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First Swede Prosecuted For File Sharing
praps writes "The Local reports that a 27-year old man who allowed people to download a film from his PC has become the first Swede to be charged with illegal file sharing, after a tip-off from the country's notorious Anti-Piracy Bureau. It's a critical test case, as prosecutors say that anything less than a prison sentence would make future prosecutions unlikely." From the article: "The case was brought after a tip off from Antipiratbyrån (APB), a lobby organization set up by the media industry to combat illegal downloading in Sweden. Since the man was reported APB has found itself in hot water, with an Internet company accusing the organization itself of illegally downloading films and games.
The file sharer was heard to say: "I cupy zee-a feeles und shere-a muosic vit my friends. Policee breek duon my duor und keeck my kittee. I im nut heppy. Bork Bork Bork!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
A prison sentence for copyright infrigement? Are we loosing the sense of proportion here?
What about murderers? Oh right, they also get prison sentences.
Ugh, for crying out loud. I can only hope that the judges are more sane than the persecutors.
It is still a question if that's "stealing" at all but they just have to put someone in prison for it anyway.
Seems like what they're hoping for is that the whole P2P is a bad dream and if they POP it hard enough, it will all go at once. Next aim would be to put a man on an electric chair, I guess?
So... How hard do they need to abuse the next victim for you to stop downloading? Prison? Ass rape? Work camps? Sheesh.
I thought the headline First Swede prosecuted for sharing files on net was fairly ominous but then I felt better after I read down a bit...
Here's a quote from the prosecutor:
"As these cases do not involve criminals, but instead quite ordinary people who share their files, any prison sentence would certainly be suspended," Rudström said.
Is it just me or does this sound like something that would be said by a defense attorney?
I'm a big tall mofo.
I don't know about everyone else, but copyright violations seem like they should ONLY be civil. This criminal prosecution is just taken to far: congress was even attempting to pass a bill that would make copyright violation a criminal offense in the US! (I dont think it passed though..)
Won't putting these people in jail prevent the copyright holders of collecting damages? (Isn't that the point: that they are supposed to be reimbursed for lost money?)
If this happened in the US, the end result would be that everyone that is ever convicted of copyright violation is going to be punished twice: jailtime plus civil lawsuit...
Both web site and tracker working for me at the moment.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
From the article: "It is, for example, a breach of copyright laws to copy a music book, but it is not illegal to receive or use the copied book," said the party's legal affairs spokesman, Johan Linander. "It should be no more complicated than that in the digital arena," he added.
Hopefully, this sort of more sane attitude will prevail. How is this different than if he lent a copy of the DVD to a friend?
In many countries, it would be acceptable to view it, copy it, or parts, while it's in the borrowers possession.
This should be the case here. The whole world is surely watching this case! Use your heads Sweden!!!
Oh my gawd, they killed kenny's mod points!!!!
tip off from Antipiratbyrån
My file døwnløåding sister wås bitten by an antipiratbyrån once...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Since the man was reported APB has found itself in hot water, with an Internet company accusing the organization itself of illegally downloading films and games.
More exactly: for paying a person to infiltrate an ISP to download and spread copyrighted files there, and later sue that ISP. I don't think the infiltrator was actually employed by the anti-piracy bureau; he just got some money to do the job. Also, it's not known anyone else at APB has in any case done this themselves. It's still of course quite dirty tactics to sue an ISP, and I hope they're not getting away with it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Almost every artice I read involving IP law in Europe shows that the legislative and judicial bodies in Europe display far more common sense than the their American counterparts, which appear to be motivated only by "good ol' boy" corporate greed and a misplaced sense of righteousness. It's readily apparent to me that the real innovations in contentent delivery and IP law reforms that are soreley needed will come from Europe, not the US.
This isn't the sig you're looking for... Move along.
This could be the end of the low ratio of torrents deleted vs. the law suits...
In yet another critical test case, prosecutors say that anything less than a prison sentence would make future prosecutions of people exceeding the speed limit by 16 km/h(10mph) unlikely.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
"accusing the organization itself of illegally downloading films and games."
Downloading ? No its uploading they are accused of. One informant they hired was the main one responsible for uploading films, music and computer programs to a computer at a ISP who they later got the police to raid and take for evidence.
