Hopefully, there will be Pirate Parties in parliaments in several countries by then, starting to reverse this madness.”

The verdict will be delivered in two weeks.

Source: Record-Breaking File-Sharing Trial Heard in Sweden

With roughly 17,000 members Piratetorrents.nu was one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers still standing in Sweden, but as of this week the site is no more. While numerous private trackers shut their doors every year, it’s not often that a site’s staff are so open about their decisions as they are this time.

“As you can see, our website and tracker are not working anymore, this is because we don’t dare take any more risks! All of the staff have a private life to think about, and they no longer want to take the risks inherent in running a tracker,” Piratetorrents’ staff announced.

“In other words, we are throwing in the towel and ending this business before something possibly happens to us in staff. There are too many laws and rules against this stuff and it’s not worth the punishment,” the message adds

A source close to the site’s staff informed TorrentFreak that the raid of XNT and the subsequent arrests had a major impact on the decision to close the site.

Over the years Sweden has proven to be one of the most active countries when it comes to taking action against BitTorrent sites, and the site’s operators were no longer willing to put everything on the line.

Adding to the XNT raid there was also a Scene notice posted recently, with information on another site that was allegedly used to automatically upload content to Piratetorrents. To make matters even worse, this notice also linked one of the XNT arrestees to the Piratetorrents tracker.

“Another p2p-tard who was involved in Piratetorrents autobot is pulchi, he was just caught by the Swedish police in a bust, due to his involvement in another tracker called xnt.nu,” the Scene notice reads.

The demise of Piratetorrents is yet another example illustrating that Sweden is not the safe haven for torrent sites some believed it to be. Although the largest torrent site on the Internet is still active there, many smaller sites have either quit or moved abroad.

Source: Torrent Site Throws In The Towel Fearing Arrests

One such site was SweDVDR, which was considered one of the most coveted private trackers of 2008. Initially they announced they would close down, although along with another site, SoftMP3, they decided to release their source code to the public, enabling other sites to spring up in their place.

A pair of new sites – TVSource and DVDRSource – seized that opportunity but despite having code on a plate, failed to make it to the big time alone. Instead, the staff of the sites (which were actually owned by the same person) decided to pool their resources and merge their databases to create a new site – XNT.nu – known to its users simply as ‘eXcelleNT’.

By January 2010, eXcelleNT had more than 13,000 users but just 600 torrents. By early May 2011, the position was quite different. Although the userbase had remained steady, topping out at just under 17,000 members, torrent count had increased dramatically to between 28,000 and 30,000. But that would be the end of their good times.

Following an investigation conducted by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, police in Borlänge, Sweden, moved Tuesday to arrest a suspected admin of XNT.nu.

Based on new information discovered in this raid, they proceeded to arrest a second man in the Stockholm area on Wednesday.

“We believe that the men have been administering and managing the site together,” said prosecutor Frederick Ingblad, a veteran of anti-filesharing operations.

While computers were seized at the houses of the suspects in Sweden, the site itself was hosted on a server in Germany. That too has now been seized.

Both men, who are in their 20′s, are said to have made some level of confession. They were then released pending further enquiries.

From being quite a safe haven for file-sharing, the heat in Sweden against both users and sites is certainly rising. However, a large number of sites – some of them of significant size – still operate from the country including the largest of them all.

Source: Police Raid ‘Excellent’ Private BitTorrent Tracker, Admins Arrested

That argument is simple, although some like to make it more complex than it is. In a file-sharing context, an IP address does not identify a person, at best it merely identifies an Internet connection. Nevertheless, countless Internet subscribers have been accused of infringements they have not committed, merely because their name is on the bill.

However, a developing case in Sweden shows that while tracking down the subscriber behind an IP address, it’s also possible to arrest and prosecute someone completely different.

In December last year a guy identified only as ‘Martin’ answered a ringing doorbell. Having played video games all night he was half asleep, arriving at the door wrapped in a blanket. Three people were outside and one of them was showing his police badge.

“At first I thought something had happened, but pretty soon they explained that it was about file sharing,” Martin told Swedish news outlet NVP.

But the police weren’t there for Martin, they were looking for the bill payer. However, he was abroad and Martin was there just as a house sitter, watering plants and feeding fish.

With the police presence expanding to five officers, network cables were disconnected, hard drives and computers seized. Despite having no initial interest in Martin, one of the computers they decided to seize was his.

Then a few weeks ago Martin was summoned to a interview with the police. There he discovered that an inspection of his computer had revealed 200 downloaded movies and he was now being pursued for illegal file-sharing.

The prosecutor in the case, Frederick Ingblad, who is also deeply involved in most of Sweden’s other file-sharing cases, admitted that they were originally looking for someone else, but Martin just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“It is now suspected that he downloaded and uploaded particular films,” Ingblad explained.

Both individuals now stand accused of copyright infringement and their indictments are expected in the summer.

“My friends think that I had bad luck. I hardly know anyone who does not share files, since you have always been able to get what you want,” Martin said.

“Still,” he added, “I think the law is right.”

Source: IP Address Leads Police To World’s Unluckiest File-Sharer

But yesterday, instead of being welcomed by the usual list of freshly uploaded content, visitors to Swebits found an unexpected and ominous message posted on the site’s homepage.

“As we all know everything has a beginning and an end. This is the end of Swebits. During the last day there has been a lot of speculation, some with hope and some with less hope,” Swebits staff informed the site’s users.

The notice went on to explain that the site had suffered a major DDoS attack and hardware failure last weekend, problems that are too time consuming and costly to fix. In addition, the site had a lack of donations recently, which according to the staff is a signal that the users don’t want the site to survive.

