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Pirate Bay Raid Investigation Finished
A Pirate writes "The Swedish Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) has finished the investigation of the Pirate Bay raid where close to 200 servers were confiscated. Just a fragment of these were actually Pirate Bay's and this led to both the police and prosecutor being charged with official misconduct, but the judges dropped the cases. In the report published by the JO he concludes that the judges were right, but there is also some very interesting information about how the MPA, IFPI and the American embassy tried to push the Swedish Minister of Justice and Secretary of State into influencing the police and the prosecutor to act upon The Pirate Bay."
That precedent was Scientology busting anon.penet.fi remailers. The US does not control the internet and hopefully as time goes by legal jurisdictions around the world will rule against heavy handed American tactics.
Legal or not, a raid that takes down a ton of sites as collateral damage is a fricking joke. What's the worst case scenario? They actually have to do an investigation, rather than just whacking a whole data center?
If I owned a site that was taken down for the crime of using the same host as TPB, I'd be assembling a team of rabid attack lawyers, and training them to go for the wallet.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Of course they dropped the case. Now that the Pirate Bay servers operate out of North Korea, it's out of Swedish jurisdiction. Plus, they probably don't want to provoke the wrath of Kim "I've got nukes!" Jong-Il...
"[P]olice and prosecutor being charged with official misconduct, but the judges dropped the cases"
a nd#2004_death_in_custody_controversy_and_riot or do a search.)
And this is why the police and prosecutor will continue to break the law. This happens everywhere, unless the police are required to actually obey the law, there is no incentive to. Even when they are punished, it generally amounts to a slap on the wrist.
The police can and will arrest people who have done nothing wrong (I and a number of others at a protest during the Forbes conference in Sydney in 2005 for example, all the charges were either dropped or thrown out of court, except those people who pleaded guilty).
It isn't just illegal raids or arrests either. In Queensland an Aboriginal man was killed while in police custody. It was latter shown that he shouldn't have even been arrested, and that he was beaten to death. The police officer responsible continues in his duties (though he has been transferred from Palm Island). Actually, apparently he has now been charged, with manslaughter, after a former NSW chief judge examined the evidence.
(See this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Island,_Queensl
So, it is obvious that the police need to be held accountable for their actions. While it is possible in most places to sue them (in the civil court), and this is what the various owners and users of these seized servers should do, the judge often finds that the police "were just doing their duty". No they fucking weren't! They were going beyond their duty.
I wank in the shower.
The US poke their noses into the business of countries around the world. They're currently also trying to get the Dutch to follow the disastrous drug prohibition policy that's failed so badly in the US, instead of the Dutch policy of allowing the sale of cannabis and magic mushrooms which has worked well for decades now.
Wow, this sounds like hassling that has worked against TPB.
You host TPB servers. We will just randomly take the servers to the police station and shut down your business for weeks. And, you can't touch us with misconduct charges or anything.
If one person buys the DVD and distributes it to the world does anyone really believe that movies will keep getting made.
Of course they will. They just won't be sold on DVD.
But do you think it's likely that that will happen?
The reason why it is such a big deal that the American embassy tried to push the Swedish Minister of Justice and Secretary of State into influencing the police and the prosecutor to act upon The Pirate Bay is because of this: according to the Swedish law it is not permitted for the Minister of Justice to tell what the police should do (in Swedish we call this 'ministerstyre'). The minister is not even allowed to speak on individual cases. To you guys in the US or Britain this might seem weird, but that's how things work over here.
What happened with the raid on Pirate Bay could very well be a constitutional offense. That is of course after the Committee on the Constitution have properly investigated it. This is serious business.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Defendant, goes home, gets a job and returns to a steady bill payer's lifestyle.
The RIAA . . . well . . .
Nevermind. I really don't care what happens to them.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.