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.

[Drakonix]

It's no surprise that RIAA/MPAA (and other large, powerful commercial interests) have "friends" in the government.

However, the blame falls on the Swedish authorities if they conducted an illegal search and siezure, regardless of who "pressured them" into doing it.

Now, they have a potentially big legal mess to clean up.

[TankGirl]

Latest developments:

- In an interview by a big Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet Fredrik Neij, one of the brains behind the Pirate Bay website, tells that the site will be up again today, only 48 hours since the police shut it down. They will be using a hosting service located in Netherlands.

- The website of Swedish police has been down due to a DoS attack since yesterday, and is still down at the time of this posting.

- The Swedish mainstream press has reported the police action and particularly the U.S. role in it in a very critical fashion. There is already high-level political speculation that the Swedish Minister of Justice, Thomas Bodström, will have to resign his job as a consequence.

[JackSpratts]

clearly a few select swedes fell on their swords for some us "friends," sacrificing lifetime careers and lifelong reputations for a very clumsy, controversial and ultimately insignificant operation. not that i ever expect to but it would be very interesting to know why.

- js.

[napho]

This is getting a little ridiculous. I've always looked at downloading as a cat and mouse game, but we really don't have the right to pirate a movie people have spent $100 million on, or an album someone has spent 2 years of his life creating. They certainly have the right to try to stop piracy, while we have the right to continue. I'm amazed there haven't been more raids and demands that isp's cap and shape the hell out of us. We've gotten away with murder so far. This "outrage" is silly. TPB wasn't exactly curing cancer; their sole purpose was to facilitate piracy and laugh at authority.

[JackSpratts]

couldn't disagree with you more napho. people have a fundamental right to exchange ideas. it is among other things the cornerstone of a free society. if an occasional piece (or an avalanche) of commercial fluff winds up in the post so be it, no one's forced hollywood to make that sausage. on the other hand, we know from bitter experience the results of clamping down on the free flow of ideas. it can and has short circuited progress of every kind, including the medical variety. climate and stem cell research jump to mind, but give me 10 minutes and i'll come up with a hundred more.

having fun? swapping trifles? sure. but not curing cancer? i wouldn't bet my house on it.

they may not know it but the people of the pirate bay and others like them have one of the most important jobs in the world.

- js.

[TankGirl]

My dear comrade Napho:

TPB wasn't exactly curing cancer; their sole purpose was to facilitate piracy and laugh at authority.

In Pirate Bay's case there's much more involved. The guys behind Pirate Bay have been actively raising public political discussion in Sweden about copyright laws and they are serious about reforming those laws radically through parliamentary means. Meanwhile they are doing all they can within the limits of the Swedish law to establish a more free information society based on people's needs rather than those of corporations. And being pretty smart with both media and technology they have come up with a site like Pirate Bay and they have succesfully fought their own war of words against the well-oiled propaganda machine of the media cartels.

Whether personal non-commercial filesharing is illegal piracy or legal and positive cultural activity depends entirely on how we as societies define it in our laws. Copyright itself is an artificial construct from the early days of the printing press, a government-granted temporary monopoly to encourage publishers to print more books to the people with the carrot of making some profits behind the protective shield of a temporary monopoly. The true long-term beneficiary was supposed to be us, the people, not the companies to whom the temporary monopolies were granted. Somewhere along the long way this principle got twisted real badly though, and now we are in a situation where the publishers who were supposed to compete with each other are consolidated into cartels that bribe our politicians to write copyright laws that suffocate competition and creativity instead of encouraging them.

This is what the guys behind Pirate Bay are really interested in and keen to fix in Sweden, and if they manage to do it in Sweden, it will be a great example for the rest of the world to follow. The defiant Pirate Bay has of course been a big provocative spike in the corporate asses of the media cartels who otherwise have quite succesfully managed to control the mainstream media and public discussion into harmless non-political contexts, where naughty pirates get caught for stealing corporate intellectual property etc. As long as they manage to keep up this media atmosphere where people feel guilty of stealing something from somebody while copying music or movies for their own personal use from each other, the cartels have nothing to worry. But when people start to perceive this sort of 'piracy' as a positive thing and to do it as a nationally hobby like the Swedes have done already for some time, the time is close for real political changes where the twisted copyright legislation can be fixed again to serve its basically good original purposes.

[napho]

You guys sure are more radical than me. Looking at a large public tracker, I sure don't see an exchange of ideas or any noble political goal. Just folks pirating the work of others. I like to download my share and then some, but I realize that the people who create and finance this stuff have the right to protect their property.