“It’s been a pleasure to be a part of Swebits and being able to influence Sweden’s best tracker. We know that it will be hard to fill the void that Swebits will leave after closing, but it isn’t impossible to replace it. Take care, whatever happens in the future,” they add.

However, this official message doesn’t take away all the speculation among users. Indeed, there appears to be an additional motive ignored by the announcements.

Today, the Swedish authorities and local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyran revealed that someone close to the site was arrested last week. The 25-year old man, who allegedly was a major uploader to Swebits, had his house raided and was later arrested by the police.

The man reportedly uploaded more than 1000 films to the site during a two week period last fall, and the authorities say he confessed his involvement during interrogations. The man is portrayed by the authorities as a central figure in the community and they link the closure of the site to his arrest.

The number of films the man allegedly shared in just two weeks appears to be unrealistically high, but the prosecution seem confident in that claim. “This person is suspected of having made the original uploads and then sharing out the works via torrent files,” prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson commented.

“Previously, we have focused us on the ‘scene, but now we have directed our focus to individual BitTorrent users,” said Henrik Ponten of Antipiratbyran in a comment. Interestingly enough the arrested man was ‘outed’ by the scene in the past, which might have tipped off the anti-piracy outfit.

This is not the first time that Swebits has shut down. In 2008 the site’s users were also led to believe that the site had ceased operating, but at the time it was a stunt to promote the revamped design that launched hours later.

This time, however, all signs suggest that Swebits wont be returning anytime soon, not in its current form at least. What role the arrest played in the shutdown is impossible to say without an official confirmation, but we have to assume that it caused concerns among the site’s staff members.

Source: Swebits BitTorrent Tracker Shuts Down Following Uploader’s Arrest

But that was not the end of the ‘collaboration’ between the US and Sweden on this front.

According to an unreleased US Embassy cable in possession of Swedish Television, the US pressure on Sweden to deal with file-sharing issues continued in the years that followed. In the cable, which dates back to 2008, the US Embassy presented a list of six items that they wanted to see addressed, all related to online copyright infringement.

A year later, five of these six items were indeed turned into action, including the appointment of more copyright police and prosecutors, backed up by educational anti-piracy campaigns. Of course, the Pirate Bay wasn’t left unmentioned in this cable either.

The cable writer mentions that it was hard for the Embassy to get openly involved in piracy related issues, because most of the press coverage was unfavorable towards the copyright industry.

“After the raid on The Pirate Bay on May 31, 2006, the issue of internet piracy was fiercely debated in Sweden. Press coverage was largely, and still is, unfavorable to the positions taken by the rights-holders and the United States Government,” the cable reads.

“The Pirate Bay raid was portrayed as the Government of Sweden caving in to United States Government pressure. This delicate situation made it difficult, if not counter-productive, for the Embassy to play a public role in IPR issues,” it adds.

In a response to the revelations, Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask denied that Sweden ever responded to pressure from the US Government. She hinted that the cable writer was making these remarks just to get a better payday.

Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde was surprised about the leaked cable, although the fact that the US put pressure on the Swedish Government was not that new to him.

“We all knew for a long while that the US was behind the raid and pressured Sweden, but that they’re still doing it was news to us,” Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “And that the Minster of Justice just says that the cable writer is lying ‘to get a higher salary’ shows that she doesn’t even care if her government is corrupt.”

The cable in question has not been published by Wikileaks yet, but is expected to be released in the near future. This, and other cables, are likely to add more insight into the backroom deals related to file-sharing and copyright issues.

Update: The full cable “Stockholm 09-141” has been published.

194710
3/2/2009 13:57
09STOCKHOLM141
Embassy Stockholm
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
08STATE45106|09STATE8410
VZCZCXRO6778OO RUEHAG RUEHAST
RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLARUEHLN RUEHLZ
RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHSM #0141/01 0611357
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 021357Z MAR 09FM AM
EMBASSY STOCKHOLM
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 4176
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 STOCKHOLM 000141
STATE FOR EEB/TPP/IPE:TIMOTHY R MCGOWAN STATE
PLEASE PASS TO USTR FOR JENNIFER CHOE GROVES
SENSITIVE SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KIPR, ECON, ETRD, PGOV, SW
SUBJECT: SPECIAL 301 FOR SWEDEN: POST RECOMMENDATION REF:
A) STATE 8410 B) 08 STATE 45106

15. (U) As of March 2 there is no decision, nor anything
in writing, that confirms that the GOS is actually
proposing a 10 percent general price cut on patented
pharmaceuticals. Therefore the Embassy does not recommend
that Sweden be put on the 2009 Special 301 Watch List as
concerns the de-regulation of the Swedish pharmacies.
However, should the GOS as a result of the April 1 TLV
report reach a decision to impose a general 10 percent
price cut on patented pharmaceuticals, the Embassy will
engage in high-level advocacy with the GOS on the issue
again.


Source: Wikileaks Cable Shows US Involvement in Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts

Today the Swedes voted for their national Parliament. If the turnout equalled that of last year, the Party would secure more than a dozen seats as the threshold for entering the Parliament in Sweden is 4 percent. However, this was easier said than done.

With 95 percent of the votes counted it is clear that the Pirate Party will not enter the Swedish Parliament. The Party is currently stuck at about 1 percent of the total vote, nowhere near the 4 percent threshold it needs.

This means that Wikileaks nor The Pirate Bay will be hosted under Parliamentary immunity. Even more so, the Party wont get the chance to legalize non-commercial file-sharing or criminalize “copyright abuse” as they planned.

Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the party is disappointed with the outcome, but that they gave it all they got.

“The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever. Unfortunately, the wind was not in our sails this time, as it was with the European elections,” Falkvinge said.

