Techdirt. Stories filed under "sweden"

Why The Tech Industry Should Be Furious About NSA's Over Surveillance

Mike Masnick — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:57:52 PDT

We've already pointed out how some tech companies, including Yahoo!, Google and Twitter have fought back against overly intrusive attempts at government surveillance (though, they often lose), and there's been some discussion about how these companies are fighting to protect their users' privacy. There's a further reason why all of the tech industry should be speaking out against NSA surveillance. Beyond just being the right thing to do to protect your users' privacy, it's likely that it also improves their bottom line. We're already starting to see the fallout from the revelations of the NSA being able to scoop up data from various tech companies, and it's going to be harmful to their revenue.

Right after the initial NSA leaks came out, David Kirkpatrick quickly wrote about how the Obama administration appeared to be sacrificing the US internet industry in a weak attempt at trying to increase security (despite no evidence that it's actually done that). The global implications of the NSA spying aren't hard to figure out -- especially when looking at how many people around the globe use these services:

It's quite possible that Obama has undermined the effectiveness and attractiveness for political speech and protest of what have been the most potent communications tools for activism in history. Political and commercial opponents of the U.S. in every country as well as governments themselves will likely alert citizens to the potential that U.S. companies could pass their info back to US authorities. This will seriously conflict with these companies' aim to maintain their platforms as neutral global environments. It could dramatically slow their global growth.

[....] Do we really want to impair such powerful tools for spreading dialogue, political discourse, and U.S. values? Is it worthwhile to impair the extraordinary financial and commercial success of these great flagships for the American economy? Does Obama want Facebook et al just to be seen as tools of American power? That is certainly not the way the average user in Bolivia sees it. They see it as a tool of their own personal power, and they don't want governments interfering with that.

Further, he points out, this will likely drive users to foreign corporations, rather than American ones, as they strive to protect their privacy:

Don't believe there are not alternatives to the U.S. Net collossi. Companies worldwide are already relentlessly working on alternatives. The second largest search service worldwide is China's Baidu, with more than 8% of searches globally at the end of last year according to ComScore. Russia's Yandex is at close to 3%, more than Microsoft's own search product. In social networking, China's Tencent has had a stunning recent success with its WeChat product, which by some counts has over 450 million users worldwide, including many tens of millions outside China. Most major Chinese Internet companies have global ambitions.

Kirkpatrick was focusing more on the consumer side, and the importance of using these tools for open and free communication. But the same issues clearly impact the business side as well. As CFO.com recently, noted, companies are gong to be a lot less trusting of US-based cloud computing companies because of these leaks. Exposing the key info to governments is a real risk:

At the end of the day, if you have mission critical data and information in the possession of a third party service provider - Cloud or otherwise – the assumption that your provider will be in full control over their environments may be drawn unto doubt. As a CFO, it is prudent to consider your next steps very carefully to ensure that your intellectual property and trade secrets do not become the assets of others.

Given the suggestions that the US government has used this surveillance as a form of economic espionage, these fears seem quite well grounded. Foreign companies are now going to be a lot less interested in using the services of American companies.

And this isn't a theoretical problem either. Sweden just issued a ruling that bars the public sector from using Google's cloud services. Meanwhile, India is already telling companies that they need to setup local servers rather than make use of US servers if they want to do business in India.

This issue is important on a number of levels, but technology companies, who rely on a global audience, should be standing up and loudly protesting the NSA's broad surveillance, because it's going to hit their bottom lines hard. The administration and the NSA are directly making it difficult for US internet companies to be global enterprises, at a time when that's exactly what we need. Is it really worth sacrificing one of the few growing and dynamic industries that the US has these days, based on some vague and unproven claims that the government "needs" all of this info? It seems like a massive cost for almost no benefit.

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Swedish Prosecutor Claims Registrar Of .se Domains An 'Accomplice' In Infringement Because Of Pirate Bay Domain

Mike Masnick — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:59:09 PDT

The concepts of secondary liability seem to go right out the window (along with basic rationality) when it comes to certain people freaking out about copyright infringement. The latest is that Swedish prosecutors are apparently threatening the registrar that manages the .se domain with some form of charges because the Pirate Bay (briefly) ran on an .se domain.

“The legal system has not been able to shut down the service after the previous guilty verdict against TPB,” IIS Chief of Communications Maria Ekelund told TorrentFreak.

“Therefore the prosecutor has opened a new case against both the domain holders and .SE. The prosecutor is accusing .SE of assisting TPB who are assisting others to commit copyright infringement.”