The thing is a whole mess with basically everyone involved having been accused of misconduct or unlawful activities - ISP, police and the APB.
Just saying it like it are.
i-own-everything
Is that a new Apple product?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Now is the time to move to Africa - the animal and music pirate sanctuary!
Really. Not from what I see in this story.
My question is this, isn't entrapment illegal in Sweden?
If not then I think the need a major overhaul in there laws.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This is the typical attitude of most Slashdoters.
Not two days ago almost everyone agreed with Apple about the lawsuit against the guy who leaked a *beta* of Tiger. Now suddenly there are 3/4 comments questioning if this Swede was even stealing...
And in the typical Slashdot philosophy this comment will be modded down and all the rest arguing wether this was stealing will be modded Interesting/Insightful.
This is a good example why I don't even argue here about copyrights and just skip those news items (apart from this).
Why is GPLed code any different than the one distributed under a proprietary license???
They are both license and allow and prevent you certain things you can do with the software you own. I don't like the idea that I should "give my code away". That's not freedom. Under the term freedom (in software meanings) I understand that with that code I am granted to do whatever I want with it, period. But this post is not about this. Everyone can agree and disagree with a license, but until Slashdot starts acting maturely against copyrights this site will always be a joke.
Treat every license and software the same way or STFU!
btw, this text is distibuted under the 'do whatever the fuck you want with it' license.
You see, just because you're redistributing Coyrighted material does not make it loose its Copyrighted status. Therefore, the nth degree person taking the work and selling it is the one committing prejudice, and that prejudice cannot be transitively transferred back.
Also, for illegal redistribution of Copyrighted material, infringement must be used instead of piracy.
Sounds like a good name for a gouvnerment official.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Are they kidding? Putting this guy in jail will be the informational age equivalent of being a martyr! Someone should tell the prosecutors: "If you strike him down, he will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine!"
Now this will certainly crack you up, but it turns out that Swedish public access radio (SR) channel P3 did an interview with Antipiratbyrån (APB) a while ago. APB then went ahead and published this interview on their website. Naturally, republishing a recording from radio is an obvious copyright violation.
Somehow, SR discovered this. They brought their legal counsel into the studio, rang up APB, and confronted them. APB's response?
* Firstly, they try to claim that they only link to the audio clip, and not a copy of it. The legal counsel shoots this down immediately citing a court decision where linking directly to a file is equivalent to sharing a copy.
* Secondly, APB claim that what they are really looking for are pirates who make a lot of money from their piracy. As has been discussed pretty heavily in Swedish media, this kind of piracy is virtually nonexistent in Sweden.
* Thirdly, they dismiss the whole thing, because, and this is the best thing: THEY ARE TOO BUSY HUNTING DOWN PIRATES!
This news hasn't really broken yet, and because of easter holdays I believe it won't until early next week.
Skip
Actually, I think he mostly speaks in Swedish, since he's from Sweden. That's a large Country in the north of Europe (an area called Scandinavia), boasting one of the world's best education systems, an extremely well developed technological infrastructure (far better than the US, for example) and very strict ecological standards. The people there have got a language that is different from English (although remotely connected, both being germanic languages). English -- since you might wonder -- that's the language you've just used. Or, well, tried to. Swedish sounds quite different when compared to English. It is much more melodic. "Bork" is not a very common word in Swedish, as far as I know.
Surprisingly enough, the swedish people, despite having this beautiful old language, try very hard to learn and speak English, because it happens to be a very popular language all over the world. It might be that a few of them have a rather strong accent, but you should hear how ridicolous native english speakers sound when they try to speak _any_ other language.
Sorry for ranting. I know you where joking. But jokes about other people's lack of english skills mostly come from persons who have never mastered a foreign language (we don't even talk about their own...), that pisses me off.
And, by the way: I'm not swedish. But all (8) the swedish people I know are extremely proficient in English.
Of course it's one year, all you have to do is right-click on the file and go to Properties...
Location: c:\files
Size: 630.25 MB
Size on disk: 630.4 MB
Prison term for file sharing: 365 D
Is it still considered one file if the movie was split into .rar files??? .r01, .r02... .r95?