One of the reasons for the lack of votes is the disregard in the debates of all the issues that are so dear to the Pirate Party, Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

“The other parties had put a collective blanket over the privacy, culture and knowledge issues, as they had absolutely nothing to gain by even mentioning the issues.”

“If the wind is not in your sails, the sweat on your brow will still not steer the ship. I guess the most obvious example is how the appellate trial of The Pirate Bay will begin just nine days after the election,” Falkvinge added.

Despite the huge disappointment among Party members, today’s result was not totally unexpected. For months on end the polls showed the Pirate Party behind. A miracle was needed to come even close to the threshold.

Falkvinge and the other Party members will now have to wait four more years before they have another shot at conquering the Swedish Parliament. For now they have to settle for their two seats in Europe.

“Each generation must reconquer democracy. Nobody said it was going to be an easy fight,” Falkvinge says.

Source: Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament

In May 2006, a few months after the Pirate Party was founded, it saw a sharp increase in members after Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay’s servers. As a result the Party gained interest from the mainstream media and at the general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament.

With three years more experience, the Pirate Party participated in the elections for the European Parliament in Sweden in 2009. These elections came a few weeks after four people associated with The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison, something that was brought up repeatedly during the campaign. As a result, the Pirate Party got more than 7% of the total votes earning them two seats in the European Parliament.

For the upcoming election, The Pirate Bay will also be a central theme in the election campaign. In May the Pirate Party volunteered to provide bandwidth to The Pirate Bay after previous hosts got into legal trouble. Two months later, the Party surprised again by stating that it would use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Parliament.

In the upcoming elections this September the Party hopes to equal the success it achieved in the European elections last year. Today the Party released its manifesto, which has grown from 7 pages back in 2006 to 27 today. The manifesto is divided into three parts, which are the core elements the Party is focusing on – privacy, culture and knowledge.

As expected, the Pirate Party stays true to their well-known principles regarding copyright and file-sharing. The Party believes that non-commercial file-sharing should be legalized. On the other side of the coin, they are proposing charges for those attempting to sue individuals for non-commercial copying. Inhibiting the spread of culture and “copyright abuse” would potentially carry a jail sentence of up to 2 years.

Although they are often portrayed as a one issue party, file-sharing related paragraphs are actually in the minority. Securing offline privacy is also a major issue, such as the ability to travel freely within the country without having to submit to identity checks. The Party further believes that medical, biological and software patents should be abolished, even though they are no longer calling for the abolition of patents in general.

“We’re aiming for entry into Parliament,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “Just like in the European elections, anything above four point zero zero percent is a political achievement that will send shockwaves worldwide. At present, we’re polling between one and two percent, mostly because the election campaigns haven’t started yet.”

“We still need some kind of key symbol issue, but then again, we’re much better off today than we were equally long before the European elections last year. We were invisible in the polls until 38 days before that election. We know that we can sprint like no other, and that we have the activists to carry our weight. It’s going to be a tough race right until the vote counts are coming in on election night,” Falkvinge told us.

Based on the current standings in the polls a sprint is indeed needed, but the Party may once again get some help from outside to achieve this. Coincidentally, the elections are held just a few days before the appeal of the Pirate Bay four begins. Because of this, the issues so dear to the Pirate Bay and its supporters may play an important role in the political debates.

“TorrentFreak readers should vote for the Pirate Party because a Pirate entry into the Swedish Parliament is going to make a tremendously larger impact than keeping or switching prime ministers. It’s going to save the Internet from censorship, wiretapping and encroachment.”

An invasion of pirates into the political system is what Sweden really needs in order to save the Internet, according to Falkvinge. “It’s going to liberate our common culture. It’s going to change not just Sweden but the world. Be a part of that change and tell it to your grandchildren.”

Source: Pirate Party Ramps Up To Invade Swedish Politics

The Pirate Parties around the world are best known for copyright activism and are often seen as a ‘one-issue party’. While they also focus on privacy, government transparency, free speech, and patent reform, it is copyright that people’s minds spring to. So, with an election coming up, the Swedish Pirate Party has decided to play to their strength.

The party has announced today that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from ‘inside’ the Parliament, by Members of Parliament.

This move will certainly push the site to center-stage in Sweden. It will ensure a huge amount of scrutiny in any and all decisions made regarding the site, which is undoubtedly the intent.

“Sweden has long been a nation at the forefront of IT. But we have fallen in the rankings, largely because today’s politicians do not see the connection between file-sharing culture and future industry skills. We have now moved from place three to eight in available household bandwidth,” the Pirate Party informed TorrentFreak in a statement.

“There is no reason for us to accept this development – there are no technical reasons for this, only political.”

“Therefore, we can never accept the copyright industry’s way of systematically and legally harassing anyone who tries to build next-generation industries. The approach is criminal in the world and should be criminal in Sweden also, professional saboteurs are professional criminals, whoever they get their money from,” the Party added.

Aside from hosting The Pirate Bay in Parliament, the Pirate Party also plans to criminalize copyright lawsuits against noncommercial file-sharers and websites, as well as lawsuits against ISPs for linking to copyrighted material.

“The Lobby is used to using dirty tricks. Let’s see them take on legislators under constitutional protection who aim to criminalize their entire bag of dirty tricks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told us.

Of course, the plan can only take place if the Party wins some seats in the September 19^th Elections, where there is a 4% barrier to overcome. However, last June they did manage 7% in the European Parliament elections, so it’s not an impossible goal by any means. We will have to wait and see what September brings.

If The Pirate Party succeeds it will add some more controversy to the upcoming appeal of the ‘Pirate Bay Four’, which is currently scheduled to take place a month after the general elections.

