Danish Blogger Raided By The Police For Writing About File Sharing?

from the that's-not-cool dept

Tue, Nov 29th 2011 11:09pm — Mike Masnick

As a bunch of you have been submitting, TorrentFreak recently had the bizarre story of a Danish law school student and legal blogger who had been writing a lot about file sharing... and then was raided by police who were told he ran a private BitTorrent tracker by the local anti-piracy organization, RettighedsAlliancen. While the guy admits he downloaded some unauthorized content, and is a member of the site in question, he had nothing to do with running it, and worries that this is really more about harassment for his blogging. Rather than denying it, the anti-piracy group seems to delight in the fact the guy has a blog where he explains to people how to be anonymous online, saying "we can see that he teaches others to break the law and conceal themselves on the net." I had no idea it was against the law to conceal yourself online...

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Filed Under: blogging, denmark, file sharing

18 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 29 Nov 2011 @ 11:21pm

I think they will blow a gasket when they see the YaCy network LoL
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Rikuo (profile), 29 Nov 2011 @ 11:44pm

One thing I noticed from the Torrentfreak article is that it says the police searched the guy's room-mate's room...correct me if I'm wrong, but surely the warrant the cops had wouldn't have extended to the room-mate? Surely that would have been considered a separate legal abode, requiring either a separate warrant or for the original warrant to be much more broad in scope.
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xenomancer (profile), 29 Nov 2011 @ 11:46pm

You Know How the Saying Goes
If you feed a man a fish he will become a slave to the fishing line and lure installed to get all those people catching their own fish, if you teach him to fish you immediately get arrested for ruining the fishing industry.
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xenomancer (profile), 29 Nov 2011 @ 11:49pm

Re:
You could think so...
you would think so...
you should think so...

and stop calling me Shirley!
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 12:25am

That is why I pirate.

And the last paragraph of the quote below is what I would like to say to "content owners" in a polite way.
Quote:
What we have here is a century of deceit, and a century revealing the internal culture inherent in the copyright industry. Every time something new appears, the copyright industry has learned to cry like a little baby that needs more food, and succeeds practically every time to get legislators to channel taxpayer money their way or restrict competing industries. And every time the copyright industry succeeds in doing so, this behavior is further reinforced.

It is far past due that the copyright industry is stripped of its nobility benefits, every part of its governmental weekly allowance, and gets kicked out of its comfy chair to get a damn job and learn to compete on a free and honest market.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-industry-a-century-of-deceit-111127/
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 12:31am

Re:
Depends on the wording of the search warrant and how the Danish interpret those things. If it says "premises" and don't put any boundaries they technically would be correct.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 12:38am

Re:
Oops!

YaCy the distributed search engine(aka P2P powered search engine) that is hard to censor.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy
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justok (profile), 30 Nov 2011 @ 2:02am

Re: Re:
I didn't call you, and how did you know my name was Shirley?
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Berenerd (profile), 30 Nov 2011 @ 6:08am

Re: Re:
They could technically search the whole building.
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gorehound (profile), 30 Nov 2011 @ 6:09am

Re:
I also enjoyed that part.I am now almost 56 and I remember a few formats those big wigs tried to shut down.
DAT Tape really pissed me off.I used those and my mate still has a few in the studio.
To bad there can't be a National Boycott Day or Week on Big Content.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 30 Nov 2011 @ 6:38am

Because the police are unaware of the "crime" being committed they bring along these tools from a private firm who basically get handed everything they want.

Several of these companies for all of their gloating actually have destroyed evidence in cases and rendered it unusable. One of them publicly admitted they had a "suspects" laptop and reveled in that they had it, the police handed them the laptop and they decided they could keep it. In the UK they botched the case so poorly that they had to return the raided peoples property, but they made sure to damage it on every level before handing it back.

This is not always about defending the law so much as it is blurring the line to trying to silence people they don't like by illegal means if need be. They lie, cheat, steal, and destroy real property... but people who share content are the "real" criminals.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 6:45am

Just one point:

"But we can see that he teaches others to break the law and conceal themselves on the net."

is not the same as

"But we can see that he teaches others to break the law by concealing themselves on the net."

The quote is not making the claim that concealing oneself on the net is illegal.

Other than that, I find it deplorable that the legal system (police included) would act on this. If I were even slightly paranoid, I'd look at the relationships between the judge involved and the groups with a vested interest in copyright.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 6:46am

Re: You Know How the Saying Goes
If you teach a man to fish, he'll buy a funny hat. If you talk about fishing, you're a consultant.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 7:45am

Re:
warrants are generally for the whole property... if it was an apartment they couldn't search the neighbors or anything, but anything w/in the unit is fair game.
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Islander, 30 Nov 2011 @ 8:22am

Response to: Rikuo on Nov 29th, 2011 @ 11:44pm
If Danish law is like Swedish, a policeman can decide to search someone's home if there's reason to suspect a crime. He doesn't have to get approval from a court beforehand.
I don't know what applies in this specific case, though - I don't even know if it was a civil or criminal search.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2011 @ 11:39am

Re:
The quote is not making the claim that concealing oneself on the net is illegal.

Of course it is. Examine the context.

If the claim isn't implying that it's illegal, why say it at all? The only reason they would include it is an attempt to smear him.
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Rekrul, 30 Nov 2011 @ 6:49pm

Re: Re: You Know How the Saying Goes
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. ;)
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The Devil's Coachman (profile), 1 Dec 2011 @ 5:44pm

Re: Re: Re:
They could technically search your colon.
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