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Pirate Bay Co-Founder In Solitary Confinement
pigrabbitbear writes "Things aren't looking awesome for Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm, who's currently under lock and key in a newly built jail about 15 minutes north of Stockholm. Svartholm's mother Kristina says that her 28-year-old son is being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day without any human contact other than his interactions with the guards. It's been nearly two months since Svartholm was arrested in Cambodia, where he'd been living for years, and extradited back to Sweden, where he's due to spend a year behind bars and pay a $1.1 million fine for copyright offenses related to his role at the Pirate Bay. But that's not why Sweden's being so tough on him in prison. Authorities believe he may have played a role in the hacking of Logica, a Swedish technology company with ties to the country's tax authorities. They haven't charged him with any crimes yet in that case, however."
Because information is more dangerous than violence.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Can you say "sending a message"? Sure, I knew you could...
Karma: Bad
So a man is languishing in solitary confinement for years, not allowed visitors, and is mistreated to a degree that if he were a prisoner of war it would be considered a war crime under the Geneva convention, without being charged, given a trial, or given an opportunity to defend himself... and when this man is finally released, they'll be sending him back to jail because he enabled people to download music and movies... and he's only in that country because of the aforementioned.
Does that seem right to you?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
this guy offended power but didn't stay anonymous, so he was nailed
unless you are rich and powerful expect the machinery of society to be turned against you if you ever upset the rich and powerful
what we need is an anonymous, distributed internet
freenet and tor are both good starts but too hard to use for normal people
now is the time to start building it, when the regular people rely on the conveniences of the internet but don't yet feel the restrictions on their freedoms
if there is no alternative built by the time they do feel it and look for one then we will have lost
learn how to configure and run a freenet and tor node on an old computer in your house, throttle the bandwidth if you want to and don't run an exit node if that is scary
but run a node, you can be part of the solution
look at http://project-byzantium.org/ if you are feeling more adventurous
His booking papers only cite pirate bay activities.
If it was because of hacking, then his paperwork damn well should say so. The fact that it doesn't means that this is nothing but an attempt to use allegations of hacking as an excuse.
Until someone puts their ass on the line and signs a piece of paper under oath as to why he's locked up, I'm not going to believe a word they say.
Until someone puts their ass on the line and signs a piece of paper under oath as to why he's locked up, I'm not going to believe a word they say.
If you'll believe it afterwards, I have an affidavit stating that I own an over-water property I think you might be interested in purchasing.
...a crime worthy of punishment equal to manslaughter.
Remember, the death penalty for hacking has been seriously discussed. If such a discussion can be considered serious.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Torrents are the modern day The Library of Alexandria.
By law, every book and scroll was copied.
It was critical for the development of civilization.
A golden age lasted until the christians and muslims destroyed it.
Don't let the plutocrats destroy our library!
hard to believe anything they say after watching how the swedish government acts.
They can hold him for a year for the Pirate Bay conviction possibly longer if they add on time for non payment of fines. However they think he was involved in hacking Logica but as yet they can't prove it. Most people break eventually in solitary and will say and do anything to get out of it. They probably plan on leaving him there for his whole sentence "for his own safety" unless he confesses.
I get your point: If you want to make money on content, rip-off creators and artists with LAWYERS, not with TECHNOLOGIES.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
... Stockholm Syndrome.
Solitary confinement isn't same as in US prisons. First of all he isn't in a prison where it would be strange if he was held in solitary confinement. Everyone who gets 'häktad' is held in solitary confinement or the "red" ward until the prosecutor says otherwise or he is officially charged (i.e. "förundersökningssekretess" is released).
I've been myself confined in solitary for 2 months, where 2 weeks were voluntary. It's good times and way better than sharing a cell with some douche bags and being able to relax because the psycho in your cell is about to get a psychosis and can't take being locked in.
In solitary confinement you get bed, PRIVACY, tv (if officially charged, or prosecutor allows i.e. after giving your sworn statement), table, toilet, water, foodstuff, books and library visit, paper and pen, access to phone (with permission of prosecutor), training room, shower, and so on. It's not the american "solitary confinement" nor is it to punish you, it's way more costly, and they try to put you into "GREEN" ward asap. After that you'll be sent to prison where there is place for you, and if you are unlucky, you get to be 3 or more in one cell.