Source: Pirate Party to Run Pirate Bay from Swedish Parliament

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.

Source: Police Arrest Several In File-Sharing Swoop

So maybe it comes as a surprise to learn that, according to new figures released by the IFPI in Sweden, music sales were up 10.2% in 2009. According to the group, this represents the first increase in revenue since 2000.

While physical CD albums sales managed a 1.9% increase over the previous year and still accounted for 80% of total industry revenues, the digital realm provided all the excitement.

The digital market place provided 16.3% of total sales in 2009, an increase of 98.6% over the previous year. 46.1% of digital sales came from streaming services such as Spotify, up from 17% in 2008, with the remaining 53.9% coming from other Internet sources.

According to IFPI, the main factor influencing these good results is a better offering to the public.

“I think the main reason for the increase in revenue is the availability of better legal services,” said chairman Ludvig Werner.

Indeed, increased availability has to help. The digital market has been resisted by the industry for such a long time, arguably enabling illicit file-sharing services to gain traction. Now that some effort is being made to compete with these unauthorized sources, the benefits can be seen.

Arguably it was the very existence of unauthorized music sources that prompted the industry to sit up and take notice of the digital market place in the first instance, but IFPI warns that these newer official outlets can only operate successfully in a market free from competing illegal file-sharing.

While Werner says that he feels that the introduction of the anti-filesharing IPRED legislation back in April 2009 had helped sales, Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law Lund University, advises to proceed with caution.

“I do not think we should exaggerate the effect. In our studies, we see that there are many who still share files. But it mostly affects the sales of physical copies where there has been a very small increase,” he told Metro.

“The increase in digital sales over the net, I think we can see continuing in parallel with file-sharing. I believe the growth would have been there even without IPRED,” he added.

Daniel Johansson, a researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, believes that the availability of streaming services may have affected the habits of younger people – the biggest music sharing group.

“There have been a lot of surveys over the last year and an important factor is a change in music behavior in the younger groups who are the biggest file-sharers,” he said.

Source: Music Sales Increase In Sweden For First Time Since 2000

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.

Source: Swedish Internet Traffic Recovers After Initial IPRED Scare

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.

Source: Many Swedes Undeterred By New Anti-Piracy Law

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.

Source: The Pirate Bay to Sue Sweden for Human Rights Violations

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.

Source: Pirate Party Wins and Enters The European Parliament

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.

Source: Two Swedish File-Sharers Arrested

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.

Source: Major Opposition to New Swedish Copyright Law

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.

Source: Sweden Considers Police Action Against File-Sharers

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.

Source: Young Pirates get Government Funding

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.

Source: Pirate Party Gets Massive Support in Sweden

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?

Source: Pirate Parties are “A Classic Civil Rights Movement”

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.

Source: The Pirate Bay Celebrates 5th Anniversary

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.

Source: Sweden to Introduce Controversial Anti-Piracy Law

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.

Source: News Site Criticized for Linking to Pirate Bay Torrents

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.

Source: Swedes Massively Protest Wiretap Law

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….

Source: Swedes To Be Wiretapped, Despite Protests

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.

Source: The Pirate Bay Takes Stand Against Wiretapping Law

“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.

Source: Swedish Left Party Wants to Legalize Piracy

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.

Source: File-Sharer Convicted in Sweden’s Biggest P2P Case

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…

Source: IFPI to Sue Swedish ISP for Facilitating Copyright Infringement

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.”

Source: Swedish Artists Want to Legalize Filesharing

When asked about the purpose of the memo in 2006, party spokesperson Peter Eriksson said: “Our aim is to make laws in line with the new technologies. The other option is to pretend that you can go on like you always have, although it’s practically impossible. Reality has changed.”

One of the driving forces behind the recent “I Wouldn’t Steal” campaign from the European Green parties was the Swedish politician Carl Schlyter, and his initiative seems to have spurred others in the party to join the debate. Earlier this week, an editorial was published in two local Swedish newspapers. It was titled “Filesharing is not theft” and was written by Akko Karlsson, member of the Swedish Green Party’s executive board.

In the editorial, Akko argued that filesharing can’t be compared to theft, as theft is when someone takes away the possibility for another person to use something, whereas filesharing only creates a new copy without erasing the original.

“For me, this is a generation issue,” said Akko Karlsson when TorrentFreak asked her why she decided to write the editorial. “You should always endorse the new technologies’ possibilities.”

In her editorial, Akko criticizes the entertainment industry’s failing to enter the information age with working business models:

“You could argue that filesharing hinders some people from earning as much money as they would have if filesharing was not possible. But now it is possible, the technology is there, and then the industry needs to find new ways of handling it. They’ve had the chance to work on new ways for 10 years but haven’t come up with much else than silly trailers that say filesharing is theft. [...] When new technology emerges, it’s not necessarily it that must be adapted to the old ways. Sometimes, the industry itself must adapt.”

Akko further told TorrentFreak that she’s convinced that filesharing, copyright and integrity will be important issues for Green Party in the 2009 elections for the European Parliament and the 2010 elections in Sweden.

“Because there is also the democratic aspect of this,” she says, “There are so many people under repressive regimes for whom filesharing and the Internet is the link to the rest of the world that inspires, gives hope and makes it endurable to fight for human rights and democracy. The state’s control system is expanding. We used to heavily criticize the intrusions of privacy and control systems in place behind the Iron Curtain, but now we are building this ourselves.”

In Swedish old media, there’s currently a heated argument against filesharing, with novelists like Liza Marklund and Jan Guillou using every inch of their weekly columns in Swedish newspapers to lobby for tougher measures. With the trial against The Pirate Bay coming up, the debate has sunk even deeper in the trenches. In this climate, for politicians to step up to the plate with sound arguments why filesharing should be legalized seems like a bold move.

