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

On this occasion...

[brouski]

I think an "OH SNAP!" is appropriate.

Re:On this occasion...

[Iblis]

People should have realized this when they found the file called "All yör båse are belöng tö us" among the warez...

ah-HA !!

[jpiggot]

So THAT explains why all those bootleg "ABBA" records were on that server !!

Man, it's always the innocent and blond that suffer.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't disagree with you. But I feel that it would be appropriate to point out that APB is not a government organization. It's just some people that are paid by various companies, and thus APB hasn't got any more rights than anyone else here.

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?

"warez"

[pablonhd]

So called "warez" ? "warez" did all this software come from? From Anti-Piracy Buereau of Sweden of course! What you pun?

Found _something_

[eddy]

>So that's why they were so sure to find stuff, they put it there!

Well, the fun part is that they actually did not find the stuff they were looking for (specified to the court), and IIRC, they didn't even find the servers they were looking for.

Re:Found _something_

[jonfelder]

In other news they didn't find the droids they were looking for either.

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:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

1) Police don't make deals. Procecutors do.

2) Swedish procecutor's do not. It's an american practice.

3) The guy wasn't working for law enforcement. He recived payment from the 'anti piracy bureau' which is not a law-enforcement or government agency, but rather the Swedish equivalent of the MPAA/RIAA.

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

Entrapment isn't legal even if the police do it. It certainly isn't legal when a private citizen does it.

Off Topic : How to pronoune "warez"

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work with a guy who had the worst command of English ever. What made this more perplexing was that it was his native tongue. Anyway, we developed a lexicon of terms that he couldn't pronounce.

Alias? "Uh lie us".
Executable? "Egg ZEK you table"
Egregious? "Eee gruh gare eee us" (like e-gregarious")

Anyway, his most..er.. egregious offense was when he came across the term "0day warez." We were at lunch talking about software or something else nerdy and he mentioned "Oday Juarez" (oh-day war ezz). I thought he was talking about an Iraqi-Mexican immigrant that had just started at work or something.

No. He read 0day warez as "Oday Juarez."

If I ever sign up for a Slashdot account, Oday Juarez is going to be my nick.

In what legal theory?

[Kjella]

a) A license (or broader: "authorization") to distribute freely, does not imply a change in its copyright status. See BSD, GPL or any other license.

b) By default distribution and reproduction are exclusive rights of the copyright holder. Even if you legally download it (signing no license at all), none of those rights have been given to you.

Perhaps you should read 5 of the GPL (it applies equally well to any other software without a license):

"You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."

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.

Another interesting misshap made by APB.

[hpj]

On another note a on misshaps that the totally out of control Swedish APB has made is that they managed to put an interview with their chief legal officer with the Swedish public radio on the front page of their webpage without aquiring the rights to do so from the copyright holder (The radio station).

For you guys who know swedish hereis an interview where the public radio calls Henrik Pontén (The APB lawyer in question previously) and ask him how they could do that. My favourite quote (Liberally translated to English): "We are currently very busy hunting pirates. I don't have time to check our webpage every day".

/Mauritz

this sounds familiar ...

[SimonInOz]

Come on, hand them over - we know you have weapons of mass destruction, we have the receipts!

Re:Sigh

[TorKlingberg]

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

These are some of the members companies of the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. My guess is that most anti-piracy groups are run by them.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment
CAPITOL FILM DISTRIBUTION
Columbia TriStar Films
Microsoft
PAN Vision
Paramount Home Entertainment
Sandrew Metronome
Scanbox Entertainment
Universal Pictures
Vivendi Universal Games
Warner Home Video
Universal Music
EMI Music
Sony Music Entertainment

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.