* Swedish Net War diary *
 

Latest developments from Sweden:

Ahoy! The pirate ship is sailing again!

Pirate Bay is back online running on new servers located in Holland. Despite the forced move into a new hosting service in another country the site seems to have succesfully restored virtually all of its indexing data from the backups, and the functionality of the site is also being quickly restored. The first new video posted to the site was a control camera capture from the police raid that shut down the site three days ago.

Demonstrations in Stockholm and Gothenburg

Support demonstrations for Pirate Bay are taking place today in the two largest cities of Sweden, Stockholm and Gothenburg (Göteborg). The demonstrators, backed by four official political organizations, demand the returning of the seized servers, a stop to all raid-related police inquiries, destruction of the DNA samples taken and answers to a number of tough questions from the Justice Minister Thomas Bodström who was responsible for initiating the Pirate Bay raid.

A 17-year old hacker took down the Swedish police website

Newspaper Aftonbladet has found out that a 17 year old high school student was responsible for the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack that took down the website of the Swedish police for over a day. The hacker told Aftonbladet that it took an hour from him to organize the attack. Thousands of compromised 'zombie computers' were used in the attack, and the effect of the attack was further amplified by the curious surfers from around the world who went to browse the website from the links posted into popular sites like Digg.

Aftonbladet: "Generation War"

"The entertainment industry has no chances against the youth", writes journalist Lena Mellin in her Analys (Analysis) column in the large Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. "The shutdown of the pirate site Pirate Bay has led to a generation war. On the other side are the old people and the law. On the other side are the young people and the Internet." Her view is supported by the official participation of several political youth organizations in today's support demonstrations for the Pirate Pay. Many well-known younger politicians of the established Swedish parties have already openly challenged the official copyright policies of their respective parties.

- tg :PIR:

In the picture below Pippi Långstrump, a popular anarchistic children book character created by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Like the Swedish pirates, Pippi is smart, resourceful and does not fear to challenge the bad guys or the authorities. Pippi's entire name in English is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking.

Pirates recover faster than the Swedish police

Newspaper Aftonbladet organized a humorous online poll asking people to guess which of the two websites, Pirate Bay or the Swedish Police, will manage to come back online first. Indicating the huge public interest in the pirate drama, nearly 70,000 people participated in the poll, with 93 % of the people putting their bets on Pirate Bay. And indeed, at the time of this posting, the Pirate Bay website is online while the website of the Swedish police is still down.

Pirate Party keeps growing at record rate

With demonstrations underway in Stockholm and Göteborg, new people keep joining the Swedish Pirate Party literally by the minute. The member count is 4958 at the moment of this posting. The Party will need 225,000 votes in the parliamentary election to be held in September to pass the 4 percent thresold required for parliamentary representation. This is not an unrealistic goal considering there are an estimated 1,3 million active filesharers in Sweden, a country of 9 million inhabitants.

Led by a charismatic 34-year old IT specialist Rickard Falkvinge from Sollentuna, the party has set 10 candidates to its national candidate list, including the leader of the party, plus 12 local candidates. The party has only three issues on its agenda (in English, worth reading!): a radical reform of the copyright law, abolishment of the patent system and the securing of people's right to privacy. In the relatively split Swedish political field even a small number of parliament members might give them a good strategic position to advance these goals.

In the picture below Rickard Falkvinge, the leader of the Swedish Pirate Party:

Peaceful pirate demonstration in Stockholm

Swedish Television reported about 500 people participating in the demonstration. In his speech one of the Pirate Bay founders, Fredrik Neij, asked the Swedish officials to calm down and stop fighting against the Internet. "It is a battle you are never going to win", he said.

According to blog reports the demonstration went peacefully and in the spirit of unity despite the diverse political groups being represented. Also the police was reported behaving friendly and peacefully.

Pirate Party keeps growing

Pirate Party's member count has just gone over 5000. It is now approaching in size the Greens (Miljöpartiet) who have 17 seats in the 349-seat Swedish Parliament. It took 4.6% of votes in the last parliamentary election for the Greens to get their 17 seats.

Pirate Bay to operate from four countries

According to Pirate Party, Pirate Bay will operate in future from four different countries - Holland, Russia, Ukraine plus one unnamed EU country. The sites will mirror each other so that a possible takedown of one site should not even cause any service breaks for the customers. The Pirate Bay staff called out for help on Internet after the police raid, and "when we told people that we are from Pirate Bay, Sweden, needing help with hardware and hosting, offers of help started to flow in immediately. Pirate Bay is now stronger than it has ever been!"

additional sources

swede snid dolkow has been busy on his blog translating the coverage into english for all us swedishly challenged readers. so busy in fact that he had to pack it in abruptly the other night after working a marathon session. also, from the reboot conference in copenhagen chaos radio has an in depth interview with peter from the pirate bay (43 min mp3). dig those cool accents. makes me want to head on over. would i love to be there right now. i can amost smell the coffee.

- js.

I remember discussing the p2p-political developments with Jack maybe a year ago or so. Already at that time it looked like Sweden might be the breakthrough country where the p2p issue would first get truly political and the democratic forces could start to have an effect. For a little while France seemed to take the lead as a group of rebellious French parliament members voted through a law that would have effectively legalized personal filesharing but unfortunately the vested interests managed to intervene and water down the French law.

It takes only one advanced industrial country that officially legalizes p2p or at least makes it non-punishable to make a big difference on how things will evolve on the global scale... and right now Sweden seems to be on a steady course towards that status.

- tg :PIR:

Latest developments from Sweden, June 4.:

Swedish government website collapses

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reports that the website of the Swedish Government has collapsed. The problem seems to be so serious that the Government representative does not expect them to get it up overnight even if they are constantly working on it. The website serves as a portal to all government departments, including the Foreign Ministery and Immigration Officials.

Antipiracy Bureau goes voluntarily offline

Dagens Nyheter also reports that Antipiratbyrån, the Swedish antipiracy organization financed by the media cartels will shut down its homepage for the moment "because it is rather lively right now out there in the Internet", in the words of Henrik Pontén, the nationally hated lawyer head of the organization, responsible for the raid against Pirate Bay.

700 people in demonstrations

An estimated 500 people in Stockholm and 200 people in Gothenburg took part in the Pirate Bay support demonstrations organized by the Pirate Party and three political youth organizations. The Swedish Television was present, interviewing participants. Image galleries from the demonstrations here and here.

Pirate Party soon larger than the Green Party

Pirate Party's member count keeps soaring. At the time of this posting there are 5215 members in the party - up from around 2000 before the police raid on Pirate Bay. At this rate it will take only days for the Pirate Party to become larger than the Green Party, already represented in the Swedish parliament.

- tg :PIR:

everyone's a pirate in sweden today. ;)

- js.

Latest developments from Sweden, June 4.:

400,000 Swedes in Antipiracy Bureau's secret register

There's a new piracy-related scandal brewing in Sweden. Newspaper Aftonbladet reports that Antipiratbyrån, the Swedish antipiracy organization, is keeping a secret encrypted register in its Stockholm offices holding detailed records of the download activities of some 400,000 Swedes. Such registers are illegal in Sweden, where personal privacy is highly appreciated by the law and guarded by state officials. Göran Gräslund, the director of Swedish Data Inspection office has promised to take a closer look at the issue. "Antipiratbyrån having the IP addresses of people in encrypted form is unlikely to make any legal difference", he says. "The personal information is still there and can be decoded back to plaintext as wished."