But Akko Karlsson is not alone.

On January 31, an editorial was published in Gothenburg’s daily newspaper. It was written by Green Party’s Lage Rahm, member of Parliament, party spokesperson on IT issues and substitute member on The Committee on Industry and Trade. On the subject of the ongoing case against The Pirate Bay, he called for reason when it comes to impose tougher measures on filesharing:

“Not only is the struggle [to end illegal filesharing] doomed to fail, it also creates a risk that filesharing on the Internet becomes anonymized and encrypted. An increased availability of untraceable networks will make it harder to fight organized crime.”

As an example, Lage Rahm put forward the bust of a pedophile ring with more than 700 suspects in 33 countries last year. This was done by tracking chatrooms, downloaded photos and e-mail.

“Most people realize that the police and copyright interest groups are fighting against windmills. [...] Convicting sentences against The Pirate Bay would have merely marginal effects on the scope of illegal filesharing. More severe is that the hunt will lead to an increased interest for absolute anonymity among Sweden’s approximately 1 million filesharers. Their activity will move to untraceable darknets.”

He focused on the dangers of Internet communities going underground and concluded:

“New technologies mean we as legislators are faced with an entirely new reality. Tougher measures against filesharing means risking the police’s possibilities of fighting child pornography and organized crime. It is worrying that the Minister of Justice doesn’t seem to realize this. For The Green Party, this is one of the main arguments of legalizing non-commercial downloading. [...] The Minister of Justice should leave to the industry to clear up the mess they have made for themselves. Judicial resources should be diverted to fight severe online criminality instead of hunting filesharing sixteen-year-olds.”

So, what does this all mean for the European filesharer? Well, one thing is sure, political parties that actually have power are taking a pro-filesharing stance. A sign that things are moving forward, slowly, but in the right direction.

Source: The Pirate Bay and Filesharers Backed by Swedish Politicians

All of the kids raised their hands. The host of the show explained that they had to use the blurred vision because they didn’t want to show the faces of these criminal kids.

Then, the host went on to present a survey performed by Swedish youth Internet community Lunarstorm, where 14000 users, 8 to 14 years old, had been asked about their downloading habits. In the survey, 60% of the surveyed kids said they download “sometimes” or “often”. The host then asked two girls (who, we must assume, are part of another class than the one shown before, otherwise, why blur them in the first place?) if they thought it was strange that something that so many kids do, is actually illegal.

“It’s so common. You don’t really think about it,” said one of the girls. Next to answer was a boy who said “Well, most people just download music and put it in their iPods.”

Now the host, in her most tutorial voice, explained that musicians and filmmakers want to get paid for their work, so the courts and the police are working hard to stop the criminals from downloading. Back in the computer classroom, she asked the girls again: Is it really ok to download other peoples work? “Not really,” said the girls. “When someone releases an album they want to be paid for it, so they get angry if you download for free,” said the boy.

The clip ended with the host saying that the law clearly states that you are not permitted to share content that otherwise costs money to buy or rent, and that it is forbidden to download from The Pirate Bay.

A conversation in the studio then took place with one of the hosts explaining why it is forbidden to download: “The copyright law says that everybody who has created film, music and such must get paid for their work.” And: “If you are under 15, you cannot go to jail or be fined if you download, but I think you really need to remember that this is illegal and that the police are watching this now.”

Anything to take with us from this piece of kids propaganda? Well, upon being questioned by the reporter on what is needed to make people pay for their content, one of the girls answered:

“If everything was a bit cheaper to buy, you would save less money when you download,” a wise lesson.

Source: Sweden Warns Kids Against The Pirate Bay

It now seems that there’s some good news for Deimos as The Pirate Bay is offering their help. In fact, they claim to have two servers lined up for Demonoid already. Pirate Bay’s Brokep made this public in a recent interview on the Subdemon techcast where he said: “We tried to contact the guys behind Demonoid and we’ve set up a tracker for them but they haven’t responded. But, we have two servers running for them if they want to set it up.” Brokep also says that he hasn’t heard back from Deimos yet, but it sure is a great gesture.

If Demonoid decides to take them up on their offer they will not be alone. In 2007 quite a lot of torrent sites moved to Sweden, and to PRQ in particular. Sweden is considered to be a safe haven for BitTorrent sites, and PRQ is popular because it is owned by TiAMO and Anakata, two of the founders of The Pirate Bay. Ironically, however, The Pirate Bay is not hosted in Sweden or at PRQ, which is probably a wise decision.

In the remainder of the interview Brokep and the interviewers discuss some of the recent news surrounding The Pirate Bay, such as the huge pile of paperwork they received last month, the new protocol they have been developing, and the explosive growth of their tracker. It is definitely worth listening to, and I’m looking forward to the next episodes of this podcast, and to more news surrounding Demonoid.

You can download the podcast, including the interview here, or stream (might be buggy) the torrent and listen to it right away, with Bitlet.

Source: The Pirate Bay: Demonoid is Welcome in Sweden

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: Swedish Politicians Strike Blows at Copyright Lobby

“We’ve been tracing spam back to them for at least over a year, ” said Pirate Bay Administrator brokep. “We’ve tried talking to MD for quite a while. Finally they called back yesterday but was not willing to talk about us having to report their clients to the police for breaking the laws they’ve broken. Now we see no other alternative but to report these incidents, as they don’t seem to stop and as they are really serious crimes they commit.”

