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

[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.

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."

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?

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: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.

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.)