Sweden Considering Law To Allow Police To Go After File Sharers

from the moving-in-the-wrong-direction dept

One of the most enjoyable parts of attending MidemNet was talking with various people in the industry who have learned how to embrace new business models and adapt to the changing market place. I ended up hanging out a lot with Martin Thornkvist, of the Swedish record label Songs I Wish I Had Written (some of that time spent wandering slightly lost through French villages post-midnight, after we discovered that there was no transportation back to the town where both of us were staying, but only a train that would drop us a few towns over, where the promised taxi cabs were found to not exist). We talked a lot about what's going on in Sweden, where there seems to be an unfortunate dichotomy. There are those who have learned to embrace the new market place and look for the opportunities, such as Martin's label, and a variety of other labels there. And, of course, there are folks like The Pirate Bay and the political Pirate Party, which actually has received some level of recognition in Sweden.

But there is also the other side. And they still appear to be in power. Apparently, Sweden's Justice Minister is reviewing a report that will recommend giving police the ability to go after file sharers. This still makes little sense to me. Copyright should be, for the most part, a civil issue. It usually makes little to no sense to ever get police or law enforcement involved -- especially when we're seeing plenty of folks in the recording industry -- such as Martin and other Swedish indie labels -- not only learn to live with things like file sharing, but to embrace it and actively encourage it. Of course, I have to admit that, while highly amusing, the Swedish Pirate Party's response to such a plan is a bit over the top:

"These laws are written by digital illiterates who behave like blindfolded, drunken elephants trumpeting about in an egg packaging facility. They have no idea how much damage they're causing, because they lack today's literacy: an understanding of how the Internet is reshaping the power structures at their core."

Of course, when you combine plans to have law enforcement go after file sharers with recently approved legislation to effectively tap all forms of communication in the country, things get pretty worrisome pretty fast.

Filed Under: file sharing, law enforcement, sweden

Sweden Trying To Update Copyright Laws; May Face A Fight

from the the-pirate-bay-force-is-strong-there dept

While there has been plenty of teeth gnashing by the entertainment industry, it still does appear that The Pirate Bay is legal under copyright laws in Sweden. While there is a trial going on, there is also already plenty of accusations of corruption involved in the trial (the prosecutor had a business relationship with a record label), and many still feel that The Pirate Bay will eventually be vindicated. However, there has been tremendous international pressure (much of it coming from US diplomats, with soundbites written by the US entertainment industry) to get Sweden to change its copyright laws. And, now, apparently some new "antipiracy" legislation is about to be introduced.

The plan is to require service providers to hand over the details on anyone who a copyright holder has "probable cause" to believe is file sharing. How that probable cause is determined remains something of an important open question. Just seeing the IP address shouldn't be enough, but it's not clear if the courts will agree. What will be more interesting is to see how the Swedish citizenry reacts to the introduction of this bill. While it hasn't caught on much elsewhere, the Pirate Party actually does have a decent following in Sweden, and the political party has already expressed its extreme displeasure over the wording of the bill.

Filed Under: antipiracy, copyright, laws, sweden, the pirate party

Is Web 2.0 About Exploitation Or Empowerment?

from the an-academic-look dept

Earlier this year, at the Mesh Conference in Toronto, I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy Baym, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas. She's been doing tremendous research into questions concerning online "fan" communities around musicians. She's just posted her latest paper, with Robert Burnett from Karlstad University in Sweden, examining the question of whether or not Web 2.0 "fan communities" are really about exploitation or empowerment. This is a question we've addressed before, given that web 2.0 critics, such as Nicholas Carr, like to ignore that there are non-monetary benefits in the economy, and thus assume that any activity done for reasons other than money are exploitation.

The paper takes a balanced look at the Swedish independent music scene, which relies heavily on fan communities to act as filters and promoters of the music. The record labels don't focus so much on "selling music" so much as building up attention that can then be monetized in many different ways. Thus, they encourage fans to share and promote their music for them. So, is this use of fans exploitation?