Top 20 Most Downloaded Torrents
Rank Name Snatched Seeders Leechers Total Ratio
1 Family Guy Movie 4,569,674 0 21 21 0.00
2 Braveheart [ENG] [DVDR] 4,501,470 0 6 6 0.00
3 Aliens 2 avi 4,469,295 1 5 6 0.20
4 X-Men the Animated Series--ALL Episodes 4,287,957 0 194 194 0.00
5 Die Hard 2 [DVDRiP]+NapisyPL 3,999,432 0 10 10 0.00
6 Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club [1997] 3,687,630 20 8 28 2.50
7 Mr And Mrs Smith DVDrip DESUX XviD 2,533,212 0 97 97 0.00
8 Mr And Mrs Smith DVDrip KiTT 2,517,423 0 18 18 0.00
9 Mr & Mrs Smith DVDrip PSP MP4-MrMrs 2,510,709 0 32 32 0.00
10 The Girl Next Door (2004) [ENG] [DVDrip] avi 2,147,287 10 12 22 0.83
11 Movie - Fantastic Four - English 2005 (dvd quality) avi 2,133,358 0 36 36 0.00
12 Elektra (2004) [ENG] [DVDrip] .avi 2,113,966 5 12 17 0.42
13 Kindom of Heaven 2,109,094 1 38 39 0.03
14 X-Men the Animated Series--Season 1 2,035,290 0 5 5 0.00
15 Mr & Mrs Smith 2,027,084 0 17 17 0.00
16 Britney Spears - Toxic 2,012,609 0 7 7 0.00
17 MR & MRS SMITH MAGOO 1,990,892 0 10 10 0.00
18 Pink Floyd - The Wall [DivX] 1,987,363 12 14 26 0.86
19 Robots [Eng] [DVDrip] [Divx 6 0] 1,978,720 0 46 46 0.00
20 Gun USA PS2DVD-START2 1,924,879 0 26 26 0.00



http://www.torrentbox.com/extras-top20.php

[TankGirl]

Latest developments, Saturday 3. June:

- Swedish TV reports that the Parliamentary Ombudsman of Sweden has promised to make an inquiry into how the police operation against Pirate Bay was handled. The Ombudsman office has already received over 200 official complaints from the various affected parties (which they have to respond to), and new complaints are landing in at the rate of 10 / hour.

- The Pirate Bay support demonstration will happen today (Saturday) at 3 pm in downtown Stockholm. Besides the organizing 6 month old Pirate Party there will be representatives from at least 3 youth organizations of the established political parties (Liberal Party, Left Party and Greens).

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by napho

You guys sure are more radical than me. Looking at a large public tracker, I sure don't see an exchange of ideas or any noble political goal. Just folks pirating the work of others. I like to download my share and then some, but I realize that the people who create and finance this stuff have the right to protect their property.

Radical maybe, but unorthodox would be a better adjective I think. We're only radical in comparison to the copyright worshipers who are establishing the orthodox church of intellectual property. Tithing, licence fees, what's the difference? Those things are only compulsory if you believe in church dogma. But the heretics like us who believe in a higher calling see their laws for the blasphemy they really are. The point is, if they can claim to have the right to own creative works then they can effectively lay claim to our culture, and if they can claim to own their copyrights in perpetuity then they can lay claim to our future. The church has no real authority to decide who is allowed to enter heaven, and likewise the copyright cartels have no real authority to decide who gets to participate in the creative efforts of society. But the only reason we're the ones being called pirates is because we don't have the law to back up our rightful claim to moral superiority.

[TankGirl]

More developments, Saturday 3. June:

- The online editions of the Swedish newspapers have received hundreds of Pirate Bay related posts. These posts and the online polls organized by the newspapers indicate the Swedish public opinion to split roughly 85 % vs 15 % in support of the pirates and private filesharing vs. copyright cartels and police action against filesharers.

- The Swedish Pirate Party has already 4630 registered members, its growth rate being unparalled in the Swedish political history. Over 2500 new members have joined the party since the Pirate Bay raid.

[multi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30HF-m_I6yY

Video from the ISP that hosted the pirate bay. The intro text says that this copy can't be used as evidence. Why are the police covering the cameras one by one?
digg

[Mazer]

I just noticed a few minutes ago that static.thepiratebay.org is back up (it's the FTP site that hosts all TBP's images and stuff) so it looks like it should be back up and running any time now.

[VWguy]

No search function as yet.

nice pic.

[goldie]

wow.....