A few years ago, we wrote about how Swedish ISP ePhone was refusing to hand over info on its subscribers who were accused of infringement, arguing that the country's IPRED (IP enforcement) law was in violation of EU law. That case bounced around the Swedish courts before hitting the EU Court of Justice, who recently decided that it is perfectly reasonable for ISPs to be ordered to hand over customer info -- if certain specific conditions are met to keep it in-line with the EU data retention rules.

While perhaps somewhat unfortunate from a privacy perspective, I don't actually find the ruling to be that surprising, and the impact is not all that far-reaching. It's pretty well-established that companies can be compelled to give up private info on people as part of a legal dispute. The larger concern should be over the standard of evidence required before such info is handed over (and also whether or not the accused has the opportunity to anonymously fight the release of info, should he or she believe that the release would be in error). The EU Court of Justice has had some good rulings lately, pushing back on copyright maximalism, but this particular ruling isn't really all that surprising, given the details. In fact, the full ruling suggests that it was tackling a very narrow question that really changes little. It doesn't even say that such info should always be given up -- just that, if certain conditions are met, it could be legal to require ISPs to hand it over.

Peter Sunde, a very thoughtful and insightful guy, who's been completely demonized by the entertainment industry for his role with The Pirate Bay, has written up an interesting piece for Wired UK where he not only goes over highly questionable issues related to his conviction, but raises a larger question about why we, as a society, allow one obsolete industry to have so much power in government and policy issues. The connections between those involved in his prosecution and the entertainment industry are simply too numerous to be fair:

The Swedish prosecutor sent out a memo in 2006 saying that TPB wasn't guilty of "main" crimes -- at best it aids and abets (he also mentioned that the people running TPB were very clever). But Hollywood was not happy with this and forced the Swedish Minister of Justice to visit the White House and talk about it. The United States told Sweden that if they didn't get rid of the site, they would not be allowed to trade with the US!

The minister (illegally) told the prosecutor what had happened which forced him to raid TPB -- only a few weeks after sending out that memo about how legal it was.

Evidently, Warner Brothers felt that the investigation was taking too long. The studio contacted the police officer in charge of the investigation (one person that worked mostly by himself) and before I had even been questioned by him, he interviewed for a job with Warner Brothers.

When we found out he'd been hired (by him changing his employer from "Polisen" to "Warner Bros" on Facebook) the reply we got was that it was proof that Swedish IT police are of such high caliber that even the big US companies would hire them.

I got promoted from "witness" to "suspect" a week after the job was promised.

During the trial it turned out that the judge was the chairman for the Swedish pro-copyright society, one lay judge ran a record company, another one was formerly the chairman for the songwriter lobby organisation. I could go on.

It's stories like this that raise significant questions about the prosecution. Even if you believe that Sunde was guilty of what he was charged with, I would think you should be able to admit that the list of things above should not have happened under any circumstance. When you read that... and then realize that the guy leading the prosecution against Megaupload for the US DOJ used to work for the industry as an "anti-piracy" exec -- you see the same pattern happening again and again. People who have too close connections to industry are making decisions on these issues designed to protect their industries, rather than looking at the actual impact on society and the economy. That's a pretty big problem, and shows how "regulatory capture" can sometimes become "judicial capture" as well.

Despite significant questions raised on some of the specifics of the lower court's ruling against the folks behind The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Supreme Court announced today that it would not hear the appeal in the case. In theory, this means that the four individuals may face jail time pretty soon -- though, as Torrentfreak notes, it's pretty standard in Sweden for cases that have gone on this long to take 12 months off of the sentences, which might mean no actual jail time. One of those still facing jail time, Peter Sunde, who has since gone on to create Flattr (a service that has helped many, many content creators -- including us at Techdirt -- make lots of money), has written up a post highlighting just how questionable the entire process has been:

We’re not surprised by this. The previous court cases has been filled of corruption. From having the minister of justice pressured by the US to illegally make a case of TPB, through the police officer responsible for the investigation (Jim Keyzer) “just happened” to get a job at Warner Brothers the weeks before I myself got promoted from a witness to a suspect, to the judges in the court cases being either board members, or in one case the actual chairman of the board, for the swedish pro-copyright society, it was clear to us that the supreme court – where many of the judges make a lot of money on their own copyrights – would be hard to persuade to take the case. Even though most of the public would want the case tested there. Even though it’s one of the most important cases for all of the EU.

