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Sweden Becoming Less Friendly To File Sharing

from the all-that-lobbying-pays-off dept

Fri, Mar 14th 2008 4:43pm — Mike Masnick

Despite having politicians who seem to actually understand the real issues at stake surrounding file sharing (hint: it's not a legal problem having to do with "pirates"), it appears that some in the country are getting fed up with the entertainment industry trying to portray Sweden as a "haven for pirates" thanks to the Pirate Bay (which isn't even hosted in Sweden any more). Earlier this year charges were filed against The Pirate Bay, even though it's still not clear if they actually violated any laws. And, now, some Swedish politicians are saying that ISPs should be required to cough up the information of those accused of sharing files. Oddly, this comes so soon after the EU decided that IP addresses are private info and various other countries in Europe have ruled that ISPs shouldn't hand over info, as user privacy is much more important than propping up the entertainment industry's business model.

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Filed Under: file sharing, isps, pirate bay, privacy, sweden
Companies: pirate bay

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 14 Mar 2008 @ 6:54pm

IP Addresses are private info?
I guess in the same way your STREET ADDRESS is private. Private so long as no one looks.

And there is no way the analogy can be anything different. If I want to give someone something, I either go to their home and hand it to them, or I use FedEx or the Post Office or UPS or whatever.

The analogy being FTP for handing directly and E-Mail or other means for the later part.

So I hope the EU counts street addresses and phone numbers as private information as well. Otherwise there are some gaps in their logic.
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who cares, 14 Mar 2008 @ 7:09pm

The entertainment industry should stop bitching. Maybe with the loss of sales, American musicians will produce songs with the motivation not being Money, but heart and soul, the foundations of real music.
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The Mighty Buzzard, 14 Mar 2008 @ 7:13pm

Re: IP Addresses are private info?
True, who owns a house at a street address is public record but who might be renting it is not. Same with IP addresses that we sublet from our ISP who have themselves leased them from yet another party.
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On the Copyright side, 14 Mar 2008 @ 7:49pm

Go Sweden
The Swedes are quite savvy with their programming skills. Perhaps they can come up with a model that protects the rights of musicians and respects the rights of consumers.
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Hellsvilla, 14 Mar 2008 @ 8:39pm

wait just a cotton picking minute!
You mean to tell me there's more than one political party in Sweden? And not all of these political parties share the exact same views on all political matters?

That's just unpossible!
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KD, 15 Mar 2008 @ 3:49am

Could be a different reason
You wrote "... it appears that some in the country are getting fed up with the entertainment industry trying to portray Sweden as a "haven for pirates" thanks to the Pirate Bay ...".

I'd say that it is much more likely that the reason for these politicians' actions is that someone has been threatening trade retaliation, or something similar, rather than that the politicians are getting fed up with their beloved Sweden being called a haven for pirates. Seems to me that Sweden has been called nasty names many times in the past, and it didn't bother them much then. Or were you just making a little joke?

If some arm-twisting is going on, it would be good to publicize the details, in the interests of publicly shaming the bully. I realize you might not know the details at the moment.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Mar 2008 @ 2:19pm

seems that the EU is more "American" in their thinking lately
the our own government
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Mar 2008 @ 6:12pm

Re: IP Addresses are private info?
Street addresses != Internet addresses. Do I really need to spell out the differences between owning a street address and "owning" a IP address?
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Senator Ted™, Creator of Law, 15 Mar 2008 @ 9:53pm

Why do you people get so excited by privacy? Everyone knows that you people are "the public" and therefore you have no right to privacy. Only us in the government have a right to privacy because information would let our enemies know what we are doing, and we can't have that, so we keep everything secret.

Now go back to your TV and watch American Idle and stop asking questions.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2008 @ 10:00pm

Re:
Nice, tell King George I said, "hi".
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