According to the SVT (Swedish Public Service), MPAA was behind yesterday's raid against The Pirate Bay.
This corresponds well with the MPAA public statement after the raid; ""the film industry has worked vigorously
with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut the illegal (sic) site down".
In April representatives for the Swedish Department of Justice and Swedish police met American authorities who,
on request from the MPAA, brought up the filesharing issue. Three problems with Sweden were listed:
* The Pirate Bay.
* Many filesharing sites are based in Sweden.
* A big share of filesharing material has its origins in Sweden.
The Department then asked the police and prosecutors to act against the Pirate Bay. When they responded
that the legality of the situation was unclear, the Minister of Justice's state secretary contacted the
Prosecutor-General and the national Chief of police who gave the orders for the raid.
According to SVT's Rapport, the MPAA contacted the White House. Then the American Ministry for
Foreign Affairs contacted its Swedish counterpart and demanded a solution to the Pirate Bay issue.
The fact that they did this is quite serious as these actions implicate minister rule,
which is illegal according to the Swedish constitution.
One might go so far as to consider Sweden's sovereignity violated. Add to this that it wasn't very long ago
American CIA captured two people in Sweden (later to be transfered to Egypt),
many are now upset over the Swedish government's submission.
Not only the Pirate Bay, but Piratbyrån (Pirate bureau), a site trying to influence public opinion - against
copyright - was raided at the same time. Henrik Pontén at Antipiratbyrån (Anti pirate bureau)
claims they (APB) mainly acted against this obviously not illegal organisation, quite pleased that they
got shut down as well.
And since then the parliamentary Constitutional Committee has been asked to investigate justice minister Thomas Bodström and others in office (The Local). After being swamped by reports the chief of the JO (persons who investigates wrongdoings in the justice system) have decided to investigate the entire raid, everyone involved in it and any illegal pressure applied.
Today two demonstration occurred in Sweden, organised by piratbyrån, piratpartiet and some youth organisations from the established political parties.
It was apparently the TPB lawyer that had to submit to DNA sampling. That gets really interesting when you factor in that "the brain behind TPB" was denied an lawyer because he was not suspected of anything that could result in jail (the news article in swedish).
So the "brain behind TPB" (and owner of PRQ which was the webhost that was raided and stripped of all servers, even though most had nothing to do with TPB) is not suspected for anything that could give jail, but despite that they could get a warrant to take all the equipment. Additionally the lawyer has to be suspected of something that can result in jail or otherwise they could not legally have forced him to give DNA. So if all that is true then the lawyer is suspected of something worse than the webhost owner and person behind TPB. That sounds very fishy so either someone is lying or the police has committed several crimes during the raid and interrogations.
Sadly this is Sweden we are talking about so the government will do something bad, then investigate why they did it until people forget what happened.
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And since then the parliamentary Constitutional Committee has been asked to investigate justice minister Thomas Bodström and others in office (The Local). After being swamped by reports the chief of the JO (persons who investigates wrongdoings in the justice system) have decided to investigate the entire raid, everyone involved in it and any illegal pressure applied.
Today two demonstration occurred in Sweden, organised by piratbyrån, piratpartiet and some youth organisations from the established political parties.
It was apparently the TPB lawyer that had to submit to DNA sampling. That gets really interesting when you factor in that "the brain behind TPB" was denied an lawyer because he was not suspected of anything that could result in jail (the news article in swedish).
So the "brain behind TPB" (and owner of PRQ which was the webhost that was raided and stripped of all servers, even though most had nothing to do with TPB) is not suspected for anything that could give jail, but despite that they could get a warrant to take all the equipment. Additionally the lawyer has to be suspected of something that can result in jail or otherwise they could not legally have forced him to give DNA. So if all that is true then the lawyer is suspected of something worse than the webhost owner and person behind TPB. That sounds very fishy so either someone is lying or the police has committed several crimes during the raid and interrogations.
Sadly this is Sweden we are talking about so the government will do something bad, then investigate why they did it until people forget what happened.