The paper shows that, contrary to the "exploitation" view, the fans often get plenty of value out of the whole process, if not directly in monetary terms. As the paper notes, the concept of "exploitation" suggests a cost to the participant, but if they get more out of participating than they give up, then it hardly seems like exploitation. Instead, it's a reasonable choice in a non-monetary market, where they get more value than they put in. Plus, the paper notes that some of the fan participants eventually do make some money out of their efforts as well. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise. There are plenty of folks who became highly involved in a hobby and are eventually able to turn that into a business.

But the bigger issue for many fans, is simply being able to build relationships with the musicians they love -- and with other fans. To them, that's worth a lot more than money, and it's hard to see how building strong relationships and friendships can be seen as exploitation.

On top of that, the paper notes that the fans also make use of certain strategies to make sure -- implicitly or explicitly -- that they're not being exploited. In other words, whether they realize it or not, they're aware at some level of the possibility of being exploited by the situation, and they make certain choices to protect against that possibility. Overall, a very interesting paper that's worth reading, and I look forward to more research on this topic.

Filed Under: communities, exploitation, music, nancy baym, research, sweden

The Pirate Bay Threatens To Sue Over Copyright Violations

from the want-to-see-copyright-abuse?-we'll-show-you-copyright-abuse... dept

The folks who run The Pirate Bay sure do seem to have quite a bit of fun. The latest is that, in response to a report from Swedish book publishers about how they scraped TPB's results for a period of time and noticed that 85% of Sweden's best sellers could be found on the site, the folks from TPB are threatening to sue the publishers for copyright infringement. Hypocritical? Yes. But, clearly, the TPB guys are merely making the point of just how silly copyright laws are. The TPB guys aren't big believers in copyright, obviously, so any such lawsuit isn't so much hypocritical as it is pointing out the absurdities of such a system to those who seem to think that copyright systems make perfect sense.

Filed Under: copyright, database rights, publishers, sweden
Companies: pirate bay

Swedish Authorities Take Action Against Blogger For Revealing Surveillance Documents

from the free-speech-violation? dept

Wille Faler writes "Swedish blogger and civil rights activist Henrik Alexandersson has been reported for "freedom of speech" violations by the head of FRA (Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment), the government agency that is responsible for surveilling the contents, origins and destinations of all phone calls, internet traffic and text messages passing through swedish networks, regardless of suspicion or not. Alexandersson published a classified document on his blog some time ago that had been leaked to him, that proved how FRA had been conducting illegal surveillance against innocent Swedes for more than ten years. It is this offense that has landed him in trouble and deemed him a "threat to national security." In other word, the messenger gets shot for whistleblowing about the illegal conduct of government agencies."

It's interesting that this comes so soon after Sweden passed a new law that lets the gov't tap all forms of communication. While you can understand the government's position, this definitely does appear to be punishing the whistleblower, which is all too common these days. Plus, of course, in attacking the guy who brought this info public, the Swedish government is all but guaranteeing that it gets that much more attention.

Filed Under: blogger, surveillance, sweden, whistle blowing

Massive Backlash Against Sweden's Internet Spying Bill

from the and-the-response? dept

We were surprised that politicians in Sweden approved a highly questionable bill that allowed rather widespread spying on all sorts of internet communications, despite widespread protests. Of course, now that the bill has become law, it seems that the protests are only getting much, much louder, going beyond the initial group of bloggers complaining to the mainstream press, and including large companies like Google and Telia moving servers out of Sweden to protect their users. Plus, nearby Belgium is threatening to sue, pointing out that Belgian citizens may be spied on without any apparent reason. Amazingly, the politicians who approved this bill are staying largely silent, despite the growing clamor about it. They originally tried to brush off the complaints from "spirited amateurs" who just need to just need to "calm down." But that doesn't seem to be working very well.