There is a different type of solitary confinement that I doubt Gottfried is put in, and they usually only exist in prisons and people dangerous to themselves.
BTW, I never been to prison. Just accused of crap. Gottfried should be happy he is put in "häkte" because when he goes to prison he'll love the solitary confinement benefits. Only negative is of course that you only get to meet the wardens and a few people the prosecutor wetted before letting them see you (and they can be friends not necessarily family).
It isn't that hard to see the reason is pure vindictiveness on the part of (monied) rights holders, exercising their purchased cronies in world government.
If you followed the press releases surrounding the pirate bay, and bothered to read their "legal threats" page before they were busted, you would know that the founders of the pirate bay frequently and bluntly told the large media companies to go fuck themselves with collapsable metal batons. (And even gave suggestions about which ones were of superior quality.)
[No seriously. They really did.]
This tidbit was alluded to discreetly by various media groups covering the trial, since their peers had made open complaints to the court about the group's lack of tact and seeming lack of seriousness, demanding harsher punishments. (Essentially, they didn't like being told to go fuck themselves, and wanted the court system to use 'harsher' punishments, because they were butt-hurt over it, illistrating their own lack of professionalism in the matter.)
The outright illegal raid on PB servers, followed by the dubious cambodian extradition to sweden, and the endless trail of clearly damning evidence of government corruption in the case pretty clearly sums it up.
Do I think the guy is a hero? Certainly not. Is he getting unfairly punished in proportion to his crimes? Oh yes, certainly. Is it due to government corruption? The evidence is pretty damning...
What is he really guilty of that they want to punish him so severely?
He threatened their hegemony, and was shamelessly unafrad of him. They can't stand that, and want to use him as a poster child to instill fear in people that would be like him, and flaunt their authority.
More than anything, I'd say he is a political prisoner, on par with what the russians do routinely.
This is insane, why is a computer programmer under solitary confinement?
Because they can't find enough evidence to charge him with a real crime, so they just torture him instead.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's standard treatment in Sweden. If the crime is non-trivial, the attorney almost always requests solitary confinement. The reason is to prevent the accused from interfering with the criminal investigation, but I think at least partly it's done in order to break the accused, helping the interrogations.
Sweden has been criticized by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture for this practice, but nothing seems to change.
I'd say that I am not that proud of our judicial system right now. This practice, the not-so-competent handling of Assange, the recent turn of events relating to a convicted serial killer (Tomas Quick) being found innocent for crime after crime, after withdrawing his own confessions, and the follow-up revelations of a closed boys-club judicial system - these events makes me ashamed and worried.
It's not necessarily attributed to malice, but it is certainly incompetence combined with the attitude among Swedish bureaucrats that the government is always right, always efficient, and certainly *never* wrong.
And this is exactly the reason why Julian Assange is so (wisely) set against being extradited to Sweden.
Then... please stop using netflix, itunes, amazon video & music, etc...
Piracy was only about stealing to some, to the rest it was a way of saying I'm sick of paying $15 for a cd to hear one song 10x.
Basically they're giving him the Guantanamo treat.
I could never imagine how fast will the "content industry" bring upon us a totalitarian, corporatist dystopia. The US is pushing for extradition of people who engaged in copying - not violent attacks, not murder, not kidnapping, not arms or drugs dealing, no, nothing but fucking COPYING copyrighted content.
The only thing more alarming is the great majority of sheeple, I mean people, watching all this and going "oh well, I guess Bono's got to buy food, too". Pathetic.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Don't fuck with big corporations.
You get thrown in jail and the key thrown away.
The upside-down world: a co-founder of Pirate Bay is in solitary, but the guys who stole $18 trillion in the 2007-08 economic collapse scam are running around free and using their cash to influence the US election.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Solitary confinement doesn't technically fall under 'torture', so they can leave him there for 20 years if they want, going absolutely insane due to the complete lack of stimulus. But it's not torture, oh no. It will absolutely destroy his mind, and ruin the rest of his life, but it's not torture, so it's all fine and good and legitimate.
Isn't the legal system wonderful.
I've known Kevin for years. He did not spend 5 years in solitary. He spent 8 months in solitary and it was over a dispute about whether to sign a document that, among other things, would allow them to restrict his telephone privileges (yes, there was actual concerns that he had the ability to hack the telco system - but not start a nuclear war.) He spent the vast majority of his time in general population awaiting trail.
