Sweden Bans Copyrighted Downloading

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."

Comments

Excellent! No more Linux kernels for Sweden!

[Anonymous Coward]

ATTENTION: People of Sweden.

You may no longer download the Linux kernel. As you will note in all the file headers, it is Copyright (C) Linus Torvalds and many others.

As you have a blanket prohibition on downloading "copyrighted" material (and not just "copyrighted material which does not permit you to download it or make it available for downloading"), you may not download the Linux kernel.

Why?

[tkrotchko]

Before we go to such extreme measures, don't you think we should have a national debate on the right balance between citizens and copyright holders?

It looks to me that we're developing a hodge-podge of copyright/patent laws that has no policy thought and is simply a collection of knee-jerk reactions to what's news this week.