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Old 03-06-06, 05:21 AM   #1
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Thumbs up * 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

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.
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Old 03-06-06, 09:11 AM   #2
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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:
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Old 03-06-06, 11:01 AM   #3
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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!"
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Old 03-06-06, 12:44 PM   #4
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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.
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Old 03-06-06, 01:03 PM   #5
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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
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Old 03-06-06, 06:07 PM   #6
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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
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Old 03-06-06, 06:41 PM   #7
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everyone's a pirate in sweden today.

- js.
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Old 04-06-06, 03:29 AM   #8
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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.
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Old 04-06-06, 07:37 PM   #9
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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!
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Old 04-06-06, 11:20 PM   #10
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damn you :P
you beet me to the digg article
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Old 05-06-06, 05:39 PM   #11
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http://piratbyran-in-eng.blogspot.com/
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Old 06-06-06, 04:45 AM   #12
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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.
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Old 06-06-06, 09:59 AM   #13
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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.
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Old 06-06-06, 09:33 PM   #14
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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.
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Old 07-06-06, 07:15 AM   #15
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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.
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Old 07-06-06, 05:34 PM   #16
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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.
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Old 08-06-06, 03:19 AM   #17
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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.
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Old 08-06-06, 06:02 PM   #18
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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".
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Old 09-06-06, 03:39 AM   #19
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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.
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Old 09-06-06, 08:50 AM   #20
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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.

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