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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.
A prison sentence for copyright infrigement? Are we loosing the sense of proportion here?
What about murderers? Oh right, they also get prison sentences.
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...
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
This could be the end of the low ratio of torrents deleted vs. the law suits...
The reason the prosecutors want a prison sentence is this:
According to Swedish secrecy law, the ISPs can only be ordered to reveal the identities behind IP numbers if the crime is worth a prison sentence. This case will serve as a precedent. If this guy is spared from prison (very likely), ISPs will no longer reveal file sharers identity.
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.
On this side of the Atlantic we've moved past the medieval system of executions and brutal prison that you Americans incomprehensibly think is compatible with civilisation. We recognise two things - firstly, that prison is about rehabilitation, not anal rape, and secondly, that simply being deprived of one's freedom for several years is already a horrible punishment, without actually having to chain people to damp dungeon walls.
You people seem to think justice is all about retribution and "making the bastards what did it suffer". We think it's about keeping criminals away from the public (so they can't continue to commit crimes), and trying to reeducate them so they won't go on and commit crimes again when they're released.
Europe has a lower crime rate per capita than the USA: in the case of Sweden, far lower. There are only two possible conclusions - either Americans are genetically predisposed to crime, or the European systems of government, education, and justice work better than the American one. I'll leave it to you to decide which of the two you consider less unflattering.
> I thought the headline First Swede prosecuted for sharing files on net was fairly ominous
I was shocked just to hear that the first Swede is still alive.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.