Pirate Bay chief: "Corruption Goes All the Way to the Top"

[TankGirl]

WiredFire:

WiredFire Exclusive:

"Corruption Goes All the Way to the Top", Says Pirate Bay Chief

It is looking increasingly certain that troubled super site The Pirate Bay will be returning within days of the MPAA backed action by Sweden’s APB and police, according to an exclusive WiredFire interview with Rickard Falkvinge, head of the Swedish Pirate Party.

Given the contents of the MPAA press release, there can be little doubting that they played a significant part in the raids that were carried out against The Pirate Bay, on Wednesday. In our previous interview with WiredFire, Falkvinge said “Oh, I know who are behind it. It's IFPI and the Swedish Antipiratbyrån (Anti-piracy bureau) both… because they (the Antipiratbyrån) told me when I asked”. It is now being reported that the Swedish Department of Justice received what amounts to orders from the U.S. Administration, who had in turn received "requests" from the MPAA, to shut down Pirate Bay. Orders went straight top to bottom, from the Swedish minister of Justice, to Secretary of Justice, to Chief Prosecutor, etc, to the policemen doing the raid.

When asked for his reaction to these reports, Falkvinge said “this is even worse than I had possibly imagined. We have a situation where not foreign corporate interests, but foreign governments, pressured by their corporate interests, manage to get young people arrested for something that is not breaking Swedish law”.

He went on to say “And being a nuisance to the media industry is not illegal. It was a scandal of the worst sort to have Swedish Police Force used for these purposes. It's not what they should be doing”. We asked him to amplify, to which he responded “ X causing Y to lose money doesn't automatically make X a criminal, in Sweden. You have to actually break a law. A few people arrested for file sharing is just some youngsters getting caught for a prank. The US Administration forcing the Swedish Police to raid somebody against the law, though, that gets people up in arms”.

We put it to Falkvinge that the practice of American intervention in foreign law enforcement policy was becoming fairly commonplace, given the moves to criminalise piracy in China, Russia and France and given the recent criminal action against an alleged 3,500 filesharers in Germany. Falkvinge replied “I definitely wouldn't rule it out. It sounded like routine business”, adding "it is pissing the MPAA off, that's true, but it's not illegal. At least, not in Sweden. When a corporate interest org can cause something like this to happen, the line was crossed a long, long time ago”.

During the course of our conversation, I asked if Mikael Viborg was the legal counsel who was forced to undergo the compulsory DNA testing that is routine when arrested in Sweden, and who the other two were. Falkvinge confirmed that Mikael was the person involved, and that Fredrik and Anakata were also arrested. Nobody is currently held in custody at the present time.

In answer to my question regarding the rumour that the site could be back up and running fairly shortly, Falkvinge replied that would happen “Tomorrow or the day after, according to the crew” And that will be welcome news for us all.

Other fresh developments from Sweden:

- There will be a demonstration in Stockholm on Saturday organized by Pirate Bureau, Sweden's Pirate Party and the youth section of the Liberal Party. At least the youth section of the large Central Party is likely to join.

- Swedish Television has run a report that claims that the pressure against Swedish authorities to act against Pirate Bay came directly from White House.

- The member count of the Pirate Party is soaring. They have got some 2000 new members within a couple of days, making the party (3745 members at the time of this posting) already larger than the youth sections of well-established Christian Democrats and the Central Party. With the Swedish parliamentary elections only 100 days away, the Pirate Party is having increasingly realistic chances of getting a representation to the Swedish parliament.