Anti-Piracy Bureau of Sweden Planted Evidence

American Sweden writes "Concerning the bust at the Swedish ISP Bahnhof on March 10, IDG Sweden is reporting that Bahnhof has posted their findings of an internal inspection. It seems as if the Anti-Piracy Buereau of Sweden and their infiltrator "Rouge" had a good deal of involvement in supporting the busted FTP server not only with hardware but with so called "warez" as well. The blog of Lars Backlund has a translated version of the interview conducted in the report of Bahnhof." P2PNet.net has a breakdown of the relevant details as well. From the article: "As it turns out, APB (or, rather, their hired informer) supplied the servers and uploaded copyrighted materials. So that's why they were so sure to find stuff, they put it there!"

Comments

Just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep this in mind the next time anyone suggests any kind of plan by which a government may keep escrow keys for other people's cryptographic systems...

Or the next time a government defends about imprisoning someone without a trial, or holding tribunal-style trials where the evidence presented judicial decisions are not subject to public scrutiny...

Re:Just a thought

[dgatwood]

So here's an interesting legal issue. If an organization duly authorized by the copyright owner to help manage their copyrights places a copy of the copyrighted material on a public warez server, it seems to me that this legally qualifies as free public distribution by the copyright owner.

So the question then becomes whether such a distribution is sufficient to have the movies in question declared to be in the public domain.... Thoughts?

Re:Just a thought

[dabigpaybackski]

You mean you're not shocked, shocked, by this abuse of power? I wonder how "COINTELPRO" is pronounced in Swedish...

Re:Just a thought

[Ohreally_factor]

You're slightly confused. It's Trademarks that must be vigorously defended. Copyright may be defended at leisure (within the statute of limitations, however).

Further, this is far from cut-and-dried. Did the informer have authority to upload the material? What powers of agency (if any) did he have? (This is why it's good to use a "cut out". Plausible deniability.)

This should be enough to get the case thrown out, one would hope, but it certainly doesn't automatically mean that the works in question automatically go into the Public Domain. Not by a long shot.

Re:Just a thought

[sicking]

APB does (most likly) not own the copyright to these files, or have permission to distribute them. So therefor they couldn't possibly turn the files into public domain.

It does however make them copyright violators which would be an interesting twist if they got sued. However since only the copyright owners of these files can sue them I'd say that they're pretty safe.

Whoever said that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law clearly didn't know very much law...

Re:Just a thought

[v1]

That'd be a bit like driving your car to the bad end of town, and leaving it there with the engine running and door open. Technically the car isn't free for the taking, (it's still your car) though it'd be easy to argue for entrapment.

Re:Just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone including swedish mainstream media are making APB out to be crooks and dumbasses now. For once the media does something good!

Then again, they happily spew out bullshit about piracy "costing" the music industry 2 billion dollars a year (did they ask all pirates if they otherwise would have bought the music?), and refer to P2P activities as "illegal downloading" (downloading is not illegal - YET! Only unauthorised DISTRIBUTION is illegal. But we're about to get a retarded change of laws there.).

Re:Just a thought

[10101001 10101001]

I think a more apt analogy would be parking it in the middle of a charity organization's donation tent. No amount of "bad end of town" has any direct implication that there's authorization to redistribute. A warez server, on the other hand, is specification for the intention of redistribution. The "bad end of town" would be closer to having file sharing enabled without a password and without actively advertising the file share to others. Ie, people would have to go out of their way to enable access to your things.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

So, we're supposed to get angry at all anti-piracy groups now because this one planted evidence?

I mean, that's really the point of posting this. If GPL authors can go after GPL violaters, copyright owners can go after infringers.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

If GPL authors can go after GPL violaters, copyright owners can go after infringers.

No matter how many times this is explained the ACs never seem to catch on. (is that a troll i smell?)

Using without paying is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than claiming authorship. Lumping them both under the umbrella term "piracy" is orwellian meme bundling.

Need proof? Using without paying is legal in my country, but violating the GPL is not. See? Different.

Re:Sigh

[hkmwbz]

"I'm pointing out the real motives behind the posting of this article--to get the P2P piracy defenders up in arms. "See, THEY'RE the evil ones!""

The real motives? They are the evil ones. This industry is actively lobbying for stricter laws that remove consumer rights, and move us towards fascism rather than democracy.

These industry backed organizations pretend to be on a moral high ground, but the fact is that they engage in illegal and immoral activities.

To me, entrapment, cartels, lobbying to remove individual rights, choking the market, terrorizing people with frivolous lawsuits, etc. are all far more serious than a bunch of kids swapping files.

So yes, they are the evil ones, and the methods they are using to deal with kids swapping files are outrageous.

"It's hypocrisy to complain about GPL violations but then try to paint anti-piracy groups as the bad guys."

This is a load of crap, and you know it.

Re:Sigh

[Peaceful_Patriot]

"I brought up the GPL violations because Slashdot also loves to post articles about those, and everyone starts talking about "stolen code" while professing that piracy isn't theft"

I agree that piracy is theft..but I believe we disagree on what 'piracy' is. Selling thousands of bootleg copies of WinXP or Brittney is piracy. Someone sitting at home, listening to music for his/her own pleasure and use is NOT piracy, although the RIAA and MPAA have tried to make them seem like the same thing.

