* Swedish Net War diary *

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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.

[multi]

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

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

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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

[TankGirl]

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."

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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.

[JackSpratts]

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.

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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:

We, French Internauts, presently observe the confiscation, by a few partisan and powerful groups, of the French Internet Domain, therefore leading to a prejudice for the vast majority of Internauts.

With the upcoming promulgation of the law about Author Rights - EUCD - , these rights being now seen as the ennemy of the network and of the internauts, we demand the abrogation of the whole set of laws that define intellectual property on the French soil and encourage the internauts to forget these notions in their everyday lives.

The party also demands the legalisation of P2P networks for non-lucrative use as a natural consequence of the suppression of the author right.

The French Pirate Party plan 6 major reforms :

1. Total and unlimited liberty of speech
2. The end of the author rights as they exist in 2006
3. The right to browse anonimously on Internet
4. The legalization of P2P Networks when used in a non-lucrative purpose
5. The suppression of all taxes on empty hardware
6. Free Internet access to all

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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."

[TankGirl]

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.

[TankGirl]

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:

As I said before Sweden really needs to pay attention to France because of the "harmonizing" of laws within the EU and because of French people's close influence on the EU by their long tradition of citizen activism. The importance of this insight should *not be underestimated* - the way to get things done in France is precisely citizen activism, en masse, as witnessed by the recent demonstrations against the CPE.

They're geographically and culturally closer to the EU's power-centers.

French activists have a higher chance of making changes in the EU, as they have already done by creating debate about open-source software and patents through groups such as StopDRM and APRIL.

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:

During Christmas 2005 the French parliament was hijacked since people were away on vacation, and they managed to get a majority vote for a law that would have legalized file sharing for a fee added to the Internet bill.

This was widely reported as "file-sharing legalized in France."

It could not be farther from the truth.

After the law was passed, there was a wide reaction against it by established rich artists and elitist EU politicians, and the elitist government in power announced it would open a site http://lesTelechargements.com to "go into dialogue with the file-sharers."

There was no dialogue - the site was professionaly designed and aimed at explaining, in a typical elitist top-down manner characteristic of France, why copyright should stay like it is, and why file sharing is illegal. A new law, one of the worst in Europe, was proposed, that would give fines to people found to be sharing.

http://lesTelechargements.fr was launched by opponents of the law, to explain why they disagree. They use the heading, "File-sharing: .FRench debate, or .COMmercial war?"

However, the current government in power, although resented by the people, is passing a lot of heavy handed laws that are not designed to do anything but defend the status quo and the interests of large corporations and trade agreements.

There is also the DADVSI law that will make development of the French VLC media player illegal, that was just passed.

Since the population at large is not engaged enough to protest the law, like they did with the CPE, it will be passed. The only way of stopping things in this extremely confrontational culture, is by massive protest.

French politics are elitist, confrontational, heavy-handed. France is a founding member of the EU, and what happens there will have a lot of influence on Sweden, since Sweden is an EU member. Vice-versa, Swedish politicians could influence what happens in the EU, if they have a good proposal.

There are several organizations working on a political level, and more Swedish people should make contact with them, since both countries are EU members they could benefit from increased contact.

The French Intellectuals involved in this debate have more say over EU issues than Swedish intellectuals, just because of their proximity and because there is no language barrier for them!

Although there is a language barrier, this is less of a problem in computer subjects, since French people who know computers tend to know English better. I challenge all Swedish pirates to cooperate more closely with the French.

Good starting points (use Google to translate if you do not know French, and send these people an email in English)

StopDRM
http://stopdrm.info/
The most important organization in France, who arranged the March against the DADVSI copyright law (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/March_ag..._copyright_law).

Audionautes Blog
http://www.audionautes.net/blog/
A blog by a teenager who meets regularly with French parlamentarians to explain technical details

April
http://www.april.org/
The main open source/free software organization.

Partie Pirate de France
http://www.parti-pirate.info/
Newly established. Does not seem like it has any formal organization yet, and only registres members by the pseudonym (nick) and not their real names.

Paris Power blog
http://parispower-pp.blogspot.com/
A blog by one of the people involved in the French Pirate Party

EUCD.info
http://eucd.info/
French site to mobilize against the wide-impact EUCD law

More about EUCD, DADVSI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Copyright_Directive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI
http://www.videolan.org/eucd.html

[noobles]

thx for information TankGirl

[TankGirl]

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

[TankGirl]

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.