[....] “In the eyes of the prosecutor, .SE’s catalogue function has become some form of accomplice to criminal activity, a perspective that is unique in Europe as far as I know,” says IIS CEO Danny Aerts.

That seems fairly ridiculous when you begin to think about the implications of it. This is so far removed from any actual infringement, it's incredible. This is the scorched earth approach to dealing with copyright infringement, with no care at all for any possible collateral damage in holding totally unrelated parties, who happened to be used by a service provider who, in turn, happened to be used by some people to possibly infringe, as liable for that infringement.

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Swedish BitTorrent User Accused Of Sharing Beyonce Album, Hit By $233,000 Lawsuit From Sony

Glyn Moody — Tue, 5 Mar 2013 03:51:06 PST

Lots of news regarding file-sharing has come out of Sweden over the years, but as TorrentFreak points out, until now, there's never been a prosecution for alleged unauthorized sharing using BitTorrent. The current case is unusual in a number of other respects:

The claim is that on June 8, 2011 a man from Gothenburg shared Beyonce's album '4' in advance of its June 24 commercial release date. The case was made even more interesting following the revelation that the 47-year-old is a music industry worker.

Because the album in question was a pre-release version, the Swedish prosecutor says he believes a heavy punishment could be handed down. As if that weren't enough, the label concerned -- Sony Music Entertainment -- has said that it intends to seek damages in a civil case: In a submission to the Gothenburg District Court, Sony said that its business has been negatively affected by the leak on a number of fronts. The label says it has suffered damage to its marketing strategy, sales revenues and has also incurred additional costs. Sony adds that its relationship with Beyonce has been damaged and the artist's reputation hurt.

For all of the above Sony say they will claim 1.5 million kronor from the man, which is roughly $233,000.
But as various studies have suggested, rather than hurting Sony, it's just as likely that this leak helped make the official launch even more successful than it would have been. Similarly, it's hard to see how Beyonce's reputation was hurt by such a leak, since the more passionate the fan, the more pleased they would be by obtaining early access.

Anyway, the figure of $233,000 seems plucked out of the air, as is so often the case in this evidence-free area. Or perhaps it was inspired by the most famous damages imposed for unauthorized sharing of music, those against Jammie Thomas, who was fined $222,000 in her first trial (which then went up to $1,920,000 in the second trial, and to $1,500,000 in the third trial.) The fact that her sorry saga is still dragging on is an indication that even if Sony wins the current action, there are likely to be appeals against such a disproportionate and blatantly punitive figure.

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Swedish Pirate Party Stops Hosting The Pirate Bay, But Intends To Sue Anti-Piracy Organization For Unlawful Coercion

Mike Masnick — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:22:00 PST

Last week, we wrote about how the Hollywood-backed Swedish anti-piracy organization, "Rights Alliance," was threatening the Swedish Pirate Party with criminal charges for hosting The Pirate Bay. It didn't stop there, however, also going after some of the connectivity firms further up the chain, moving beyond mere secondary liability (TPB) and tertiary liability (the Pirate Party) to a ridiculous and astounding quaternary liability for a company providing connectivity to the Swedish Pirate Party, which hosted a part of The Pirate Bay, which is used by some individuals to infringe on copyright. Still, getting involved in any such legal fight is difficult, so The Pirate Bay and the Swedish Pirate Party have moved The Pirate Bay's connectivity yet again, such that it is hosted by the Spanish Pirate Party and the Norwegian Pirate Party. Spain and Norway are two countries that have resisted attempts to censor sites like The Pirate Bay.

However, even if the Swedish Pirate Party is no longer hosting the site, it is clear that it is not happy about this turn of events, and suggests it is planning legal action for "unlawful coercion" against the Rights Alliance:

"The Pirate Party has a board meeting in a few days. I will recommend the board to file a police report against the Rights Alliance for unlawful coercion," Troberg says. "It is important to determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others."

Given how law enforcement has treated The Pirate Party so far in Sweden, it seems unlikely that much would come from such an action, but that just highlights a big part of the problem.

In the meantime, this continues to show the ridiculous whac-a-mole nature of the entertainment industry's war on TPB. The site isn't actually "hosted" by these other Pirate Parties, but rather it is widely distributed. However, there does need to be a few key places where it connects clearly, so that people can find it. And that, it appears, is the role that these Pirate Parties will take on. And, while that's happening, it would appear that some other Pirate Parties around the globe are gearing up to be able to take on similar duties, should it be needed.