Another view worth reading comes from my friend Martin Thornkvist, who is from Sweden, and ran a record label in Sweden and has worked with a bunch of Swedish artists. You might think he'd be against The Pirate Bay, but he's quite upset about this ruling, noting that it makes him both sad and angry. He points out that it makes him sad, because the entertainment industry is still fighting their fans. He notes that when they stop fighting their fans -- as the record labels finally realized with Spotify -- piracy almost disappears. Though he also points out that without The Pirate Bay, Spotify almost certainly would not have existed. And that's the part that makes him angry. Despite helping to push the world forward, the thanks they get is jail time:

I’m angry because the founders of The Pirate Bay don't get the recognition they deserve. For pushing the development of new services further and forcing the media industries to distribute their content in a manner that people want, (ie not plastic discs and windows policies).

Meanwhile, the site itself has moved to a .se domain, assuming that the US government is likely to seize their .org before too long. Because, you know, that'll really stop file sharing...

In looking over Eric Goldman's excellent "linkwrap" of a bunch of recent SOPA/PIPA stories, it pointed me to a News.com article from last month, about how SOPA was really about going after one single site: The Pirate Bay. I've actually heard this repeatedly -- and from folks heavily involved with the bill itself. The whole point of the bill is to try to take down The Pirate Bay. Now, we can argue back and forth about how pointless that is... but there's something else that seems important:

As written, nothing in SOPA can touch ThePirateBay's main website, ThePirateBay.org

That's because the current version of the bill excludes any .com or .org. from being a target (though, they can be required to take action against other sites). This has caused some confusion, mainly because of the changes between the original version of SOPA and the "manager's amendment," which is the current version of the bill. The manager's amendment makes you jump through some hoops to understand this, but the key point is that a "U.S.-directed site" is defined to be a "foreign internet site" in the bill (in the original SOPA, a U.S.-directed site could be any site). Then, a foreign domain name is listed as not a "domestic domain" (keep hopping!), which itself is defined as "a domain name that is registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry or other domain name registration authority that is located within a judicial district of the United States."

This means that all .com or .org domains are domestic, since they're assigned by a registry that is located within the US (for those confused, a domain registry is a company like VeriSign that runs the master database of all domains under a single top level domain). The thinking here is that (as ICE and the Justice Department have claimed) any website that has a TLD that is controlled by an American company can be dealt with via existing laws, such as the one that ICE uses to seize websites. .com is run by VeriSign, which is based in the US. And .org is run by the Public Interest Registry, which is also based in the US (Virginia, specifically).

That means that thepiratebay.org -- the main website for The Pirate Bay... is actually immune from the two key parts of SOPA (sections 102 and 103, since both clearly state that they only cover "U.S.-directed sites").

So, based on the law as written... The Pirate Bay is immune from SOPA (though, potentially not from ICE just seizing the domain). It's worth noting the same is true of both RapidShare and Megaupload -- two other sites frequently cited by the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce as the types of awful, evil sites that these bills are targeted to take down. In fact, remember that "53 billion visits to rogue websites" claim that the US Chamber of Commerce loves to repeat? Nearly half of that is from RapidShare and Megavideo/Megaupload. And yet, those sites are clearly excluded from SOPA based on the definitions. So why would they still be trotting them out as examples?

Last year, we poked some fun at the folks in Sweden who were trying to create the religion of Kopimism, in which "copying and the sharing of information is the most beautiful thing in the world." While there were some bureaucratic problems, and at least one rejection of the plan, it turns out that at the very end of the year, Kopimism became an officially recognized religion in Sweden.

"Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution", says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism.

Of course, while some are claiming that this may effectively legalize file sharing for members of the "religion," I doubt that's accurate. There are plenty of religious practices that are deemed illegal. It can create some legal fights, but it certainly doesn't automatically legalize all religious practices (think: bigamy, human sacrifice, etc.).

To be honest, while this is amusing and does a nice of job of pointing out the ridiculousness of trying to clamp down on culture, I'm not sure it does much beyond being a little publicity stunt. For those who think stronger copyright laws are a good thing, this certainly isn't going to convince them of the error of their ways, and will simply reaffirm the belief that those opposing the excessive nature of copyright laws today are not to be taken seriously. Of course, the flip side of that argument is that today's copyright laws are a complete joke themselves, so perhaps the most reasonable response is to make an even bigger joke out of them...