While it's unclear what will happen here, this is just the latest in a long line of recent efforts to bring together people to call attention to questionable political moves that politicians in the past have been able to sneak through with little public scrutiny. While there is always some risk of misdirecting the potential "mob mentality" that can arise in these situations, it should make politicians start to think twice before believing they can just sneak through any law.

Filed Under: backlash, surveillance, sweden, wiretapping

Sweden Approves Bill To Tap All Forms Of Communication

from the you-have-no-privacy-anywhere dept

Recently, we had mentioned a bill under consideration in Sweden that would open up all forms of communication to government monitoring, and Slashdot passes on the news that the bill has been narrowly approved. Apparently a few "safeguards" were added, though those were not detailed in the article. There's still plenty of controversy about this, but it seems like yet another law put in place by those who do not understand the law of unintended consequences. This law will be abused -- and the privacy of many people will be at risk. As for those who are actually planning terrorist attacks or whatever, they'll quickly migrate to more secure forms of communication (if they hadn't already).

Filed Under: surveillance, sweden, wiretapping

Blank Media 'Pirate Tax' Used To Fund New 'Pirate' Album

from the giving-back dept

Many countries have a "blank media levy," which is basically a tax on any kind of blank media on the assumption that some percentage of the blank media bought is used to make unauthorized copies of music. This is pretty ridiculous for a variety of reasons -- most notably the assumption that everyone is breaking the law and needs to pay a tax to a single industry that is unwilling (though not unable) to adjust its business model. However, in Sweden, one musician who started receiving his "royalties" from such a blank media levy was so offended by the concept that he decided the only way to pay the money back was to use the money to fund a new "Pirate Album" using samples and clips from other musicians, put together to make totally new songs -- and then release the whole thing on The Pirate Bay. He's using the album to highlight how ridiculous it is to forbid others from making new derivative creative works built on the works of others. If only more musicians would realize that all creativity is built on the works of those who came before, and pretending that the line stops with you is a mistake.

Filed Under: media levy, pirate tax, sampling, sweden

Sweden Considering Law To Let The Government Monitor All Forms Of Communications

from the doesn't-anyone-see-a-problem-with-this? dept

While Sweden may have some politicians who understand copyright issues, we're about to find out how well they understand privacy issues. The Swedish Parliament is considering a bill that would give the government rather broad powers to monitor all forms of communication, from telephone to email to fax. It would require telcos to install (at their own expense) equipment that would allow this widespread monitoring. As one critic of the bill notes, it's as if the supporters of the bill assume that government officials will only have the best of intentions when using such a system. I think we can all agree that this is not the case. Any such system will likely be abused. And, of course, as that same critic points out: "No one has shown this method to be effective, the criminals will always be one step ahead, and normal users will be caught in the middle."

Filed Under: surveillance, sweden, wiretapping

Warner Brothers Hires Lead Police Investigator On The Pirate Bay Lawsuit

from the conflicts-of-interest dept

Stephen Holthaus writes in to point us to a press release from The Pirate Bay about the fact that the chief police inspector who built the case against the Pirate Bay in Sweden has now been hired by Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, it seems like the folks at the Pirate Bay may be overplaying this news, implying that he was employed by Warner Brothers while conducting the investigation. Instead, the details show that he merely switched jobs last month. That's not as scandalous as the Pirate Bay folks make it out to be. While they do have a point in suggesting that some of his investigative work may have been part of the "job interview," it's not unreasonable that Warner Brothers would decide to hire someone who had the experience this investigator had. After all, the RIAA and all of the major record labels have a history of hiring former law enforcement officials (no matter how pointless their "anti-piracy" efforts are). So, while it may call into question the guy's objectivity during the trial, the guys at the Pirate Bay probably should tone down the moral outrage on this one.

Filed Under: investigation, pirate bay, sweden
Companies: pirate bay, warner brothers