Sweden to Give Courts New Power to Hunt IP Infringers 171
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Swedish Culture & Justice ministers are preparing to give new power to Swedish courts to let them force ISPs to give up subscriber IPs. The end goal is trying subscribers in court for copyright infringement. As the one-time home of the Pirate Bay, which is now internationally distributed, they face both US pressure and push-back at home. The Swedish arm of the Pirate Party is calling this move a 'sanctioned blackmailing operation', but hopefully the Swedish courts won't allow the IFPI to use as many tricks as the RIAA has in US courts."
Sparkle and Fade (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
Sweden Pursues Illegal File-Sharers
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., MGM Pictures Inc., Colombia Pictures Industries Inc., 20th Century Fox Films Co., Sony BMG, Universal and EMI have until Feb. 29 to file claims for damages in the case.
So, is that Feb 29 of this year, or in the next leap year, or is this article HOPELESSLY OUT OF DATE? Did they file it or not?
Re:lol (Score:4, Interesting)
Its a lot easier to deny a random search/download on something like the ed2k network as you don't know what you are getting until its there.. With the torrent from a well documented place like PB, its pretty much clear what you were doing.
What needs to be done is complete plausible deniability, like is offered on FreeNet with its encrypted local store and communications, but with some sort of multi-homed downloads so it doesn't take months to get a file. ( of course that doesn't help you if you have CDs full of the stuff for backup and you get raided. )
IP address and legal privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
One interesting side effect... (Score:2, Interesting)
The ministers writes
"Today copyright holders are by and large bound to report internet copyright violations to the police. The Police and attorneys work has admittedly improved through enhanced education and specialisation but its not reasonable that this whole responsibility should be placed on police and attornies alone.
On the contrary it is in many cases more naturally and suitable that the copyrights holders themselves are given the ability to intervene against [copyright] intrusions. "
[Link to original article posted in Svenska Dagbladet http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/artikel_972903.svd [www.svd.se] ]
Of course, it won't be the artists or filmmakers themselves who collects evidence, it will be the organisation backing them up. But, and here is the interesting part, it may very well backfire with thousands and thousands of demands being sent to the courts, from hundreds of known, not-so-known, and completely unheard of artists who's found their work on various sites. It can also lead up to a civil disobediance campaign where people start reporting en masse just to clog the system with demands.
I'm far from a fan of the current government but I must say they have an interesting take at the end of the article.
"To battle illegal filesharing it is required that affected branches takes their responsibility. If copyright is used to protect obsolete businessmodels then it will in the long run be impossible to defend it"
Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests! (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course there is the right for private copies in some countries, but as some poor RIAA representative put it during Napster's peak: "Ok, it makes a difference wether you share some music with your close friends or thousands of 'friends' over the net."
Just a little sidenote: Many countries have a problem with the sheer flood of indictions coming from *AA lawyers*. I see this as the true reason for legislation to change the rules by either: Giving the copyright holders direct access to the names of those pirating (making it an issue for civil-law), or by introducing a minimum level of damage before the jurisdiction is allowed to act. Of course I prefer the latter, but AFAIK no country had the guts to go this way yet. The UK and France are pretty close with the idea of simply blocking access for those infringing, but I somehow doubt that this will get popular.
*Just a little example from Germany: Over here content creators can't get the name behind an ip-address. So they indict, which leads to the following actions: The state's prosecutor knows it's not worth the hassle, but he has to investigate the identity of the other party - the file will usually be closed after this. The lawyer requests access of records and sends a monition to the person behind the ip-address. In this document he/she offers to drop all civil charges in exchange for a sum which is at a price point significantly lower than anything you would spend in court. For this reason 99% are settled this way, but it's still not a cheap deal for those affected. The problem with this system is that some lawyers send thousands of such requests automatically to one single prosecutor, thereby bringing the legal system to a grinding halt. Therefore legislation has seriously considered to introduce an exemption, below which prosecutors don't act.
Re:Sparkle and Fade (Score:3, Interesting)
Offtopic I know, but I've always wonder why the recording cartels and law enforcement didn't go after IRC with much publicity. It's not that under the radar, Dateline was using what appeared to be mIRC when they were buying credit card numbers in one of their under cover stories.
Re:Corporations are not people (Score:3, Interesting)
Another option is to abolish all rights for corporations and require that either a declared individual in the corporation represents the company for all rights and penalties, or that corporations are merely collections of individuals and that the individuals have wholly independent rights and responsibilities.
All of these approaches have drawbacks, as well as benefits. Some day, society might even figure out if any are any good.
Re:Copyright is necessary (danger: groupthink erro (Score:2, Interesting)
The Linux-style "give it away for free" approach simply doesn't work for programs that are (a) very complex and (b) not widely used. I'm thinking of music composing, CAD, EDA and 3D design tools here.
You are wrong. Take Ardour [ardour.org] or gEDA [seul.org] for example. I'm sure you will point out how unsophisticated these are compared to their commercial counterparts, but these programs are quite functional and suitable for 75% of what people need to do. If there were no commercial software counterparts to these, you'd better believe the companies that needed the software would contribute resources to seeing that the free versions did what they needed them to do.
In fact, I'd argue that it is because of commercial software that the free versions lag behind. If a company can buy a program for $10k, they have no motivation to see that the free version is improved. They might not even want to see the free version improved because the high cost serves as an entry barrier into the field to help keep out competitors.
My point here is that if this truly is the information age, then we must have the notion of information as property.
Unsubstantiated bullshit.
Even free software programmers are affected, since IP law also protects their work from being stolen (GPL violations, etc.).
I loathe people who make this specious argument. If there were no copyrights, there would never have been a need for the GPL in the first place. There's a reason it's referred to as "copyleft" license; it's a direct attack on the evils of copyright.