Re:Sigh

[Michael Hunt]

No, Piracy is violence and murder atop the high seas. Selling thousands of bootleg copies of Windows XP or Britney Spears is both a violation of good taste and large scale copyright infringement.

Nothing annoys me more than people referring to copyright infringement as 'piracy'. It does a dishonour to those I know who have actually had to fend off real pirates in their time (e.g. my best mate's dad, who's Chief Engineer on a very large Shell product carrier.)

Not only planting evidence...

[spaeschke]

It also sounds like entrapment. "Hey, can we be in your scene?!? Here's some 133t zero day games!" sounds a lot like "Hey honey, you working? $50 if you show me a good time."

Re:Not only planting evidence...

[cheekyboy]

That sure is entrapment, sure you can say "she could have sold her services elsewhere" but its still an IF, and you cannot predict the future. You cannot say with 100% sure chance that person would have sold to someone else. This aint precrime tomcruise world.

And if the cops are so sure person X would have done it, then they could have easily just waited till they did, or are they that lazy and fat?

OT, if she only reads you poems thats not illegal, so why should something else that cant be taxed not be legal. Is it because its selling something that makes a neat profit and cant be taxed that is annoying the govt/police? or their church going ways of the 18th century?

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

This might all be a misstatement. If you follow the link and download the logs, you see he had access for 2yrs and was uploading and downloading a lot of stuff. Now the question we should be asking is... how LONG was he an informant?

Meaning, maybe he was a kid busted for warez, and the police offered him a deal (no jail time in return for access to the server). So the end result may be that he was working for the police, but he wasn't in fact the police.

If that's the case, then I don't think the argument of planting evidence is going to work.

Re:wheres the outrage?

[gr8_phk]

"Law enforcement has been "hiring" hitmen in order to find and arrest them for decades."

Law enforcement hires a hitman and then arrests him before he does the job - like right after he accepts some money. They do not commit murders themselves to become part of a group that does such (that we know of). They can pretend to be drug buyers in order to catch dealers, but it's not OK to become a low level dealer (selling to the public anyway) in order to move up the food chain to reach the source - or does this happen?

What about giving them illegal stuff?

[Otto]

What do you call it when the cop gives you a kilo of grass, tells you it's free, then busts you for having it?

Or closer to this case: If somebody comes up and hands me a bunch of weed for free, then goes and gets a cop and tells them I have weed, and the cop comes and busts me?

Basically, somebody gave the guy servers and loaded warez onto them, then told the cops to bust the man. You can't tell me that's right. I may not know the legal terminology here, but it still ain't right nevertheless.

What constitutes "hard time" in a Swedish prison?

[swb]

I'm pretty sure that Sweden has Bad People(TM) like every other place, but for some reason socialist propaganda (generally not Swedish) and common stereotypes suggest that just about everything except the weather is a little kinder, gentler and more socially aware than everywhere else.

For some reason I envision a maximum security prison in Sweden being more like a college dorm than a prison.

Re:Sweden: More Crime and Poverty Than Mississippi

[n3k5]

Though they think of themselves as prosperous, Swedes as a group are actually worse off than black Americans, according to this Swedish study.

What the linked study says is true, the numbers are sound. But numbers like the GDP per capita are only a part of the picture. If you condense the statistics down to one average American and one average Swede, you ignore that there are lots of poor Americans who are made up for by the top 1% Americans who have 1/3 of the wealth. In Sweden that curve is a lot more even. If you have a look at reports plotting the quality of life in countries of the world, Sweden usually makes the top 5 while the US aren't even in the top 20. Another issue with the GDP/capita is that, while it is a nicely internationally standardised and generally useful figure, it measures how much people produce. Americans produce more, thus earn higher wages, and use those to consume more. In the process they harm their environment much more, which isn't represented by the GDP. The US also have a huge national debt. In comparison, your average Swedes do have problems with unemployment, but those that have work also choose to work less and have more leisure time. They also don't want to have 3 TV sets and 2 cars per household.

As far as the economic statistics go, I don't intend to contradict the parent poster at all, I just want to say you have to take them with the customary grain of salt. It's a different story with the crime rates: The parent is plain wrong. Crime rates in Sweden, and most of the EU in general, are lower than in the US. The provided link didn't work for me; maybe it was related to that Interpol report that inflated Sweden's murder rate to some 500% because of a statistical error? Again you must take care not to oversimplify things; maybe there are more pickpockets per capita in Sweden than in the US, or maybe they catch more pickpockets in Sweden (because the police aren't so occupied with homicides?), but when you visit Sweden you definitely don't have to be afraid that something really bad will happen to you. The crime rate is low.

Speaking of crimes, the actual topic would have been something about piracy or so? Oh well. Maybe next time.

Name 'Rouge' probably not a mistake

[larske]

The name is probably taken from the popular swedish agent novel Coq Rouge (meaning red rooster, code name for the agent in the novel). It is a perfect name for an infiltrator.