Swedish press siding with people in the "Net War"

Despite the approaching FIFA World Cup football tournament (a big media event in Europe), it is the unfolding piracy drama that has captured the main headlines in the Swedish press. The press is showing little or no sympathy to Antipiratbyrån and to the media cartels financing its operations. The online reader forums of the newspapers are filling up with hundreds of furious posts from the readers protesting the illegal police action against Pirate Bay and demanding the resigning of the Justice Minister Thomas Bodström who seems to have been the key official to fold under the pressure from the U.S. government and the American movie cartel MPAA.

Government website comes back online, police website still down

The web portal of the Swedish government came back online this morning, bringing some relief to the various Swedish officials who need it to access their respective data systems. The website of the Swedish Police is still down under a continuing DDoS attack. Earlier yesterday Antipiratbyrån voluntarily went offline, obviously to avoid an inevitable crashing or worse under the attacks coming from the Internet.

Latest developments from Sweden, June 5.

Cultural Chief confesses filesharing publicly, defying the new copyright law

Swedish TV reports that the Cultural Chief of Karlskrona, a city of 61,000 people in southern Sweden, reports himself voluntarily to the police, confessing publicly that he downloads music from the Internet. He says he started filesharing as a protest against the new stricter copyright law in Sweden, to come into effect 1. of July. He emphasizes that he is filesharing only from his home, not from workplace. "I'm doing it just as a private person. Internet is the world's best music library." According to the new law he risks a two year jail sentence.

Swedish Security police to investigate Government website crashdown

Dagens Nyheter reports that the Swedish Security Police will make a criminal inquiry regarding the recent crashdown of Swedish Government's website. The police is already busy investigating the crashdown of its own webpages, back online after a two day's downtime due to DDoS attacks.

Digged! Pirate Captain's speech gets international attention

P2P Consortium, a 'roof' website linking numerous p2p communities together, gets to taste the dreaded Digg Effect as the English version of Rickard Falkvinge's (Swedish Pirate Party leader) inspired speech from the Stockholm demonstration found its way to Digg's front page in less than a day from its posting. Digg comments available here. The speech has also started to spread as copies in Blogosphere. The voice of Pirate Captain will be heard by an international audience of tens of thousands!

damn you :P
you beet me to the digg article :W:

Latest developments from Sweden, June 6.:

Swedish police prepares for National Day unrest

Today is the National Day of Sweden, and the Swedish police is preparing for violent clashes between various political youth groups - mainly the neo-nazis and the radical leftist antifascistic movement, both to have their own meetings in the centrum of Stockholm. An additional worry for the police are the Net activists who managed to shut down both the police and the government websites in the aftermath of the Pirate Bay raid a week ago. The situation in downtown Stockholm is bound to be tense tonight, and the police has told in advance that they will be present with a large riot control force.

Green Party echoes Pirate Party's criticism in filesharing issues

The approaching Parliamentary election starts to show in the Swedish political discussion, even if the large government parties have not yet really started their own campaigns. Peter Eriksson, the spokesman of the Green Party (Miljöpartiet), attacks in today's Expressen Justice Minister Thomas Bodström and his views on Pirate Bay. "It is totally absurd to try to stop new technology with police and repressive laws", he tells Expressen, echoing the criticical voices of the popular Pirate Party. He also addresses filesharing issues in his blog in sharp terms, demanding Swedes to accept the new technology and to start thinking about new ways to compensate copyright owners. The credibility of the Greens as a pro-p2p party is questionable though as they have earlier voted for the new stricter copyright laws and also negotiated possible minister arrangements in a post-election government with the anti-p2p Social Democrats. A more likely explanation is that the party is alarmed by the record fast growth of the new Pirate Party. Should the Pirates manage to attract enough younger voters, the Green Party might be left under the 4 % vote thresold required for parliamentary presence.

New study: every second Swedish schoolchild downloads from Internet

Aftonbladet has just released a new study revealing that every second child in the age group 10-16 is downloading copyrighted material from Internet. Children typically have their own computers in their own rooms, with parents having little idea of what their offspring is doing online. The study also shows that less than 10 % of children have bought music online - most prefer to get their online music for free. However, about 40 % had spent money on CDs during the month before the study.

Pirate Party member lists circulating on Internet?

Aftonbladet reports that copies of Pirate Party's member lists are circulating on Internet. The newspaper claims the lists to be genuine but hasn't given the Pirate Party a chance to verify it. With the election approaching, and with Pirate Party's membership tripled within a week (current member count is 5910) misinformation and scare campaigns are a real possibility.

Latest development, 6.6.2006:

Swedish Green Party now officially wants to legalize 'downloading'

...and it did not take long for the Swedish Green Party (Miljöpartiet) to make legalizing of personal 'downloading' an official campaign issue. This goes straight against the political program of their most likely political partner in the next government, the influential Social Democrats, who have been instrumental in bringing the new tougher copyright laws into Sweden. It is worth noting though that the Greens talk about 'downloading' only which suggests that they are not ready to legalize modern p2p software where uploading is an essential part of the network functionality. And as noted earlier, the credibility of the Greens in this issue is not high, but the development itself is remarkable. The mere possibility of Pirates entering the Swedish parliament is changing the established political field in relation to the filesharing issue.

Latest developments, 6.6.2006

Media game getting dirty

At this stage it seems likely that the news of a Pirate Party memberlist 'circulating in Internet', first claimed by journalist Robert Triches in Aftonbladet, was a fabricated smear and scare effort by the journalist himself and his unknown background forces. The journalist never could deliver this 'list' to Pirate Party for verification; there were no signs of hacking on Party's computer, and despite some 100 or so of the finest pirates looking for this list from Internet they could not find a sign of it. Now if these guys cannot find something from the Internet, it probably is not there!

Pirate Party leader: "Greens are cheating filesharers"

Alarmed by Pirate Party's sensational membership growth and facing a very real risk of dropping below the 4 % vote thresold and thereby having to leave the parliament, the Swedish Greens quickly jumped to the p2p bandwagon and included the legalization of 'downloading' into their official campaign items. In reality they are not promising anything beyond the corporate distribution model, says Pirate Party's Rickard Falkvinge. There are no p2p networks with downloaders only. It's all about downloading and uploading, and only if you legalize both, you are really legalizing filesharing, he emphasizes.

95 % of pirates will have a vote in the election

Bernt Granbacke, one of the many volunteering Pirate Party field workers, gives some interesting statistics about party membership in an interview for Norlänska Socialdemokraten. He tells that the party grows nationwide at a rate of 20-100 new members per day, and that 95 % of party members are in a legal voting age. Perhaps surprisingly the members are not predominantly young people but mostly from the age group 30-50 years. When asked about the position of the party in the traditional left-right axis, Granbacke answers with a question: "Where would you like to have us?"

Election specialist: "Filesharing will be one of the main election themes"

A nationally respected statistics professor and election specialist Peter Esaiasson has already gone on record saying that filesharing will be one of the main themes of these parliamentary elections. Greens have already responded to the signals and made their own p2p-friendly facelift, and there may be pressures in other parties to do something similar.

