Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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...
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."
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.
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 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.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
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.
This is a load of crap, and you know it.Clever signature text goes here.
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.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
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.)
You're doing it wrong.