MPAA boss Chris Dodd has apparently resorted to out and out lying as he makes a big push to get SOPA passed. On Tuesday he spoke at an event for the Center for American Progress, in which he pulled out his usual "woe is us" story about why Congress needs to pass SOPA/PIPA. However, Dodd, once again, appears to be factually challenged. For example, during questions, Dodd claimed:

“The entire film industry of Spain, Egypt and Sweden are gone.”

James Losey thought this was odd, given that he was familiar with some films coming out of Sweden:

Sweden actually produces a number of high quality films. Released in 2008, the vampire flim Let The Right One In received critical acclaim here in the U.S. Additionally, all three best-selling books of the Millennium Trilogy are Swedish films and 2009’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was quite successful. The film made a modest $10 million in the U.S. and a respectable $104 million worldwide.

Considering the budget for the U.S. remake of the film is $100 million - as much as the original film has earned to date - perhaps Dodd meant that the film does not count until Hollywood gets a chance to remake it. Ironically, the U.S. remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was shot in Sweden.

Chris Dodd was correct to say that film is an international industry, but he was wrong to say that the Swedish film industry has disappeared and misleading to imply that all Hollywood jobs are American jobs. At least for this Hollywood production, Sweden has a lot to gain.

Of course, there's also plenty of actual data on the film industries around the world, so I figured that perhaps I'd dig into the numbers a bit more than James' excellent debunking, just to see if there was any truth to Dodd's bizarre claims. Thankfully, the folks at the UN actually track this data. On top of that, the awesome chartsbin has laid out how many films every country produces in a neat interactive map:
via chartsbin.com Let's start with Sweden. I think the chart above is a bit out of date. Looking through the UN data, it shows that Sweden produced 41 feature films in 2009 -- actually a significant increase from 2007 and 2008. No sign that the industry is "gone" there. But perhaps it used to be much bigger? Back to the UN we go... to learn that in 1995, Sweden made 17 feature films. Gone? Sorry, the facts say Dodd is lying.

Okay. Let's look at Egypt. The latest UN data shows Egypt produced 46 films in 2009. Not bad. But perhaps it used to be much bigger? Oh, whoops. 1996 (the earliest data available) shows that Egypt produced 24 films that year. So it looks like the industry has about doubled. Gone? Oops. Dodd is lying.

Finally, let's check out Spain. Spain has been a favorite target of both the MPAA and the RIAA lately. They like to claim that "lax" copyright laws there have decimated the entertainment industry in that country. Once again, the facts show a totally different story. If you look at the map above, you can see that Spain is actually a movie making powerhouse in Europe, and the data shows that it just keeps making more and more movies. In 2009 it produced 186 movies, and the trend has been directly up. In 2008 it was 173. Go back to 2005 and it was 142. Go back to 1999? 82 films. Back to '95? 59 films. Yeah, film production has more than tripled in the last fifteen years.

Sorry, but Chris Dodd is flat out lying.

Why do the public and politicians let him get away with blatant falsehoods as he seeks to push a law that will set up an American censorship system? The facts say that he's full of it... and yet we're supposed to trust him that this bill is needed?

It's an argument often made here at Techdirt: file sharers aren't always just leeches on the underside of content creators. Very often, they are true music fans constantly patrolling the cutting edge of music. A study released by Sweden's Internet Infrastructure Foundation shows that, among other things, Spotify is certifiably big with younger internet users (85% of those aged 16-25 use Spotify) along with some other interesting statistics:

In Sweden, Spotify usage is even running ahead of use of community sites, IM, blog reading and game playing.

One in three people (37%) listen to Spotify during a month, which is twice as many as file sharing (18%) and many more than those who buy a CD (9%) or pay per song (4%) during a month.

Spotify's enormous market share no doubt is related to it being a truly "native" application, and while it is definitely more popular with the under-25 crowd, it still is popular enough to supplant other internet activities including "use of community sites, IM, blog reading and game playing."

Of course, Sweden also gave the world the Pirate Party, so it's also unsurprising that file sharing is bigger than ever, with 21% of those surveyed indicating that they share on a regular basis. But it's not all bad news for the music industry. On top of near universal adoption of fully legal streaming via Spotify, the report also indicates that file sharers are on par with non-file sharers when it comes to purchasing music:

"If we compare file-sharers with those who do not share files, we find that there is no difference in how often they buy CDs. However, a larger percentage of file sharers pay to download individual songs than those who do not share files."