7.6.2006

Court decision: 26-year Swede to pay fines for sharing a movie on DC

Aftonbladet reports that a lower court in Gothenburg has sentenced a 26-year old Swedish man to pay 16,000 Swedish crowns (1735 euros / 2221 USD) as fines for sharing a movie on a Direct Connect hub. He was the third filesharer sentenced under the new Swedish copyright law, and all sentences so far have been fines only. Media industry appealed earlier one of the sentences to a higher court which refused to consider the appeal.

From the practical point of view it is important that the filesharing punishments have been fines only. This means that the crime is considered so small that it does not give the police a permission to force the ISPs to identify the people behind IP numbers in filesharing networks. This is a remarkable security factor for the Swedes, one of the most active filesharing nations in the world. US-style John Doe cases which the media cartels have used actively to extort money from American filesharers are out of question in Sweden.

In a related reader poll in newspaper Expressen 85 % of people consideres it wrong to sentence filesharers while 15 % accepts it.

8.6.2006

Larger parties bend to support filesharing under political pressure

Following the example of the Swedish Greens, the leaders of two larger Swedish parties, Moderate Party (Moderaterna) and Swedish Left Party (Vänsterpartiet), have now also come out and declared a change in their filesharing politics, reports Expressen. Both parties are now willing to review the new strict Swedish copyright laws so that they would allow domestic filesharing, despite the same parties voting for these strict laws just a year ago. "We cannot go chasing after a whole generation of young people", says Fredrik Reinfeldt, the leader of Moderate Party. "The idea was to address commercial piracy, not to chase private persons", says Lars Ohly, the Swedish Left Party leader. Both party leaders told that they had changed their minds after seeing the recent police actions against filesharers.

By challenging the established parties with their 3-point agenda the Pirate Party has already managed to cause a major shift in the Swedish political climate regarding filesharing. The Moderates are the second largest party in the Swedish parliament with their 55 seats; Left Party has 28 seats; the Greens, who joined the p2p bandwagon earlier, have 17 seats. Together their 100 seats represent a third of the Swedish parliamentary power. And all this has happened in just a couple of days, with three months still to go to the election. Filesharing will be one of the central election themes in Sweden this time.

The main catalyst for the massive political shift has of course been the soaring popularity of Pirate Party. Now the established parties have realized that they risk losing votes to the Pirates not only from among younger voters but from all age groups in a country where filesharing is a national hobby. As for the young generation, results from a large national Youth Poll (mimicking Parliamentary election with the same candidates) were published yesterday. The established parties were going fast downhill while the great winners were Swedish Democrates (Sverigedemokraterna), a radically nationalistic right-wing party, and Pirate Party, which got 4.7 % of the votes - enough to take it to the Parliament in the real election. However, the poll was done before the Pirate Bay raid - an event that sent Pirate Party's popularity skyrocketing. The party has tripled its member count since the raid, now at 6324 members.

8.6.2006

Three out of four first time voters support filesharing

Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan has just released results of a poll charting the opinions of first time voters on the filesharing issue. The results show that three out of four first time voters support filesharing, legal or not, and the support comes similarly from political left and right. "Anybody who is doing business with copyrighted material has reason to be worried", says Nicklas Källebring, an opinion expert from the Temo institute behind the poll.

The participants were asked whether they feel it is ok to download files from Internet even if it is illegal, to which 38 % answered yes without reservations and 39 % answered yes with some reservations.

"It is quite bizarre that we have tried to criminalize something that is a part of everyday life of young people", comments the results Ida Gabrielsson, a spokeswoman for Young Left, a youth organization of the Swedish Left Party. Two out of three of her party supporters gave an unreserved 'yes' to filesharing in the poll. Usually the thresold for people to admit supporting something illegal is very high, even in opinion polls. The filesharing issue seems to be an exception to this rule. "Obviously many voters think that this particular law is extremely stupid", says Temo's representative.

The poll was done in May, before the MPAA-initiated Pirate Bay raid, a landmark event in the Swedish Net War.

Broadband tax? "No thanks", say both pirates and antipirates

Two high-level managers from Swedish Radio came out yesterday with a compromise proposition of a broadband tax to solve the Swedish filesharing controversy. The proposition was quickly rejected both by the pirates and by the antipiracy organization Antipiratbyrån. A reader poll in Aftonbladet confirms that the public does not like the idea either: 80 % of readers oppose proposed tax, with 15 % supporting it.

"The problem with this kind of solution is that filesharing is a very widespread phenomenon. Most people are not downloading well-known bands but smaller, unsigned bands. The tax money would end up to the pockets of the well-known bands though", says Tobias Andersson from Pirate Bureau. "Yet another tax sounds like a classical Swedish solution. I would instead like to see our politicians stand firmly behind the new stricter laws and keep communicating to people that it is illegal to download copyrighted material", says Henrik Pontén, the head of media cartel controlled Antipiracy Bureau.

In the present pre-election opinion climate the politicians do not seem to be ready to pay the price of standing firmly behind the media cartel friendly laws. Three established parties have already officially indicated to be willing to legalize personal filesharing - a major political achievement from Pirate Party, founded only six months ago.

9.6.2006

Pirate Party: "Downloading is not filesharing"

Now that already three other parties have changed their positions on the issue of filesharing, Pirate Party is challenging them with its new press release to be precise and honest about what they are promising to voters. Many of the newborn p2p-friendly politicians are merely talking about legalizing 'downloading' while Pirate Party emphasizes in its own agenda how the legalization of both downloading and uploading is necessary for modern p2p networks to be legal. Legalizing uploading has far-reaching consequences: it empowers individuals to act as free global distributors for any legal content they want to share without fear of punishment or costs. The idea is not to legalize distribution of illegal content like child porn but otherwise sharing e.g. copyrighted music or movies would be legal.

Pirates buy a lock of Justice Minister's hair

Dagens Nyheter reports how Piracy Bureau (Piratbyrån) has bought a lock of Justice Minister Thomas Bodström's hair in a charity auction broadcast on the Swedish P3 channel. The winning bid was 10,101 Swedish crowns (1086 euros / 1383 USD). "That really touched me", commented Bodström who has come under a lot of political pressure due to his role in the Pirate Bay raid. "And the absolutely best thing is that now they have the copyright to that lock and can do what they want with it".

The studio audience whispered something about 'taking a scalp' and 'hairrising'. "We will naturally make business with it", announced Pelle Thorsson, the representative of Piratbyrån in the studio. "For example, we can sell each single hair on eBay". :BL:

9.6.2006

Fourth Swedish party bending in the filesharing issue

Dagens Nyheter reports that Center Party is now also changing its stand on the filesharing issue. With its 22 seats the party is the second smallest in the Swedish Parliament. Center Party's Johan Linander says: "Copying of copyrighted material does not always lead to fewer sold CDs. Many of the songs would never have been bought on an album. My impression is that filesharing rather leads to an increased interest in music and films, which in some cases can increase sales figures too."