All this for one ancient site that hasn't changed or innovated much in years. It's kind of incredible. Peter Sunde, The Pirate Bay's former spokesperson has insisted, for years, that The Pirate Bay should be dead already, not because of Hollywood's continued attempts to take it down, but because other sites should have innovated far beyond what TPB has offered. Of course, I'd argue that Hollywood itself has had multiple opportunities to do that innovation, but instead has focused on attacking TPB and trying to cut off what consumers want, rather than figuring out ways to help provide the public what they want. It's been a decade long case study in exactly how not to deal with disruptive innovation. And this story shows no signs of changing any time soon.

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Anti-Piracy Group Threatens Pirate Party With Criminal Charges For Hosting The Pirate Bay

Mike Masnick — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:52:29 PST

For a few years now, the Swedish Pirate Party has provided some hosting services to The Pirate Bay, arguing that attempts to take it down would amount to political censorship. It appears that theory may finally get tested. According to TorrentFreak, the Swedish anti-piracy group "Rights Alliance" has sent a letter threatening to take legal action against the Pirate Party if it does not stop hosting the site.

In the letter, which also targets bandwidth provider Serious Tubes, the group cites last year’s Supreme Court rejection of The Pirate Bay case as a precedent that hosting providers can be held liable for providing Internet services to file-sharing sites.

“With that decision, it was finally determined that not only those who operate illegal file sharing services, but also the Internet providers to such illegal services are committing a criminal act,” the Rights Alliance writes.

The party is figuring out how to respond. They note that, given how the original TPB trial played out, even if they believe they're strongly in the right under the law, the courts seem to toss all logic out the window as soon as someone mentions "but, piracy!" So they are reasonably concerned that a fair trial on the merits of the case would not come from this. However, it would certainly be an interesting trial, and might certainly call more attention to the issues that go beyond just the initial TPB trial. This is clearly getting into significant questions about secondary liability, especially over products that have significant non-infringing uses, and where the site itself is not hosting any of the infringing content. The whole thing remains a witch hunt by people who don't seem to understand the technology. A lawsuit against a political party may serve to highlight just how crazy this witch hunt has become.

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HBO's One Attempt At A Standalone Digital Service Sucks

Leigh Beadon — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 08:13:00 PST

In my recent post about the fragmentation of online television, there were a few aspects and details I left out because they seemed worthy of a separate, closer look. One is the oft-forgotten fact that HBO does indeed offer one lonely digital-only subscription service... to customers in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. That program was announced last year and seemed like a promising step for the notoriously cable-dedicated HBO—but the customer feedback is coming in, and the results are not encouraging:

A list of complaints include HD content is (was?) only available on Samsung Smart TVs, meaning you were only given SD quality when streaming through your computer or any other device. Same goes for surround sound and 5.1, which are only available through the Samsung TV app. Other complaints I've heard includes buffering problems with the Widevine plugin (at standard definition), and lack of Apple Airplay support. The product is available as iOS and Android apps, but Xbox and Playstation apps are still said to be under development.

The online UI is nice to look at but was poorly designed; initially HBO only allowed you to search for TV shows by alphabetical letter. The results were underwhelming and exaggerated how little content HBO was offering.

...

It should be noted that you're not given access to the full back catalogue, several classics are not available such as Deadwood and Oz, which apparently have some copyright restrictions.

Some might claim it's still a good deal at €9.95/month, considering most people can't access any of these shows legally without a full cable package. Of course, Netflix only costs €7.99/month in the region, and has a larger selection, which makes the price a little less impressive. Then there's the fact that HBO initially promised much, much more:

Every episode of all HBO series available online

All new episodes available within 24 hours of the US premiere, with local subtitles (dubbing is rare in the Nordics, foreign TV shows and movies are usually subtitled in the local language)

Works on practically all devices: smartphones, tablets (Android, iOS), computers (Windows, Linux, Mac), video game consoles (PS3, Xbox), Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, and Sonera IPTV service

Full HD 1080p picture quality

Surround sound

Compare that to the list of complaints, and you realize HBO isn't doing a great job of living up to the expectations it created. Then there's the other truly insane catch: customers are locked into a 12-month contract, after which they must give 3-month notice for cancellation. Yeah. Moreover, the terms stated that simply logging into the service once waives your ability to cancel it because you're not satisfied (despite using the service being the only way to know if you are satisfied). After facing significant criticism for this move, HBO backtracked and offered subscribers the chance to use the service until the end of this month without a longer commitment—but only those subscribers who also signed up for the HBO Nordic newsletter. Classy.