He also gives a nod to the huge community of fan out there, “we’ve had help from irc’ers going through all the emails from MD.” It seems that the Pirate Bay, should be called the ‘Hydra Bay’, as each time it takes a hit, it comes back stronger than before. The ten companies reported to the police, are:

• Atari Nordic AB
• Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
• Emi Music Sweden AB
• Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
• Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
• Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB
• Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
• Ubisoft Sweden AB
• Universal Music Group Sweden AB
• Universal Pictures Nordic AB

Just more ongoing revelations that have resulted from what we quite rightly called “The biggest Ever BitTorrent Leak”…

Source: PirateBay Fires a Broadside of Complaints to Police

Pressure from anti-piracy lobbyists is not really a new phenomenon for the Swedish authorities. A month prior to the Pirate Bay raid, Executive Vice President of the MPAA wrote a letter (PDF) to Sweden’s State Secretary in which he stated:

“It is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated.”

Perhaps even worse, after the raid it became apparent that the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s blacklist because they didn’t take the Pirate Bay down.

However, these and other threats won’t solve the case. Unfortunately for some, the police need actual evidence if they want to take legal action against The Pirate Bay, something that they don’t have at this point. Even after more than a year, the police have nothing to go on.

Up until today, The Pirate Bay servers remain in custody and the police still hope to find something. In fact, prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall is still convinced that he will eventually press charges against the Pirate Bay admins. The Pirate Bay is not really impressed by this announced prosecution, and according to a leak within the Swedish police, they don’t have much to be afraid of.

Below is a copy of the letter sent last month on behalf of the Portuguese counterparts of the RIAA, BSA and MPAA.

Re: Pirate Bay
-
Dear Sir.
-
We address yourself in our capacities of Directors of the Portuguese Artists and Musicians collecting society GDA. the Portuguese Antí-Piracy Video, Games, Cable Operators and local MPA Association, Fevip, and the local IFPI National Group, AFP (Record Producers), concerning the pirate Bay case.
-
As you are aware, both physical and digital piracy is severely affecting the Music and Film industry worldwide and Portugal is no exception.
-
The Portuguese music market, lost about 50% of its value during the last 5 years, as well as half of the sales and jobs, affecting the live hood of our Authors, Com posers , Artists, Musicians, Actors, Video and Record producers.
-
One of the main reasons for this crisis is digital piracy, due lo poor enforcement of the law and the fact that more and more households have now broadband access (according lo Anacom, the Portuguese National Authority for Telecoms, 14.3% of the Portuguese households have now broadband access – 1st quarter 2007).
-
Among the different digital threats, the most important are the services that use the Bit Torrent Protocol, due lo the fact that this type of service allows users to download films and the entire discography of an Artist within minutes.
-
In the Portuguese courts there are now over 40 criminal claims against and some of them relate to the Bit Torrent Protocol, and we have reasons lo believe that some of the Torrents downloaded by the Portuguese torrent users may well come from Pirate Bay.
-
The reason we write to you is the fact that this case In Sweden is pending for more than one year and during this time the Pirate Bay activities is affecting right holders around the world. We therefore kindly urge you to take the necessary steps to come lo a swift enforcement of the law in this case.
-
We trust you will understand our concerns and act accordingly in order to stop the effects this case has outside the Swedish borders.
-
With kind regards,

Director General AFP
Director General FEVIP
Director General GDA

Source: Anti-Piracy Lobby Pressures Police to Take On The Pirate Bay

Several topics are discussed including the new “anonymous P2P protocol”, which is not their secret project, that they are currently working on.

Making all transfers anonymous will be the future of filesharing according to Brokep. No more lawsuits and privacy for everyone.

Among other things, Brokep talks about censorship, copyright, lawsuits, Sealand and why we need more BitTorrent trackers to keep the community alive.

I could of course embed the video here, but I think The BitLord show deserves some credit. Check out the interview with Brokep over here.

Source: The Pirate Bay Interview (Video)

Soon after the raid several sources reported that the MPAA initiated the attack. Apparently they directly influencing Swedish authorities to intervene in this specific case, which is considered illegal in Sweden (the term is “minister rule”).

To make it even worse, it turned out that the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s black list because they didn’t take the Pirate Bay down. This threat should have have made the Swedish government move even quicker. It is assumed that Swedish authorities hinted to the prosecutor to take action, and even though the prosecutor wrote a PM a before the raid in which he stated that it was impossible to convict the Pirate Bay, the letters from the MPAA probably changed his mind.

It later became public that John Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPAA wrote (PDF) to Sweden’s State Secretary in which he stated, “It is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated.”

Following the raid the Swedish pirate party got thousands of new members in a matter of weeks. Suddenly, they were the largest party without parliament seats. This success has also led to pirate parties forming in a number of other countries: France, Italy, USA, Belgium, Austria, and very recently also Germany, Spain and Russian. There is also one forming in the UK. Together, they have founded PP-International, which is an international collaboration forum/group to exchange experiences, ideas and such, and Sweden has a very important role here.

In August 2006, three months after the raid the documentary “Steal This Film” was published. This excellent documentary gives some more insight in the events that took place May 31, 2006, In this documentary The Piratebay admins tell how the raid went down, what happened after the raid, how the MPAA was involved, how the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s black list, the Pirate demonstration, and how they were harassed by police officers and more.

Up until now the servers of The Pirate Bay are still in custody, and prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall announced earlier this month that he will press charges against the Pirate Bay admins. However, The Pirate Bay said it’s not impressed by the announced prosecution, and according to a leak within the Swedish police, they don’t have much to be afraid of.

Source: The Pirate Bay: One year After the Raid

To celebrate this great accomplishment, the Pirate Bay crew decided to give the Swedish King a diploma. “The diploma is a congratulatory diploma about our joint efforts in making Sweden famous globally when it comes to technology and culture”, writes Brokep on the Pirate Bay blog.