There are seven parties in the Parliament, and now four out of them have already announced being ready to review to law and to allow private filesharing. The parties still opposing a change in the law are Social Democrats (144 seats), Liberal Party (48 seats) and Christian Democrats (33 seats). Marianne Carlström from Social Democrats is unwilling to change a law that has come into effect just a year ago. "But it is clear that we are following the issue", she says, leaving a door open for negotiations. On the other hand Justice Minister Thomas Bodström, a Social Democrat too, has indicated willingness to discuss legalization of filesharing (just a day after he said strictly "no") so the party is sending mixed messages. Should Social Democrats - by far the largest party in Sweden - also give in under the mounting political pressure, the legalization of filesharing would be almost certain already before the election. This would be a major political victory for the pirates and a powerful example for the filesharers in other countries to follow.

another great idea from jack

looking down the road it seems that some sort of liberalization of copyright laws will occur in sweden, at least as they pertain to individuals doing non-monetary transactions (see my post on fileflation in this week's wir - j/k), but another unknown is the european union: will it insist sweden conform to eu policy for admittance, or will brussells will allow member states some flexibility in these matters? of course if the movement spreads across europe that question becomes moot, but in the meantime it is of some interest to people who run certain sites, and everyone else who uses them. i for one would put my servers in sweden in a heartbeat if the laws were changed (and i had some servers...). take this board for example; we could finally allow direct postings of songs right in the threads, as well as videos etc, and we could run a dc hub for the benefit of members, all without fear of any paramilitary homeland security raids and mandatory work vacations at gitmo. 'course we might have to own property in sweden for this to work, but that's doable too. we could all go in on a cheap patch of highly contaminated industrial land, say a square meter or so for a few kroner (i vote for mercury - i had fun playing with it in school). we would satisfy the ownership obligation, while at the same time allying ourselves with the real power in the world: the big multinational industrial polluters. all those special laws and juicy insider tax breaks they get would apply to us too!

see, it pays to think ahead. :edu:

- js.

10.6.2006

Researcher: broadband tax possible, 1 USD/month maximum

"It is technically possible to compensate the musicians whose works have been copied without authorization by using an extra license fee on broadband connections", says researcher Anders Edström Frejman from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm to Dagen's Nyheter.

"The record labels are no doubt thankful if they can get money from broadband operators, and some sort of measurement and compensation model could surely be agreed on. But I don't think the labels will show green light to filesharing of copyrighted material even then. And that leads to a logical sommersault of them saying that unauthorized copying is forbidden and at the same time demanding broadband users to pay compensations for copyrights.

Frejman himself has in his research managed to develop a counting system to monitor which songs are most often downloaded from a DirectConnect p2p network. He believes it is technically possible to develop similar systems for the five or six biggest p2p networks that exist today. "Similar systems are already used by the American companies who monitor the popularity of songs on p2p networks and then sell this information to the record companies. It won't be 100 % accurate like the system we have for airplay counting but it would still be usable." As the p2p networks are international, the measurement system should take into account only Swedish downloaders but they can be filtered by their IP numbers.

Frejman says that the tax should not be higher than 10 Swedish Crowns (approximately 1 USD) per month. His view is that the big record labels have so far grossly exaggerated their losses. According to a fresh "Music Lessons" study done in the Royal Institute of Technology 55% of filesharers buy roughly the same amount of music as they did before filesharing; 7 % buys slightly more; 3 % much more; 25 % a little less and 10 % much less. Many were also found to visit concerts more actively than they did before filesharing.

11.6.2006

Pirate Bay has doubled its popularity

Dagens Nyheter reports that Pirate Bay's website - running presently on Dutch servers - has doubled its popularity since its brief forced shutdown by the Swedish police 31.5. The figures come from the US Internet measurement company Alexa.com. The advertisers are naturally pleased by the development.

"The visitor counts of Pirate Bay have gone up quite drastically in the last few days", says Christian Bönnelyche, the Swedish representative for the betting company Unibet. "This means that our ads there will get more publicity than we expected". The website has now become more popular than the established high-profile websites of newspaper Aftonbladet and online marketplace Blocket. When asked about the legal issues of the site, Bönnelyche compares Pirate Bay to the Swedish Post who delivers letters legally despite there being illegal things in some of the letters. Only if the site as a whole would be proven to do something illegal, would Unibet consider withdrawing its advertising.

11.6.2006

Justice Ministery: "Legalizing filesharing would conflict WIPO, UN and EU treaties." - Pirates: "So be it."

Christoffer Démery from the Swedish Justice Department warns in Sydsvenska's interview that legalizing filesharing would lead Sweden into a legal conflict with WIPO intellectual property treaties, UN copyright conventions and EU directives. While the various international deals would leave some room for interpretation with downloading only (leeching), the conflict will be inevitable when it comes to uploading. Sweden can legalize filesharing nevertheless, which will make the situation legally unambiguous to the citizens; in this case Sweden will have to take whatever heat there is to come from WIPO, UN and EU through the various diplomatic channels.

The leading Swedish pirates are fully aware of this but they think it is worth doing anyway.

Rasmus Fleischer from Piratbyrån says: "I don't think that the Swedish opinion needs any formal legalizing. What we want most is a stop to the furious efforts to control what people are sending to each other over the Internet. The discussion about copyrights can take its time and be conducted internationally."

Richard Falkvinge, the leader of the Pirate Party, says: "The eventual penalties that Sweden will have to pay are much less than what we can win here." As for WTO, UN and EU he says: "There has to come a time when we start to change outdated laws. We will begin it in Sweden but we are also thinking about others at the European level. When Europe has changed, the rest of the world cannot ignore this anymore."

Piratebyrån's Rasmus Fleischer's speech at the Reboot Conference is available here:

Piratbyran's speech at Reboot

It's one of the most insightful commentaries I have seen on the copyrights issues in the era of filesharing, definitely worth a read!

A couple of samples:

Rasmus speaking at the Pirate Bay support demonstration in Stockholm 3.3.2006, a day after his speech at Reboot:

12.6.2006

Here's a bit from the 10.6.2006 editorial of newspaper Expressen, saying a strict "No" to broadband tax, proposed as a method to compensate copyright holders in case Sweden legalizes filesharing.

"Absolute No" to broadband tax

"The police raid against Pirate Bay finally initiated the debate that we should have had already a year ago. At the time we criminalized filesharing, and the only protests we heard were those from the activists. Now that the debate has grown wider, it took only one week until the responsible parties started to bend in the question. This says a whole lot about the quality of legislation work. When a legal proposal comes in an EU directive, we way too often take it as some sort of supernatural force that cannot be influenced on.

It is remarkable that other parties besides Centre Party and Green Party are now starting to realize that we cannot criminalize a whole generation of youth and a whole Internet culture. Downloading films and music from Internet is here to stay. Recording music from radio to cassette tapes and taping films from TV to videotapes cannot be stopped either, even if the content industry really hard tried to do it.

However, it is distressing to see how many Parliamentary parties seem to favor a special broadband tax supposed to compensate artists for the claimed losses of CD sales. The idea is to tax the traffic on Internet so that the state could give money to a particular segment of culture.

This is the biggest threat of socialism since the employee stock funds. The artists will in practice become state employed culture workers. Free culture life will become a joke.

We should be extremely cautious to give the state any permissions to tax new activities. It will soon become like V.A.T. - first a temporary minor cost but soon the biggest cost in the household.

It is also very worrying that the first question for all the parties has been how the artists and the film industry will get paid. A progressive policy in an active broadband country like Sweden would instead protect freedom in the Internet, totally ditch the present laws on filesharing and leave it to the acting parties to find a way to make their money."

