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Sweden Bans Copyrighted Downloading

Posted by Zonk on from the a-less-friendly-EU dept.

Xiar Prime writes "Swedish lawmakers have made downloading of copyrighted material illegal, one day after an 11-nation piracy crackdown. Prior to the passing of the law, it was only illegal to provide copyrighted material, not download it." From the article: " The law was drawn up to bring Sweden into line with EU directives and is also part of a wider crackdown on net piracy. It comes a day after the US Attorney General's office announced an 11-nation operation to catch and shut down net piracy groups."

2 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. Im swedish ;) are you? by lordsilence · · Score: 5, Informative

    Analyzers of this law has deemed it to be pretty toothless against piracy. The police themselves has announced that copyright crimes wont be prioritised. It's not even clear if they will investigate things further on invidual downloaders/filesharers since they consider this a crime which will not be a jailable offence. Most likely a smaller fee like for speeding or parking ticket. But we'll see what the antipiracy groups comes up with before we know anything for sure.

    1. Re:Im swedish ;) are you? by lordsilence · · Score: 4, Informative

      They are still fine. They dont provide any copyright material. They simply provide links which is entirely fine by swedish law. Untill then they will continue providing their bittorrent tracker service.