It is forbidden. The police are not allowed to entice a suspect to commit crime in any way.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
...it was always explained to me by lawyers back when I first started writing programs that copyright and patent and trademark were only supposed to be civil constructs for the early protection of the originator, giving them a chance to make first fair use of their creations.
They were NOT supposed to be used to create monopolies on things like calling "dibs" on the front seat of the car in perpetuity when you were a kid. The onus was on the originator to take steps to protect their turf at the outset, and from then on. It was up to the originator to perform due diligence in enforcement of their transitory rights in the matter or lose them. These were NOT rights in the same sense as freedom of speech and so on, these were legal constructs based in laws and not presupposed natural holdings recognized in the US Constitution.
Now it's at the point that various associations are unilaterally taking it upon themselves to do the due diligence on behalf of the originators and in most cases with no legal agreement to perform that representation on their behalf. Only the parties directly affected have any standing and they must do their own work short of legal assignment of rights and/or responsibilities by binding contract.
You cannot merely imply that a third party has standing simply by virtue of the subject matter. IOW, you can't simply have the RIAA do your copyright enforcement for no better reason than they are a recording association and you made a recording. You have to enter into an agreement or they have no business doing your enforcement for you. That's the way it was explained to me when I wrote my first program and like an adult, I accepted my responsibilities.
Moving it from the civil side to the criminal side is the next level of lunacy. As most every lawyer I've ever spoken with agrees, we already have some several hundred times more laws than we can possibly enforce, causing us to reduce more and more criminal offenses to de minimus status, where they aren't worth the time of the authorities to go after.
If we continue on this path unabated, we will get to the point that the police will have to either put all this crap on the back burner and ignore most of it, or they will have to become a weird combination of the firemen of Fahrenheit 451 and the thought police of 1984. Is this really what we want?
The other consequence is growing civil unrest and here in the age of the global Internet, with cryptography and hacking knowledge being so freely availible, and the growing anti-corporate socialistic mindset combining more and more with basic human cynicism, we're looking at more and more subversive and reactionary fighting back.
Does it only seem like the future is going to end up like some techno-future anime? I am all for growing rabid peaceful noncompliance, fighting them to a standstill, until a peace treaty of sorts can be worked out if only in terms of a gentlemens' silent agreement. We need to come to an accomodation somewhere in between before it is too late.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I just noticed that the mplayer site had a 'shut down' notice, now it's not responding at all, altho google has a cached
version of the "closed for patent infringement" statement. Hmmm, it was just updated with a redirection to the closed notice.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It was all fun and games as long as it was U.S. citizens, but now that they've rolled a Swede, the streets will run red with blood!
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Modded +4 Insightful for bashing the muppet "Swedish Chef"!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Fun fact 3: no one thinks the Swedish Chef speaks Swedish.
But jokes about other people's lack of english skills mostly come from persons who have never mastered a foreign language
Most americans can't even speak English properly.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Next thing, I will mention Kermit the Frog, and will get flamed for bashing the French and swamp-dwellers.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you want to see how different Swedish is from English, go to Stockholm.
If you want to see how similar Swedish is to English, go to Helsinki.
"It is, for example, a breach of copyright laws to copy a music book, but it is not illegal to receive or use the copied book," said the party's legal affairs spokesman, Johan Linander. "It should be no more complicated than that in the digital arena," he added.
That's the smartest comment I've seen on the whole P2P fiasco.
I have a plan that would remove all this nonsense and that is an insurance for people who use p2p. People can pay a small sum per month and if a company sues that individual for copyright theft the money from the insurance pays up for the lawsuit and damages. And as companies only sue a minor number of people an insurance company would also make money.
No, the next insight will be:
Fun fact 3: Adult Americans keep asking what "Bork" means in Swedish.
anti-American beer commercial to get Canadian's all patriotic about their country.
And before you pass me off as yet another jealous American, I too am Canadian, but one who is sick and tired of our national identity being instilled by a manipulative corporate agenda.
Go ahead, mark me off-topic.
A person can not get persecuted for downloading a file, because it's not illegal. Sharing that file on the other hand is.