14.6.2006

Pirate Bay operating from Sweden since Saturday

Newspaper Aftonbladet reports that Pirate Bay has operated from servers located in Sweden since last Saturday. When Aftonbladet asked for a comment from Håkan Roswall, the prosecutor behind the May 31 raid, it turned out that Roswall was not yet aware of this development. Roswall was sceptical about the news and suspected it to be a 'propagandistic claim' by the filesharers.

"I thought he knew that we are back", says Fredrik Neij from Pirate Bay. "He is welcome to check if he wants." Neij tells that Pirate Bay decided to leave Netherlands after being pressured by the local Justice Department. Their server equipment is partially rented and partially donated by people who want to see the site to get back on its feet. According to Aftonbladet the site remains 20-30 % more popular than what it was before the May 31 raid.

Pirate Bay's IP address resolves presently to the defiant DNS name hey.mpaa.and.apb.bite.my.shiny.metal.ass.thepiratebay.org. At some point after the raid also the DNS name same.tracker.same.place.come.get.me.roswall.thepiratebay.org was in use.

lol@those wacky swedes.

- js.

15.6.2006

Swedish Police to propose new actions against filesharers

Expressen reports Swedish police planning "more effective action" against filesharers. What that might imply is yet unclear. "We will present tomorrow some concrete proposals to make our work more effective", promises Stefan Eurenius from the Swedish Police. The request for new copyright law enforcement ideas comes from Justice Minister Thomas Bodström, the leading political figure behind the new stricter Swedish copyright law. The law has since last summer effectively criminalized 1.3 million Swedish filesharers, as estimated by SCB, the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics. Bodström has repeatedly demanded "tough measurers" against filesharers.

The last hardline action - a raid against world's largest torrent site Pirate Bay - turned into a huge political boost for the new Pirate Party, aiming to the Parliament in the coming September 18 election and now having 6891 members. The party is quickly approaching the size of Green Party (Miljöpartiet) that has presently 7862 members and is an already well-established political force in Sweden with its 17 parliamentary seats. The Pirates will need about 225,000 votes to make it to Riksdag, the 349-seat Parliament of Sweden.

15.6.2006

Expensive collateral damage from the Pirate Bay raid

Aftonbladet reports that already 15 of the approximately 200 innocent third-party businesses who were kicked offline in the Pirate Bay raid have contacted State officials demanding compensation for their downtime. Many of these businesses are small 1-3 person companies to whom even a week of downtime may prove costly or fatal. The individual demands vary between 1,000 USD and 20,000 USD; the total 'collateral damage' costs of the May 31 raid may rise to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"You could compare this to a situation where the police is trying to catch a given car from a parking hall but ends up confiscating and removing every car from the hall.", says Clarence Crafoord from the Centre for Justice whose lawyers are helping the affected businesses pro bono.

15.6.2006

Swedish Police proposal: special p2p prosecutors, p2p investigator teams

The Swedish Criminal Police and Prosecuting Authority left yesterday their proposal for more effective measures to fight illegal filesharing in Sweden, as requested by the Ministery of Justice earlier this spring. The main suggestions are to educate four special prosecutors to handle all filesharing cases and to have dedicated investigator staff to handle filesharing cases, reports newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

So far the filesharing cases have been assigned to whoever online crime investigators have been available in the scarce IT-trained staff investigating also crimes like online pedophilia and online fraud. Same with prosecutors - cases have been assigned to whoever prosecutors have been available. The training of the four special prosecutors (two from Stockholm, one from Göteborg and one from Malmö) is planned to be 10 days long. The p2p investigators will get a five week training to legal and technical issues.

Henrik Pontén from Antipiratbyrån is happy that "the prosecutor understands the complexity of this type of crime and is willing to dedicate resources and get a better competence on it."

Rickard Olsson, one of the candidates of Pirate Party in the coming September 18 parliamentary election, says: "The police and the prosecutors do not understand anything about what is going on, and after their 10 day crash course they will hardly understand anymore. But at least they admit that they don't have any competence on this field today."

19.6.2006

Pirate fleet organizing for the battle ahead

The Swedish parliamentary election is only three months ahead, and the Pirates are tuning up their field organization - or rather their fleet organization - for the crucial political battle ahead. Rather than using the dry conventional terms like 'region', 'electroral district' etc. the Pirates have decided to use in their election work marine terminology fitting better to the pirate theme. So for the Pirates, Sweden is divided into five 'fleets', each having several 'squadrons' (electoral districts), and each squadron in turn consisting of a number of 'ships' (local voting districts).

The membership of Pirate Party has now exceeded 7000 members, and the statistics are already starting to favor the party's aspirations for a parliamentary breakthrough. In previous parliamentary elections a registered party member in Sweden has statistically been worth of 30-34 votes in the election. To reach the 4 % voting thresold the Pirates will need each of their present members to be able to generate about 30.3 votes. The structurally most comparable party is the Green Party who managed to generate 30.8 votes per registered member in the previous election in 2002.

Wow! TankGirl is in a frenzy :bdance: You go girl, and don't forget to change your panties. :drool:

yeah - her first post in four days. she's really obsessed. napho, i don't know why you're buried in the frozen north. with your cunning intellect, you should be down here, teaching coeds at an Important American University. plus because it's warm, their underpants are more thongier. :ND:

- js.

I was looking at the totality of the thread. All those posts and then she bumps it. Canadians are known for their massive intellect and ability to see the big picture. I would've posted in here sooner but was having a problem buttoning my new jeans. Finally I'm on top of the learning curve. :W:

lately it seems tankgirl's responsible for half the total coverage coming out of sweden, which is nothing short of amazing.

as moderator of this forum however i take the welfare of our contributors very seriously, and if i think tg's overdoing it intellectually i may have no alternative than to order some time off. perhaps some physically demanding dungeon activities with a certain helpful northerner may be just the prescription for her.

luckily there's no need for buttons. tankgirl has plenty of belts.

- js.

Naphoooo!!! Goddamn, spanking time again! :AB: :W: LOL @ Jack. :hflag:

20.6.2006

Swedish economist: "Time to get rid of copyright law"

"It is time to get rid of copyright law", writes Karl-Henrik Pettersson, an economist and author, in Swedish newspaper Expressen. "The thought of not having a copyright law may sound unrealistic. But it is not. A copyright law that is already ignored by millions of young people is in practice already half-gone. And it may very well be in society's best interest to get rid of the law also formally."

He goes on to clarify the difference between stealing and copyright infringement, demanding that the right to make copies is legally clearly separated from the ownership of the artists to their works. "Making this distinction between ownership right and copyright leads to an important insight - that the ownership can remain even if the copyright is taken away. For example, as a creator of music I would always have ownership to my works so I could keep on selling them to companies just like today, and they could keep selling them to the market just like today. There would only be this one important difference: copyrights being removed, the company could not set limits to how many copies of the work are being made, how it is further distributed etc."

He emphasizes common good as the correct basis for legislation. "Naturally we cannot let only media industry and their economical interests to determine whether we should have copyrights or not. An increased benefit for the society must be the basis for a copyright law, just like it is the basis for other laws. Why should we maintain laws that do not give citizens back real value for what they are paying for. I have serious doubts whether today's copyright laws bring any increased benefits for the society at all."