It's no real surprise that HBO's first attempt at a standalone online offering is a disaster. HBO approaches the internet with extreme trepidation, but revolution requires gusto. Digital distribution—especially when it comes to competing with piracy—is a go big or go home endeavor. Or... go halfway, and watch your customers go elsewhere.

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PayPal Freezes Funds Of Famed Swedish ISP Twice

Mike Masnick — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 03:44:57 PST

I have to admit I'm a bit surprised they relied on PayPal in the first place, but PRQ, the famed Swedish ISP created by two of the guys behind The Pirate Bay, and which (as you might imagine) was known for standing up for its users against legal threats, has had its PayPal account frozen twice for unclear reasons. Apparently PayPal had been working just fine for three years, and then suddenly the account was frozen. Employees contacted PayPal, who told PRQ to just set up a second PayPal account for users to use until they sorted things out, and then they'd merge the two accounts. Instead... they froze the second one as well. Of course, if you follow stories involving PayPal, this is hardly uncommon. It seems to happen all too frequently with many sites that use it. PayPal works hard to try to minimize fraud, but it seems to have a super itchy trigger finger to completely shut down sites with no warning and little process for appeal. Relying on it as a sole payment offering seems to be asking for trouble.

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Swedish Appeals Court Says Web Designer Is Responsible For Copyright Infringement On StudentBay

Mike Masnick — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:51:56 PST

It's really amazing how fearful people who don't understand technology are of anyone who has any connection to file sharing, no matter how remote. Over in Sweden, an appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling absolving a web designer of any liability for designing the StudentBay -- a torrenting site for educational material -- and decided that because he designed the site, he must be liable for what users did on the site. This goes beyond secondary liability into some sort of weird tertiary liability. It already seems odd to blame the operators of the site for actions taken by its users, but now we're holding the graphic designers responsible too? It's a sort of scorched earth policy from people who don't seem to understand how the internet works, and who just seem to want to "destroy everything." Of course, the end result is that anyone with half a clue just thinks the judicial system is a complete joke. That doesn't seem useful for anyone.

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Swedish Pirate Party Sues Banks For 'Discriminating' Against Wikileaks

Mike Masnick — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 03:03:05 PST

Earlier this year, we noted that a court in Iceland had ordered Visa to start accepting donations to Wikileaks again. There's been some cat and mouse games as the various payment processors, under pressure from US officials, cut off the site a while back. The latest, however is that the Swedish Pirate Party itself has pressed charges against Swedish banks for discriminating against Wikileaks.

The charges were filed eariler today with the Swedish Finansinspektionen, the authority which oversees bank licenses and abuse of position. This follows an earlier initiative from the Pirate Party to regulate credit card companies on the European level in order to deny them the ability to determine who gets to trade and who doesn’t.

“The blockade is a serious threat against the freedoms of opinion and expression”, says the Pirate Party’s Erik Lönroth, who has been preparing the formal charges. “It must not be up to the individual payment provider to determine which organizations are eligible for donations. At the same time, these charges will bring clarity as to whether the bank regulations of today are sufficient, or if regulations need to be tightened to protect freedom of expression.”

I don't quite understand Swedish law, so it's not entirely clear to me how the Swedish Pirate Party has standing in which to bring these charges. However, it looks like "charges" basically mean asking the relevant regulatory body to investigate whether the actions are legal. Given how much power a very small number of payment companies have over what can and cannot accept money online, it would be nice for there to be some rules against discrimination. Of course, an even better answer would be to create more services that can accept payment...

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New Ruling In Sweden Suggests Ruling In Pirate Bay Case May Be Re-Examined For Bias

Mike Masnick — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:44:00 PDT

A few years ago, we were surprised to find out that the judge in The Pirate Bay case in Sweden had ties to the copyright lobby pushing the case. There were additional issues, after it was discovered that at least one of the lay judges (sort of like a jury, but not quite) on the case was employed by Spotify, and might have business reasons not to be completely objective. Even more ridiculous? When the court reviewed whether or not there was bias, the original judge making the review ended up having to be removed... for bias, after it came out at she, too, was involved with the same pro-copyright groups that the original judge was associated with. While the courts eventually said there was no meaningful bias, a new high profile case in Sweden may reopen the issue.

The full details aren't that important, but the case involved some gang warfare. It turned out that one of the lay judges on the trial had been a member of the local police board while the issues in the case were happening -- and because of that, there needs to be a retrial. In that case, the bias actually seems much less evident than with TPB. And, not surprisingly, TPB is using this to file for a re-evaluation of the bias questions in the original Pirate Bay trial.