Make no mistake, King Carl XVI Gustaf really deserves it. A few weeks ago the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) published a report in which Sweden was placed on their piracy watch list. The IIPA considers Sweden to be a save haven for pirates. The Pirate bay is also mentioned in the report, hate that The Pirate Bay admins “proudly flaunt their role in facilitating infringements, often taking pot shots at rights holders from whom they receive notices of infringing activity”.

It’s worth celebrating.

Source: The Pirate Bay’s Torrents Quadruple in a Year

The raid on the Pirate Bay, and the rise of the Pirate Party clearly left their mark on Sweden’s political climate. The extremely fast resurrection of the Pirate Bay was a slap in the face of the IIPA, MPAA, and other anti-piracy organizations. In the report we read:

Sweden also is the host country to ThePirateBay.org, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker and one of Sweden’s largest web sites. Operators of the site proudly flaunt their role in facilitating infringements, often taking pot shots at rights holders from whom they receive notices of infringing activity. ThePirateBay was raided in mid-2006 by the Swedish police, and although the site is back up and running, it is expected that its prosecution will take place in the middle of 2007

The IIPA can not yet see an end to the widespread piracy in Sweden. According to the organization, 490 000 movies were downloaded during the third quarter last year, an increase from 468 000 movies the year before, the report says, not specifying any source.

The situation is further complicated, according to the organization, by the fact that Swedes are tolerant towards piracy, something that according to the report is evident in media and in public opinion. The politicians are not thought of as having understood the extent of the file sharing problem. The organization however claims to be looking forward to cooperating with the new government in finding new ways in the struggle against piracy.

Source: Sweden: A Safe Haven for Pirates

Earlier this month a 29 year old man was fined $2200 for uploading a movie, but he was discharged by the appeal court because there was not enough evidence that the man actually uploaded the film from his computer.

It is unknown whether the convicted filesharers will appeal. They might have a case since these rulings often lack a sufficient amount of technical evidence.

Source: Two Swedes Got Fined for Sharing Files

The present ruling makes it hard for the anti-piracy lobby in Sweden to get someone fined in future cases since it’s hard to get technical evidence, and the police are not allowed to conduct a house search for filesharing crimes.

Christian Engström of the Swedish Pirate Party was happy with the outcome and told The Local

“It is obviously good that the court is careful with its evidence and it is important that the lower courts take note of that. But the judgment doesn’t really mean much for file sharing as such. And our basic point is of course that it is absurd that someone should even be tried for making culture available to others”.

Hip Hip Hora…

Source: Alleged Filesharer Acquitted by Appeal Court

This Swedish election has been special in many ways. It was if though the parliamentary parties and the media outlets of Sweden decided to boycott all the parties that didn’t already have seats in the parliament. The media let virtually no space for smaller parties – debate articles were refused, press releases not printed and so on. The parliamentary parties were not willing to debate with the smaller parties. Even the Swedish election authorities did not make their numbers official until Wednesday, three days after the election.

Despite this, the smaller parties shared about 5.7% of the votes. This is nearly double compared to the last elections. Sweden is a country with high percentage of active voters – at peak years, close to 90% of the voters place their ballots. This year, this number was 81,5% – and everyone seems happy that at least it’s not as bad as last time, when less than 80% voted.

Unfortunately The Pirate Party is a typical example of a smaller party.

They are completely ignored by news and media outlets. The papers have more or less openly decided to shut out smaller parties. The debate articles weren’t published – I think the Metro newspaper went so far as to reply they didn’t view the Pirate Party as a party, but as a special interest group. The press releases have been ignored, and the party was good enough to be in the papers only if reporters have somehow sniffed a possible scoop – or scandal. The fact that a member left the Pirate Party to help a reality show pin-up with her personal campaign (the Unique party, which only had her name on the ballots) made news. That the Pirate Party had outgrown the Green Party (government party) did not.

It was shunned by the political establishment. A consensus has been reached to only accept governmental parties into the light. Probably this is a strategy to keep white supremacists out of the fine halls of debate, out of the TV studios, and out of having an accepted platform. But this also reflected badly on other smaller parties, such as the Pirate Party, who were not allowed in public debates, not allowed to put up one little election hut (an endearing Swedish tradition, where you build little huts or cots near malls and communication centers in towns and suburbs and large centers of the cities).

Despite this, the Pirate Party has thrived. It has now over 9 000 members, which is better than, as mentioned, the Green Party. The complete lack of funds, being virtually dependent on member charity and the RELAKKS cooperation, meant that the party had to rely completely on active members. Not only for printing and putting up posters or handing out flyers, but also to make sure there were ballot papers at all the polling stations. The Pirate Party succeeded in doing that. On almost every polling station there were ballot papers, not only on Election Day, but on all the several other locations where people could pre-vote, there were also ballot papers.

Come Election Day, many, many members stood outside the polling station for twelve hours, handing out ballot papers to people coming in. As did the seven major parties, only while their representatives was standing there for an hour or two, getting paid for their troubles while waiting to be substituted by someone else, Pirate Party members stood for hours expecting no one to relieve them and getting no payment for their troubles.

Despite this, the results were not as good as hoped for. As of now, the official result is 0.63%. As numbers go, everything but 1% must be seen as some sort of disappointment. The outcome was not what had been expected. For every member, there were about 3-4 voters. Suffice to say, the many members that had gathered on a restaurant in Stockholm didn’t cheer as much as might have been expected beforehand. Perhaps the winds did not blow so strongly into the sails of the Pirate ship as one might have expected.

But not everything in politics are numbers. There are also things to brag about.