In fact, it looks as if file sharers may be purchasing more music than their non-sharing counterparts. In fact, despite the fact that the Pirate Party originated in Sweden, the outlook for Sweden's recording industry has been on the upswing since 2009, when it posted a 10.2% gain. Most of this was due to streaming services, which accounted for nearly 50% of Swedish music revenue.

The Swedish arm of the IFPI also credits new legislation with the reduction in file sharing, along with the new streaming services. According to its numbers, 6 out 10 file sharers either stopped or reduced their sharing in response to the legislation.

No matter which angle you view this from, using the IFPI's numbers or the Internet Infrastructure Foundation's, it's obvious that well-crafted legal streaming services are taking a bite out of file sharing. If the Big Four Three labels and the major studios want to continue to convert the next generation of customers to legal services, they need to get behind services like Spotify, Netflix, etc. rather than cripple them by withholding content or pricing themselves out of the market. It's also nice to see another set of numbers reaffirming the fact that many file sharers are still buying music, despite having access to cheaper, free-er options.

For several months leading up to this November's Swedish Gamex show, the Pirate Party of Sweden had been pursued by the show's sales staff to attend. Then the week prior to the show's opening, the Pirate Party was told it wasn't welcome.

"On Tuesday afternoon, I called a representative of the show with a few simple practical questions, but she seemed generally stressed out and said something vague about the show and not wanting any problems before she hung up," says Troberg.

I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.

Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict, and the party's presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work "could be perceived as criminal."

Just what those criminal works were, no one was able to explain. The details of the unvite were severely lacking. Troberg had tried to explain that the Pirate Party wants to change existing laws through the legal process and that could not conceivably be considered "criminal". Unfortunately, no one was listening.

Frankly, it is a sad day when a political voice is silenced for no reason other than a few legacy industries not liking the message. We have already learned that here in the US, the supposed bastion of Democracy, is refusing to hear all sides of legal issues. It really comes as no surprise to find that the same people would want to block access to those same dissenting ideas. Do we really think things will get better as we move more and more toward stronger copyright? Will the next step after SOPA be the silencing of any speech that can be perceived as "pro-piracy"? I certainly hope not.

Earlier this month, an anti-piracy tracking company traced the origin of some Swedish films found on The Pirate Bay... all the way back to the Swedish Film Institute. After some embarrassment and further investigation, the Institute is now insisting that it can't find any evidence that someone there leaked the films... and they're complaining that the anti-piracy firm DoubleTrace "aren’t... forthcoming with their evidence." Shocking, I'm sure. But the larger point is that the Swedish Film Institute is pointing out that the IP address alone does not identify the user. This is, of course, entirely true. It's what tons of people have been pointing out for years, and what the film industry (and the recording industry) has often mocked as being a silly excuse. So I'm in agreement with TorrentFreak when it says:

The important thing here is that when it comes to the allegations against SFI, and the refusal of the anti-piracy company to make their ‘evidence’ available, SFI should be given the benefit of the doubt.

But, unlike the hundreds of thousands of other ISP account holders around the world who receive letters claiming that they illegally uploaded a movie or song and therefore should pay compensation or, increasingly, be disconnected from the Internet, they are treated more respectfully, quite simply because of who they are.

An IP address is not a person, and unless anti-piracy companies want to let their ‘evidence’ be seen and tested in public, perhaps it’s better if they keep their allegations to themselves.

People who talk about copyright policy and some of the things going on around the globe, often talk about how various governments' decisions appear to be direct-on-order from Hollywood and the legacy US entertainment industry. And, to some extent, that sounds crazy conspiratorial to think that Hollywood and the MPAA would be so involved in domestic policies that impact innovation around the globe. But as some are noting, this "nutjobby" theory is now actually looking like clear fact, at least in the case of Sweden. This has all come out thanks to the State Department cable dumps, which basically show that pretty much Sweden's entire strategy in pushing through bad laws that take away civil rights and privacy online were direct from the US entertainment industry, weakly laundered through the US State Department, who merely passed along Hollywood's orders to the Swedish government... backed up with the threat of trade sanctions. What's really amazing is that the diplomats in the State Department never seem to consider whether or not they should be protecting a few big entertainment companies, rather than the best interests of citizens around the globe. It's such a short term view, as well, because wiping out civil rights elsewhere will come back to haunt the US. But as long as the MPAA's members keep getting paid...