Sweden to Give Courts New Power to Hunt IP Infringers

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Swedish Culture & Justice ministers are preparing to give new power to Swedish courts to let them force ISPs to give up subscriber IPs. The end goal is trying subscribers in court for copyright infringement. As the one-time home of the Pirate Bay, which is now internationally distributed, they face both US pressure and push-back at home. The Swedish arm of the Pirate Party is calling this move a 'sanctioned blackmailing operation', but hopefully the Swedish courts won't allow the IFPI to use as many tricks as the RIAA has in US courts."

Comments

Re:Illegal files? Illegitimate Requests!

[trawg]

Pirate bay provides links (or trackers) to files, those trackers/links are not copyrighted in any way and there's not law in Sweden that forbids such practice (unlike USA's DMCA). So, In Sweden doing what Pirate Bay does is not illegal AT ALL. That's fine - but that's not the point of the article. It sounds like they're giving up going after the Pirate Bay, specifically because there's no laws against its existence. They want to go after the people that are USING the Pirate Bay, and they're getting laws crafted to force ISPs to cooperate by giving up details of file sharers.

Re:No, actually

[VGPowerlord]

The following is the entry for piracy from Merriam-Webster Online. Note the third definition.

1: an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2: robbery on the high seas
3 a: the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright b: the illicit accessing of broadcast signals

Re:Pirate Bay is law abiding!

[prxp]

The Berne Convention (...) states that copyrighted works are protected by the laws in the country where they were created. This means that in Sweden it is illegal to distribute a work created in the US unless you have been given a license to do so. I beg to differ. And since IANAL, here it is a quote from wikipedia about it:

The Berne Convention requires its signatories to recognise the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way it recognises the copyright of its own nationals, which means that, for instance, French copyright law applies to anything published or performed in France, regardless of where it was originally created.

This use of the word piracy is not recent

[Valdrax]

Actually, piracy has actually been in use as a term to describe infringing on another's intellectual property rights for at least 180 years in American courts.

For an example, see Blunt v. Patten, 2 Paine 397, 3 F.Cas. 763 (1828):

In answer to a question from the court, whether the defendant had pirated from the drawings and papers, or from the engravings, he answered, from the engravings.
. . .
The act that secures copyright to authors, guards against the piracy of the words and sentiments; but it does not prohibit writing on the same subject. As in the case of histories and dictionaries.