The public debate on filesharing is active in Sweden - and it will probably just heat up as the September election gets closer - with many authors, artists and culture workers coming out with their opinions. The overall response of the Swedish culture community to the filesharing issue favors legalization as proposed by the Pirate Party in its election agenda. There are naturally opposing voices as well but they seem to be in clear minority among artists and culture workers. Many artists express their economical worries about the changes ahead but at the same they time give their support to the legalization as the sensible thing to do.

On the political front only Christian Democrats have taken a definite anti-p2p position while all other parties have either bent to support legal filesharing or at least keep a door open for negotiations.

Digg this piece of news?

"ANY AT ALL"

i know that today's conglomerate-driven ip laws will stand little serious public scrutiny but to actually see an economist write that is a bit breathtaking just the same. that is one powerful statement.

- js.

20.6.2006

Swedish publisher joins the debate: "Share more files!"

Johan Ehrenberg, an author of eight books and the CEO of Swedish culture magazine ETC, joins the filesharing debate in newspaper Kristianstadsbladet with a suggestion for filesharers to share even more files.

"So we got broadband into our country. What was impossible just a few years ago is suddenly possible today. The same old funny copper wires and weather-beaten telephone poles carry now a flow of information from the entire world to our computers. But how shall we use these 6 megabits per second?

To share information of course. Music, including our own music, movies, books, thoughts... think what fantastic freedom this actually implies. What I am reading, you can read too, and we can discuss about it, even if we are located on different sides of the globe.

There is only one problem.

This new freedom is being obstructed and opposed by a strange club whose membership consists of multinational media companies, Swedish officials and restless culture workers. These are the forces that fight against free downloading of books, texts, music and movies.

That the police is following the laws made by politicians is one thing. Worse is that those laws were shaped according to the wishes of large companies. As a result, the laws are all about the profits of those corporations, and nothing else.

The artists, writers, musicians, photographers are all fooled by something called 'copyright'. There is this dream that you can write a hugely popular song and live the rest of your life on its profits.

This is insane because the overwhelming majority of Swedish culture workers will never get paid for what they are doing. Take for example an author. When you buy a 200 kr (20 USD) book, the author will get about 20 kr (2 USD) from it. If it is a paperback, the author will get maybe 2-3 kr (20-30 cents). The big money will land on companies and on bookshop chains. As the books in Sweden typically sell under 2,000 copies, you understand easily that almost no authors live on their work but instead on paid presentations, grants, second jobs.

Same with the musicians.

Copyrights simply do not protect the poor. They protect only the rich."

Ehrenberg goes on to describe how filesharing has effectively created a gigantic digital library. The politicians and media corporations oppose the library idea fiercely as it would diminish a large part of their present power over what is distributed and to whom. "But naturally you should keep downloading more with your broadband during the summer", he concludes. "In the election we can demand that the parties organize a simple compensation system to those who have done the work. The fine thing about Internet is that we can easily establish counting methods for how many times various books and songs are being downloaded. It is the will to do so that has been missing. Both from the media corporations and - so far - also from the politicians."

20.6.2006

Wikinews has published today this extensive interview with Rickard Falkvinge, the leader of the Swedish Pirate Party.

A couple of samples from the interview:

20.6.2006

Swedish TV to present today proof of US pressure behind Pirate Bay raid

According to advance information the Swedish Television will present today proof of government-level US threats behind the May 31 Pirate Bay raid. According to available information US threatened Sweden with WIPO sanctions unless they shut down Pirate Bay. In an earlier TV interview following the raid Justice Minister Thomas Bodström denied strongly any foreign influences behind the raid, so the Swedes will get today public proof of his lying in that interview.

This will be politically potentially very explosive information and may lead to an another big backslash against both the Justice Minister himself and the political forces behind him. The Swedes as a proudly independent nation despise the idea of foreign powers being able to influence their justice officials and police forces. The filesharing debate is bound to get even more publicity in the Swedish media after tonight's revelations, to be aired in Rapport program an hour from now.

21.6.2006

US threats revealed by Swedish TV make headlines

As soon as Swedish TV's Rapport program had revealed that the US government had threatened Sweden with WTO sanctions unless they shut down Pirate Bay website, the news made it to the top headlines of several major Swedish newspapers. "US threatened Sweden with commerce sanctions", captions Svenska Dagbladet. "US threat behind filesharing raid", shouts Aftonbladet's front page with big letters; Dagens Nyheter uses precisely same wording. "US threatened with sanctions", puts Sydsvenskan it. And so on.

That every headline mentions words 'US' and 'threat' together is descriptive of the response of the Swedish press. The press is taking a clear national stand, treating the officials that allowed the MPAA and the US government to have an influence on the Swedish Police as traitors. US has not enjoyed much public sympathy in Sweden in recent years, and particularly the Iraq War has damaged its public image seriously in the eyes of the Swedes. So the press does not hesitate to put even more pressure on Swedish Justice Minister Thomas Bodström and his right hand man, state secretary Dan Eliasson, both pointed out by the Swedish TV program as key persons in causing the raid to happen.

This may well be the beginning of a second major backslash to the MPAA in Sweden, with some collateral damage to the Swedish-US political relations as well. The actions of Justice Minister Bodström will be subjected to a special parliamentary inquiry demanded by several parliament members. The Swedish law is strict about not allowing ministers and other public officials to intervene into the specifics of any particular law enforcement operations. Should the inquiry find that Bodström had overstepped his limits and pressured the Swedish Police to particularly attack Pirate Bay in its general copyright law enforcement work, he might be forced to leave his job. The inquiry will take place after the September election though, so until that Bodström can hold his seat.

http://thepiratebay.org/blog.php?id=30

it seems someone is tracking the movements of one of the PirateBay people

22.6.2006

Dagens Nyheter: "First step: cancel the new copyright law!"

Dagens Nyheter, one of the major Swedish newspapers, joins the hot Swedish filesharing debate with a critical editorial where they demand a thorough re-evaluation of copyright laws on several grounds. "Much too long the question of copyrights has been left to the side lines of the political debate. What we need now is a proper time-out to discuss whether there exists other and better ways to protect intellectual creations."

For starters, the newspaper proposes shorter rather than longer protection times for copyrighted works and warns of the privatization of the common culture. Further they demand that the needs and interests of libraries, universities, archives and museums are secured in copyright legislation. These institutions are created to spread culture effectively to the people, so copyright laws should help rather than hinder their work.

The editorial also points out the important differences between material products built of limited material resources and intellectual property built of virtually unlimited resources.

"To try to stop the technical development with dragonic copyright is a wrong way. As a first corrective step Sweden should go back to the copyright law we had before 1. July 2005", concludes Dagens Nyheter.

22.6.2006

Dagens Nyheter: "Bodström becoming a risk for Social Democrats"

The growing popularity of the Pirates is not the only thing that worries established political parties in Sweden with 86 days to the election. Dagens Nyheter reports how Social Democrats - by far the largest party in Sweden - are worried about their Justice Minister Thomas Bodström, once a popular political figure, becoming a risk to party's success in the September election. "The debate on filesharing has raised onto a new level with the revelation of US threatening Sweden with trade sanctions. It will hardly be a vote winner in the election to be perceived as a lap-dog to George Bush and Hollywood's entertainment industry."

