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Swedish Pirate Party Threatened for Hosting the Pirate Bay
New submitter BetterThanCaesar writes "The Swedish Pirate Party and their ISP Serious Tubes have received a letter from 'The Rights Alliance' (formerly Antipiratbyrån, The Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), demanding they cease supplying Internet access to The Pirate Bay. Referring to the final sentence on the four Pirate Bay profiles, they threaten with legal action if access is not removed by February 26. On her blog, party leader Anna Troberg calls the letter 'extortion,' pointing out that (translated from Swedish) '[i]t is not illegal to provide The Pirate Bay with Internet access. There is no list of illegal sites that ISPs cannot provide access to.' (google translation to English)."
The letter sent (in Swedish). Update: 02/20 14:58 GMT by U L : richie2000 notes that hosting isn't quite right; they're just routing traffic to TPB: "We're not hosting TPB, we're just routing traffic to them. Just like an ISP. Serious Tubes routes traffic to the Pirate Party, so they're even more removed. But, last night, Portlane, one of the ISPs that routes traffic to Serious Tubes, was pressured into cutting their transit to ST, even if they were just a provider to a provider to a provider to TPB."
So, do you get your goth makeup at hot topic or is it more of a mail order thing now?
Thanks for the response. However, I'm sorry, but your argument is very wanting.
You are saying, quite literally, "because private companies should not be able to spy on internet traffic, internet traffic cannot be policed, and therefore all uses of the internet should be left alone." This is almost scandalous in its willful torpidity.
your argument effectively makes it impossible for law enforcement to engage in any meaningful oversight of everything from child pornography to bank fraud. "but" you'll say, "these are crimes, and copyright is a civil affair." except that it isn't.. or rather, what you will find yourself arguing for is for the government to be more actively involved in prosecuting copyright infringers- is this really what you want?
if piracy (i use this term as shorthand for unfettered, ahem, 'sharing') results in increased sales, then tell me why rightsholders are so against it? I find your claim about the spanish movie industry to be "flourishing" to be comedy, as anybody who can google the words "Spanish film industry subsidies" can quickly see.
I fully agree that civil liberties are important. however, they don't exist in a vacuum--for example, the reason that sweden is sweden and not somalia with regards to weapons is that swedish weapons laws are balanced. I suggest you have a read of the excellent (but dated) book "rights talk" which goes into this in some detail. while i understand that you try to frame this issue int terms of "big evil hollywood with its billions in profit" because that attracts teenagers to your cause, let's look more realistically on what's going on in sweden - the recent case and the court ruling against you vis a vis a small publisher of audiobooks is telling. http://edri.org/bonnier or are you going to tell me that the swedish audiobook firm was gaining business by having its work expropriated? how many examples, excactly, do you need of the chilling effects of piracy, companies that have gone bankrupt because of piracy, and BROAD academic studies comparing rates of innovation to IP protection (the "pro-piracy" people invariably make small focused studies to pick out statistical anomalies - like your spanish film claim which is not actually true) before you admit that really what you are after is power?