Swedish Govt Mulls Tougher Punishments To Tackle Pirate Sites (torrentfreak.com)

Authorities in Sweden are mulling new measures to deal with evolving 'pirate' sites. As part of a legislative review, the government wants to assess potential legal tools, including categorizing large-scale infringement as organized crime, tougher sentences, domain seizures, and site-blocking, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: Sweden is now considering its options when it comes to its future prosecutions of large-scale copyright infringement cases. As part of a review now underway, the government is accessing the powers it needs to deal with more serious cases of copyright infringement. Police national coordinator for intellectual property crimes Paul Pinter hopes that any changes will enable police to operate more efficiently in the future. "If you have a felony, you can get access to a whole new toolkit. In the terms of reference for the inquiry, the government mentions almost all of the points that we have previously proposed," he told IDG. Considering the way anti-piracy enforcement has developed over the past several years, few of the suggestions from the police come as a surprise. At the top of the tree is treating pirate site operators as more than just large-scale copyright infringers. The Justice Department says that due to the manner in which sites are organized and the subsequent development of revenue, treating them as self-contained crime operations may be appropriate.

Comments

Wow, Al Capone is now == Pirate Bay

[TimothyHollins]

Treating copyright infringement the same as organized crime sounds like an MPAA/RIAA-controlled alternate reality. I guess a lot of money went into "convincing" the right people for this legislative "review".

Re:Wow, Al Capone is now == Pirate Bay

[DickBreath]

While I think the MPAA / RIAA efforts are misplaced, at least they are focusing on the pirate sites instead of everyone else. Like mass lawsuits / extortion letters / settlements with individual downloaders. That approach sure won the hearts and minds of potential customers. Or going after Google because (in their delusional thinking) Google IS the intarwebs, and controls piracy. Or removing Google's links to pirate sites somehow magically makes the piracy disappear. Not even realizing that there are other search engines. Or that people discover the pirate sites by other means than Google. Or realizing that Google might have been a helpful tool to discover pirate sites. And the MPAA / RIAA going after individual online posts of mere links to infringing material. Free clue: If you take down the infringing material, the link becomes irrelevant -- including the hundred additional links that you don't even know about. Then there is the clueless attempts to shut down entire sites, or even entire domains containing multiple sites, over one infringing link -- and thinking this is somehow okay. No concept of the economic damage the MPAA / RIAA is causing. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

Going after the actual pirate sites is a step in the right direction. It only took these imbeciles ten friggin' years to figure it out. That said, I will still snicker out loud every time I read about pirate sites evading the RIAA / MPAA. I don't visit any pirate sites. But I am far more sympathetic to them than to the RIAA / MPAA.

Finally, some of these 'pirate sites' are not actually pirate sites at all. Megaupload, for example. Sometimes the RIAA / MPAA goes after an entire 'technology'. Like suing Diamond Rio for making one of the first mp3 player devices! Or the ridiculous Megaupload raid because some people used it for copyright infringement.

It would be off topic to mention things like Hollywood Accounting, or how record labels screw over artists, or "collection societies" which are nothing more than extortion rackets -- sometimes trying to "collect" on music that they don't even represent. Or the stretching the bounds of copyright beyond recognition, such as playing the radio in an auto mechanic garage counts as a public performance and needs an expensive annual license. So I won't mention those things, since they are off topic.

Re:Sweden

[muffen]

Doesn't Sweden have bigger problems, like Muslim rape gangs making it the rape capital of the world?

No, but Sweden does have a very broad definition of rape, things that in many countries wouldn't even be considered illegal, are considered rape in Sweden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Anyways, why bother with facts when you can use #alternativefacts, the latter doesn't even require any references.

Re:Sweden

[F.Ultra]

By your own links the number of reported rapes have gone from 4208 in 2005 to 5918 in 2015, that is in increase by 41% and not 1500%.

Your second link for the "reported gang rapes" says that this was a measurement up to 2006 which is long before the current migration that you are talking about. Also it talks about alcohol being the main culprit, that the legal definition change that GP talked about explains some of the increases and so on.