Firstly, it's not stealing. That's logically impossible, and can only be attributed as such due to an emotional reaction to the fictitious loss of one's property arising from ignorance, in some cases willful, about how copyright and intellectual property actually works.
Secondly, the "getting tired of paying $15" was, and is, a justification for a much larger and more serious problem.... content creators and distributors no longer needed to be compensated directly in order to receive copies, or expressions, of the intellectual property. They no longer needed to be accompanied by the licensing in accordance with the laws, or in other words, be authorized.
I'm fucking tired of paying so much for water and gas. However, regardless of my feelings, the utility companies continue to charge those rates and I have exactly one entity to receive it from. The expense and challenge of creating my own water and gas sources are considerable.
Once a content creator adds their contributions to the world, it is far more trivial to distribute that content in a manner in which it can be suitably consumed. MP3's and the emergence of broadband Internet connections made it possible to cheaply distribute all that content. Software which allowed "ripping" of content off CDs enabled legions of younger people to convert intellectual property from a state that required physical distribution, to one that only required the Internet and a hard drive.
Peer to Peer communications software vastly exacerbated the problem by bringing many orders of magnitude more efficiency to the distribution process.
There was no great intellectual movement against the content creators and distributors. It was far more simple than that:
A) You are in a huge bazaar. Merchants are offering their wares and haggling prices. You only have $15, and this allows you to purchase one item, with restrictions on how it can transported and used.
B) You are in an even bigger bazaar. It's a bit more dangerous, and sometimes that banana is really a penis, hiding inside the skin of a banana. However, everything is free. All it cost was the gas to get there.
How can content creators and distributors compete with free?
Therein lies our fundamental problem. It no longer costs nearly as much to create copies of intellectual property and distribute them. The technology and resources are widely available.
The laws and society have simply not kept up, or have been able to adapt to our changes in technology. People, however, adapt extremely quickly. This disparity is the cause for all our strife, and the imminent destruction of free societies.
Hyperbole? Hardly.
The response of content creators and their uber rich distributors is not to adapt themselves to the new world and possibilities, but force the world to adapt back to them. Unfortunately, with great consequences, the only way to allow content creators the temporary control over their works (to benefit all of us, not just them) is to destroy freedom. It's the only way to effectively do it.
That's the real nasty truth of it. People don't want to pay for shit if they don't have to do so . It takes effort, sophistication, and commitment on the part of those that have the ability to not pay, to actually pay.
Most /.'s that claim they are paying, or are willing to pay, only do so because they understand the consequences of not even attempting to compensate the artists.
In most cases, claiming some noble truth, or great cause is what compels you to infringe copyright, is just a lie .
The problem is "they think he might have something to do with whatever", so let's punish him now.
Due process? Nah, that's for civilized countries. Which there is none on Earth right now, and things only seem to get worse.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Your comment is pretty hilarious if you actually read the article or know anything about custody or prison in Sweden. Would it be better if he was thrown in a cage with other, no doubt, rather more hardened criminals?
"They believe he may have played a role" .
In other words, they don't have anything on him, but they are still getting a lot of pressure from the US, so they invent an excuse to keep the public quiet.
The "moral" of the story is Assange is right, Sweden is the USA's bitch and they jump through the hoops like a good doggie. Think actual Swedish content was even one half of one percent of TPB? Nope but he pissed off the media cartels which along with the other megacorps own the USA so they just told their pitbulls at the state dept "Make sure they fuck him hard" and wadda ya know? that's what they are doing.
Sigh...I remember when extradition was actually a big deal, when only murderers and organized criminals had to worry about it, but now every. country. on. the. planet. has to follow the USA's rules and jump through the hoops, because God fucking forbid our media cartels have to get with the 21st century and use new models of business, why God that would be horrible!
Just think, if the cartels would have been in place at the turn of the 20th century you'd be forced to this very day to buy a saddle and buggywhip for every person riding in a vehicle. I mean how dare they have to change when they could just buy the laws?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You may want to re-evaluate your history of the late 1900's and early 20th century in regards to the existence of cartels and over bearing monopolies. It was during this time period when worker rights were non-existent and monopolies were not restricted in how they conducted their business enterprises. And stop blaming the US and let Sweden take responsibility for their own actions for a change. That is of course unless you have any proof to back up your statement.