In eight months the Pirate Party grew from nothing to 9 000 members, more members than one of the parliamentary parties. This is in a time where virtually every political party are together losing tens of thousands of members. Day in and day out newsspapers write that people are losing interest in party politics. However, even on Election Day the Pirate Party received some 100 new members, simply by handing out ballot papers.

In three months, Pirate Parties has started in fifteen countries. Socialist, liberal, conservative parties have sister parties in many countries. But these are networks that took years, even decades, to develop. For it to pop up in fifteen countries over one summer is unheard of in history.

So, the Pirate Party didn’t reach the 1% mark. This means they will not have their ballot papers placed for them at the next elections (to the European Parliament in three years). But the Pirate Party has proved that they can have their ballot papers out by their own means. And since they are still growing, chances are they have an easier time doing it then.

However, The Pirate Party had other triumphs. Together with the Pirate Bay raid and the work of Piratbyran and other groups and people, copyright issues are now a part of the political agenda. One of the major parties has placed some stress on it as part of their campaign. Most of the parties, both in the new government as well as the opposition, changed their views on copyright and come to the conclusion that a revision might not be such a bad idea after all. Seats or no seats, the Pirate Party has had a huge impact, this must not be forgotten.

Now starts a new phase in the Pirate Party – a phase where ideology will be strenghtened, where they will lend support and help to pirates in all countries, and where they build up their inner structure and look forward to the next election.

The ship is in the water. Now it’s up to the Pirate Party to Sail it!

Perhaps it is nice to give a little more detail on the results of the Swedish Elections, for those who are interested.

Close to 100 000 people turned in blank ballots, which means, something like, ‘I agree with the voting system, but I don’t care about any single political party.’ It would be like three million American voters choose to vote, but vote for nobody. ‘We like our system, but to us it doesn’t matter who the hell runs it – the difference is not big enough for us to care.’ Together, the small parties and the blank ballots come close to corresponding to the total increase in voting numbers. So, in reality, one can seriously question if this was at all any gain to the established parties.

There was a change in government. From the Socialist block, consisting of the Social Democrats, the Left (ex-communist) party and the Green Party that has been controlling the country, to the Alliance, that spans from liberals to mildly conservatives, in the three non-socialist parties. For the first time in forever, a non-socialist government will be installed when not in an economic crisis.

But, to be honest, one can question whether this Alliance are really the winners. Many, many of the blank votes, and most of the votes on smaller parties, can easily be deducted as protests against the Social Democrats, who, through decades and decades of power, have developed strong power bonds and, as being the ruling party, hosting most of Sweden’s political scandals, most of its personal gainers, snobs, magnates, cheaters. These votes weren’t so much pro-Alliance as anti-Social Democrats. Which is illustrated by the fact that the Moderates, being the largest of the Alliance parties, won back a little bit more than the support they had lost the last elections, the fact that the Center Party gained a very small number of seats, the fact that the Christian Democrats and the People’s Party the liberals both lost even if they were on the winning side. The Christian Democrats lost a third of their votes. The People’s Party lost almost half.

In the municipality of Stockholm, the Green Party, being the smallest of the parties in the ruling red-green coalition, is seen as the winner. They nearly doubled their votes compared to the last election. Good to mention is that they ran a fierce banner campaign on subways and busses propagating for re-legalizing file sharing. Ironically the Pirate Party has more members than they have.

Source: Swedish Elections: The Pirate Party Sails On

A quote from the Wired article about how piracy divides Sweden:

Pirate Bay’s Peter is dining with a crew of pirates from all over Europe. Over tabbouleh and sausage, the talk turns to strategy: how to create media events, awareness campaigns, educational programs to let people know that piracy isn’t about free movies — it’s about clearing the way for culture to progress.

Peter talks about expanding the Pirate Bay beyond the current 25-language translation. He turns to me, with bright eyes: “We want to make a Pirate Bay for kids!”

Sebastian Gjerding of Denmark’s Piratgruppen warms to the idea, and starts talking about designing a poster to hang in schools, teaching children how to share files. The pirates bandy about names for the campaign and seem, for the moment, to settle on “iCopy.”

The article further covers the current situation is Sweden, the rise of the Pirate Party, abd the battle over piracy.

Wired quotes Attorney Monique Wadsted, the MPAA’s representative in Sweden:

“It’s become a copyright haven, a territory where you spread everything without fear of prosecution.” She continues: “Nobody has ever presented a good argument why this should be free…. They like to talk about music; they have a problem with (talking about) movies, because movies cost a lot to make.”

Great read.

Source: A PirateBay for Kids

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: New Law empowers Anti-piracy lobby in Sweden

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: What is this Bodström society thing anyway?

TPB supports an initiative by the AFCI to help the Ladonians in their quest for internet connectivity.

The AFCI demands:
* No copyright laws!
* Internets connectivity from every stone!
* Removal of all weapons of mass destruction aimed at the internets borders!

Pirate Bay Chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff Brokep states:

“ACFI has been working under cover for quite some time to get information on Ladonia and its goverment. We will support any action taken by ACFI against Ladonia in this matter!”

Arrr!

The AFCI goes on saying: “Surrender to our demands or we will take your castle by force!”

Stay updated on the latest developments at CAMP IRC (EFNET #IMPLODELADONIA)

Source: The Piratebay joins war against Ladonia

Piratebay founder Fredrik Neij said to Svenska Dagbladet on Wednesday:

“If there is money left over, it will go to us who work at Pirate Bay as salaries”

This could mean trouble according to prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall

“It is going to be an entirely different penalty if it turns out they earn money through their work”

In the meanwhile big corporations like broadband provider Verizon are lining up to advertise their goods to the bandwidth craving pirates ;)

via 1 and 2

Source: Ads Could Kill The Piratebay