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Mr. Viscusi argues that using a flat value discriminates against young people. A study he conducted puts a $7 million value on a human life. But applying that figure to both the 12-year old saved by an auto-safety rule and the 70-year old whose life has been slightly prolonged by clean-air rules "creates a severe inequity," he says.
1 human == $7 million (that's a lot more than the UK government says a human costs).
Now, the MPAA would say a DvD costs about $20, and a downloaded movie directly relates to a lost sale.
Do the math and it works out that a human life is worth about 5000 downloads of all seven movies.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I agree with you, but this is a difficult matter since it conflicts with basic human emotions - greed and lazyness. A software company for instance, can put a lot of manhours on producing a product. They then want to earn back what they've put into it (you have to feed even the programmers sometimes, you know). The easiest way to do that is sell it on a CD. You just cram out a shitload of cds and put those in stores and if the product is any good, people will buy. Easy money.
// no I don't have a sig
Now you say that anyone should be able to distribute copies for free. That means that I can buy a CD, then make a shitload of copies and put them in piles outside the store. Nobody would then buy the product from the stores, since it's available for free right outside. The company wouldn't make any money out of it and all the programmers would starve to death. Another one bites the dust.
The solution is ofcourse to implement a different buissness model. For instance as http://www.mysql.com/ is doing - give away your product for free and charge for professional support. This is far from easy and requires good managing skills, something that many company-leaders lack.
What about music? A successfull artist could live of giving concerts to the fans, that download and share the music. Movies? The movie-hiring buissness would dissapear, so the only thing left would be movie-theaters. Wouldn't people stop going to theaters if you could download the movie? Not if you have reasonable prices and give a good experience. What experience? Well I don't know, it doesn't exist yet, cause nobody cared to come up with one since what we have now is "good enough". Myself, I'd even be happy with the current one, if only they'd lower the prices. As it is, I almost never go to movies.
With the old model, you can make lot of money fast. With the new one you have to struggle to make your living. The result? Big lazy companies lobbying for laws that will make it possible for them to continue to make loads of money fast and easy.
But I have a feeling that it will not last. If everybody on this planet were lazy stupid bums, the big companies would win and we would get lousy products for a high price and people would still eat it, since nobody cared. But obvously there are many that care and do something about it and I think that is enough to make sure that we are on the right track to the "Free Information" future =)
If you had been paying attention, you would have realized that I was mocking the parent poster's argument, by showing that an equivalent argument leads to a ridiculous conclusion (that car thieves ought not to be put in jail). Instead, you took my statement at face value, and the point went completely over your head.
A life is worth more than every movie ever made; any punishment for copyright violation that includes jail time is out of proportion.
As a consequence no film whose making runs a non-zero risk of killing someone should ever be produced, right? Also, punishing ordinary theft with prison time is always out of proportion?
Your thinking is based on the popular error, that a human life should be valued higher than any finite amount of money.
Government continually has to make trade-offs between saving lives and improving efficiency. Surely you would not approve of speed limits so low that nobody can be killed in a car crash? But how can one find the point of balance when the weight on one side equals infinity? If you postulate that the value of a life isa infinite, you cannot have a consistent theory of economics and hence, rational decision-making becomes impossible.
So, how does one value a life? Of course, we cannot simply ask a man, how much money he wants for his life, as that would again give us infinity. Instead we must ask what the compensation for a (small) risk to one's life should be and extrapolate from that. For example, if Joe is prepared to run a one percent risk of losing his life in exchange for a gain of ten thousand dollars, then we should value Joe's life as (at most) one million dollars.
Of course, one arrives at different values for each life with this method. Since law, culture and religion require that each life should be treated as equally valuable, it seems appropriate to simply take the average, or perhaps the median.
If you have followed me to this point, you understand that it is both necessary and possible to determine a conversion factor between lives and dollars (and I would say that one million is about right). So treating someone who steals a million dollars like a murderer is not wrong.
A different way of arriving at the same conclusion is to reflect that a loss of one million dollars is enough to destroy the livelihood of maybe 5-10 families. Surely this creates an amount of anguish comparable to a murder.
ring.....ring....ring....
Hello?
(staticy voice in phone) Bork! Bork! Bork!
(click)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.