Pirate Party: "Chasing of filesharers corrupts the justice system"

In its recent press release the Pirate Party blasts hard criticism on the Swedish officials in the light of Swedish Television's revelations. One of the hottest pieces of evidence published in the Rapport program was a message from state prosecutor Håkan Roswall where he states how "it causes particular irritation among copyright holders how the persons behind website Pirate Bay openly propagate free filesharing and how they have set up a political organization Piratbyrån to spread the idea that we should get rid of copyright laws." Piratbyrån's own server was also taken down in the May 31 raid and is still being held by the Swedish police.

Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge comments: "The Swedish government has made an active effort to disturb political opinion forming in Sweden following a request from a foreign power. This is a scandal of major proportions. It means that not only Thomas Bodström has lied about the American pressure, but also the police and the prosecutor have lied about it. Corruption goes both wide and deep. Therefore I don't believe that the inquiries by Justice Ombudsman and Constitutional Committee will be enough. More than ever we need a parliamentary party that can drive through laws that are in line with the sense of justice of the Swedish citizens."

Swedish TV's revelations on YouTube

Swedish TV's politically explosive Rapport program revealing US pressure behind the Pirate Bay raid is now available with English subs on YouTube: SVT1 Rapport video

23.6.2006

Prosecutor: "Charges against Pirate Bay operators earliest next summer"

Sydsvenskan reports that possible charges against Pirate Bay operators based on material captured in the May 31 raid will be delayed at least to next summer, according to Håkan Roswall, the prosecutor in the case.

In the police strike against Pirate Bay and its service provider PRQ the police confiscated 186 servers. The raid hit also a number of innocent third party businesses who had rented server space from PRQ. Of the 186 seized servers so far only 45 have been returned, "as they contain no relevant information to the inquiry". The police still holds 140 servers and claims that mere copying of information from these servers for further investigations will take 3-4 months.

The three Pirate Bay activists who were briefly arrested during the raid might be later charged for copyright crimes, hints prosecutor Roswell.

Pirate Bay servers not in Sweden?

Sydsvenskan's story also brings up an interesting piece of technical information. The Swedish police has seemingly gone and checked Pirate Bays present server arrangements and they have found out that the site has only a single computer running at their Swedish host, apparently acting as a proxy to the real operational servers located totally elsewhere. The police does not have any idea where the servers might really be located, and they suspect Pirate Bay playing hide-and-seek game with them, trying to lure them into another raid that would cause yet another PR backslash for both the police and the Justice Ministery.

Peter Sunde, one of the activists behind Pirate Bay, admits Roswall being partly right. "That's also what we have. But we really have several different solutions for the site. We are setting up a number of different systems to have more alternatives."

23.6.2006

New insurance for filesharers

The Swedish Net War took yet another curious turn yesterday. Aftonbladet reports how a new insurance service has been launched by Magnus Bråth from Uppsala to protect Swedish filesharers from possible fines in case they get caught. By paying 140 Swedish crowns (about 1,5 USD) to Magnus, he will pay your fines in case you run out of luck in your online culture sharing activities.

"So far the fines from filesharing verdicts have been around 18,000 crowns (1,800 USD). With some 1,000 paying customers this will work fine", says 29-year old Magnus who operates his insurance company under name tankafritt.nu (translating to 'ThinkFreely.Now'). "I got worried when I realized that record and film companies can dictate our laws. This is my contribution to the debate." The insurance will cover only the fines passed by Swedish courts - should movie or record companies demand extra compensations for their economical losses, those will not be covered.

Insurances against fines are not a new idea in Sweden. So far there have been similar services available for drivers to insure against possible speeding tickets and also for people using public transport services for free to cover for 'control payments' should they get caught for freeriding. The existing insurances have worked well so far, and many students and other low-income citizens have opted to pay a small annual insurance fee instead of paying repeatedly for the fairly expensive bus, train and metro tickets. Whenever they get caught in a random ticket check, they will routinely mail the control payment ticket to the insurance company and forget about it.

Antipiracy organization Antipiratbyrån's lawyer Henrik Pontén is perhaps surprisingly supporting the new insurance idea. "We welcome the idea. One of our big problems so far has been that those being punished for filesharing have not had the money to pay their fines. Hopefully this will bring a change to that. I don't see though how this would cover the filesharers against the much bigger compensation costs set by courts." The new insurance company does not intend to expand its coverage beyond fines.

Magnus Bråth consulted lawyers before starting the operation and found out that the company's business model is legal in Sweden. He himself is not a filesharer but sympathizes filesharers enough to protect them with his service. So far four Swedes have been sentenced to fines for filesharing; none of them has so far had to pay any extra compensations to the content industry.

26.6.2006

Swedish musician union launches a sales service for its members

Sydsvenskan reports how the professional union of Swedish musicians, Musikerförbundet, is opening a new payment service to help its members to sell their music directly from their homepages.

The union is tired to see its members being fooled in royalty payments by the record companies. "The Swedish musicians do not get as much as they should from the record companies", says Musikerförbundet's Jan Granvik. "It is very hard to keep track of the royalty money streams. The industry has built an unbelievably complex system, and the musicians are constantly cheated. They are an easy prey as they are the only ones in the business who do their work because it is fun - all the other parties are there just to make money."

The union is presently running an inspection on Swedish record company Mariann. A number of artists suspect they have been cheated in Mariann's royalty payments. Such inspections are rare though as they are costly to organize. Therefore Musikerförbundet has chosen a new strategy: the artists can now handle the selling of their music themselves.

The union invested 500,000 Swedish crowns (50,000 USD) to new software that can handle the sales of audio files, t-shirts and CDs so that the items are sold from the various homepages of the artists but the money transactions are handled centrally by the union itself. Both credit card and mobile phone payments are accepted. The money goes first to Musikförbundet which then passes it to the artists. The system will be immediately helpful for unsigned artists; most signed artists will not be able to use the service right away because they have given exclusive sales rights of their albums to their record labels. This does not worry Jan Granvik. "Only by setting up an alternative system can we attract a larger number of musicians."

Musikerförbundet hopes that their new service will help to turn things back into right track. "This is our way to face both the threat of illegal filesharing and the threat of unethical businessmen.", says Granvik.

for this to be taken seriously payments must first go directly to musicians - who can then pass them on to other parties, the software can handle it easily enough and if at some point the other parties (media cos, cisac etc) feel they are being shorted they can audit the artists and prove it in court. wouldn't that make a nice change?

money has a habit of sticking to fingers, so we shouldn't be surprised when the union "representing" the musicians gets accused of keeping more than it's share. in the meantime i see such a supposed "pro-artist" scheme doing little more than deflating some of the arguments that favor free file-sharing.

the union has had at least ten years to propose an arrangement. it's less than probable this month's announcement just happens to coincide with the nationwide pro file-sharing movement presently sweeping sweden.

- js.

26.6.2006

New study: downloading not the reason for movie industry's problems

Svenska Dagbladet reports about a new large study on Swedish media consumers conducted by the University of Gothenburg (Göteborg). The results from the new study question movie industry's claims that filesharing is the reason behind the falling trend in the movie theatre audiences.

"A downloaded film does not offer the same experience as going to movies. The study shows clearly that most people think the movies are at best in movie theatres. I personally believe that the movies people download are those that they would not go to see in theatres anyway", says Rudolf Antoni, a doctorate on journalism and mass communication reponsible for the study.

The results show that 18 % of those who download films go to movies at least once a month while only 9 % of those who never download movies visit movie theatres as often. In other words, filesharers are twice as active moviegoers compared to non-filesharers. Downloading is most common among 15-29 old males, but even in this net-savvy consumer group the results are not particularly alarming for the movie industry: those who download movies go to movies approximately as often as those who never download them.

The study does not support the idea of downloading hurting DVD sales either. Those who download movies from Internet consume about twice the amount of DVDs compared to non-downloaders.

A total of 3000 Swedes were included in the study; answers were received from 65 % of those being polled. The study was done in 2005 when no online movie services were yet available to Swedes. Svenska Filminstitutet (Swedish Film Institute), a major organization supporting the production of Swedish movies, was one of the sponsors of the study.

28.6.2006

Pirate movement spreads to France and Italy

Political initiatives to set up official Pirate Parties following the Swedish model have taken place both in France and in Italy.

Here is the agenda of the French Pirate Party:

29.6.2006

Pirate Party rules in a large online election poll

Demokrati.nu ('democracy now') is a Swedish online poll website charting the popularity of the various parties in the coming September 18 election. The site, sponsored by several Swedish magazines, certifies with both IP numbers and e-mail that people vote only once. Voters are allowed to change their earlier vote anytime they wish.

Now that over 6000 people have voted, Pirate Party has a clear lead with 33.7 % of the votes. The Pirates are followed by liberal-conservative Moderate Party (17.9 %), main government party Social Democrats (13.9 %) and populist right-wing party Swedish Democrats (13.9 %).

It is obvious that this type of online poll favors parties with active, net-savvy supporters and does not thereby represent the entire population. On the other hand, the sample of 6000 voters is already quite large and starts to give indications of the national trends.

The figures are certain to cause worries to the strategists of the established parties. To prevent a dramatic loss of votes - especially among 400,000 first time voters - four of the seven parliamentary parties have already bent to support Pirate Party's demand to legalize private filesharing in Sweden. But the voters may still not find the old parties credible enough - after all, those same parties forced a new stricter copyright law on Sweden just a year ago. Pirates, on the other hand, are street credible, generally considered cool, and they come with a sharp, modern agenda for a better information society. The additional merit in their agenda is the unconditional decriminalization of 1.3 million Swedish filesharers - which may be a big factor in this particular election.

30.6.2006

Another large online poll indicates strong support for Pirates

IDG.se, a major Swedish technology web portal with 1.2 million visitors, dedicated its 'Weekly Poll' to the coming September 18 election, asking how the readers plan to vote. A total of 5050 people participated in the poll, and the final results gave Pirate Party a convincing 39.4 % support. The combined support of Moderates, Liberal Party, Christian Democrats and Center Party (lumped together as 'Borgerligt Parti') was 36.2 %. The main government party Social Democrats got only 6.4 % support, and the combined support of the Greens and Left Party was 6 %. Together with demokrati.nu results, these figures are to cause even more worries to the established parties. The Pirates seem to enjoy strong popularity among the tech-savvy part of the Swedish population.

30.6.2006

Swedish prosecutor: "Pirate Bureau is like IRA and Pirate Bay like its armed wing"

The courtroom controversy between the Swedish filesharing activists and the officials behind the Pirate Bay raid is getting pretty tough. In a trial where service provider PRQ demands its confiscated servers back from the police - they contain e.g. their customer database and information needed to pay taxes - the State Prosecutor Håkan Roswall made the following statement: "I don't know how to put it, but you could say that Piratbyrån is like IRA and The Pirate Bay is like its armed wing."

A statement like this demonstrates well how hard it is for some Swedish officials to accept the fact that there can be a genuine political movement that campaigns for a copyright reform. The prosecutor is unwilling to return the servers to PRQ claiming they are needed as evidence, even if the time would already have allowed to copy all relevant data to other computers for evidence purposes. A more obvious motivation is to hinder the operation of Piratbyrån, the ideological headquarters of the Swedish copyright reform movement.

Starting from last year, the entertainment industry lobbyists have campaigned actively to hijack the new European data retention laws - motivated solely by the fight against terrorism - to serve their own commercial interests at the expense of the taxpayer.

2.7.2006

Kristianstadsbladet: "Who does the culture belong to?"

The cultural editors of newspaper Kristianstadsbladet participate the Swedish copyright debate with a good debate essay starting from the historical background of modern copyright debate, highlighting especially the role of the French author Victor Hugo - the world's most pirate copied author of his time - in initiating the international meeting in Berne, Switzerland, that resulted in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

Kristianstadsbladet remarks that in his speech Hugo took a clear standing for the "cultural common good", and that this concept is important in today's filesharing debate as well. Hugo himself emphasized that whenever he had to make a choice between author's copyright and common good, he always priotized the common good and public's right to knowledge and information.

"Even if we don't think about it, we have a large pool of knowledge that we base our co-existence on", writes Kristianstadsbladet. "Old and inherited culture like songs, clothing, traditions and older literature are freely usable. We can learn from them and use them to shape new culture."

"An author, for example, can be influenced in any degree by Homeros, Bellman or Strindberg without having to pay any compensations to anybody. Such resources of knowledge are the cultural common good, and they are an important part of information flow in the society."

2.7.2006

One year of stricter copyright law behind

The new, stricter Swedish copyright law criminalizing 1.3 million Swedish filesharers came into effect a year ago, 1. of July 2005. At the time, only Center Party and Green Party voted against the new law, while five other parliamentary parties voted for it.

The practical effects of the law on filesharing in Sweden have been minimal at best. Swedes were and continue to be among the most active filesharing nations, hosting the world's largest BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, being the superpower of Direct Connect with the largest number of hubs and users, and so on.

Six months after the new law came into force the first Pirate Party in the world was founded in Sweden, capitalizing on the political education work by the activist organization Piratbyrån (Pirate Bureau). The public opinion in Sweden is strongly for legalizing filesharing, and the media industry has failed miserably in its efforts to impress guilt about p2p downloading on the minds of the Swedish public. In Sweden being a 'pirate' is a positive thing.

So the will of the Swedish citizens is in direct crash course with the will of the media cartels and the copyright laws they have managed to dictate down to the EU member states from WIPO and EU Commission. The extent of this conflict will be measured on September 17 this year when the Swedes have their parliamentary election, with Pirate Party giving a democratic voice to the filesharers for the first time anywhere during the 6-year history of p2p.

4.6.2006

The French-Swedish connection

Pirate movement is not only spreading in Europe, it is also starting to operate as an European-wide political force.

A good example of this is the forming of the connection between Swedish Pirate Party and its French sister party. The Swedes were the ones to start it but when it comes to pressuring your government and the whole EU with citizen activism, the French are of course masters in it. They know how to go to barricades and how to demonstrate so that something eventually gives in. Read this snippet from the French sister party's offer of help to Piratepartiet at their forum:

Here is a more detailed account of the developments in France so far, with a number of useful links for those interested in what happens in France:

thx for information TankGirl

Thank you, noobles, and welcome to p2p-zone! :)

5.7.2006

Belgians join the pirate movement

The political pirate movement is spreading fast in Europe. The latest country to join the movement is Belgium, who has now its own Pirate Party. What started as a Swedish revolt has become an European-wide political revolution for reforming the media cartel dictated copyright laws and for defending citizen privacy against police state style control measures geared to serve private commercial interests. It is only a question of time when the movement's impact will be felt in the power centers of EU.