It certainly seems like they have a much stronger case for judiciary bias than the case where bias was officially found. Makes you wonder why they didn't find bias originally. Perhaps it's yet another case of "file sharing law" vs. "real law", with officials magically viewing the world through different lenses whenever a "copyright infringement" case comes before them.

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Sweden Failed To License Photographs On New Currency

Mike Masnick — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:01:54 PDT

Ah, copyright. Back in April, the Swedish central bank announced and showed off its new banknotes, including portraits of "important Swedish personalities." There's just one problem: it failed to license the images before announcing the notes. The bank insists that it wants to license the photos, but by showing off the new bills with the images prior to licensing them, it's put itself in a not-so-great bargaining position, and it appears the photographers are using that to demand much higher prices than the bank was expecting. So far, only two images have been cleared -- even though it's been five months since the new bills were announced and shown off. Yes, the bank can (and most likely will) find other photos, but it's going to involve redesigning many of the bills in question. Of course, this is the same Sweden where the government has been trying hard to crack down on infringement (at the urging of the US). Yet it's own central bank is going with a "use first, license later" approach?

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Did The US & Sweden Team Up To Get Cambodia To Arrest The Pirate Bay Founder... About Something Unrelated To TPB?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 6 Sep 2012 01:41:22 PDT

Over the weekend, when the news broke that Gottfrid Svartholm, the founder of The Pirate Bay, had been arrested in Cambodia, I didn't think too much of it. It was well known that he was in that part of the world, and you had to figure that sooner or later he'd be tracked down. Despite claims that he was too ill to show up for the appeal of The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden, many questioned if he was just hiding out in southeast Asia to avoid any potential jail time. Over the past few days, some additional info has come out that is certainly raising eyebrows, even if the evidence is circumstantial. And the biggest bit of news may be that his arrest might not even be about The Pirate Bay.

Either way, let's start with the basics. First, Cambodia has admitted that it will be deporting Svartholm, even though there's no extradition treaty between Cambodia and Sweden. Of course, deportation and extradition are not the same thing, and you don't need an extradition treaty to deport someone. But it is still notable.

But then there are two bits of news that seem like quite the coincidence. First up: Ron Kirk, the US Trade Rep, and the main US government official responsible for ACTA and the TPP... just happened to be in Cambodia the very day that Svartholdm was arrested... and, the very next day, Sweden just happened to announce a $59 million "aid package" with Cambodia. Is it any wonder that some are asking if Sweden basically paid Cambodia to arrest Svartholm... and if the US had a helping hand in all of this?

At this point, it certainly could all be a coincidence -- which is the direction I tend to lean for the time being -- but it is quite a coincidence. We already know that the US government has been heavily involved in getting Sweden to put The Pirate Bay on trial. In fact, the US's deep involvement in Swedish copyright laws and policies has been a source of friction with some Swedish officials. Furthermore, Ron Kirk's entire role is about negotiating agreements and treaties between countries -- so the fact that a Swedish/Cambodia deal came together just as he was in the country? It certainly wouldn't be shocking to find out that he had a hand in making the deal happen.

But, let's add in one more bit of info. Svartholm's fellow TPB'er Peter Sunde is claiming that the arrest is not related to The Pirate Bay, though other reports claim otherwise. Some other friends are also insisting that it's not related to TPB, though I will admit to being skeptical. More surprising, perhaps, is Sunde's suggestion that the arrest may actually have more to do with Wikileaks, which Svartholm's company used to host, rather than The Pirate Bay... Of course, if that's the case, it doesn't discount the involvement of the US or Sweden (and might only reinforce it). Though it does add an element of... oddity to the whole situation.

Of course, even if the arrest is about something else, if he does end up being shipped back to Sweden, the TPB issue won't just go away. And it's likely that whoever is involved -- whether it's these other two governments or not -- recognizes that as well.

Update: TorrentFreak is now reporting that the arrest is about a tax hack:

Svartholm’s arrest is related to a hacking operation that may date back to 2010.

The hack targeted Swedish IT company Logica, which supplies services to the Swedish tax office. Earlier this year the hack made the headlines when the tax numbers of 9,000 Swedes leaked online.

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Pirate Party ALMOST Ejected From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles After Vendors Selling Waffles Complained (Updated)

Mike Masnick — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 05:02:10 PDT

Update: Correcting this post as I misread how the situation ended, in which they were allowed to stay after they were almost ejected. I apologize for that wholeheartedly. The "tweets" in the middle were a little confusing and I read them to mean that they had been removed, but as many people in the comments pointed out that was incorrect. I'm sorry for the error, and, as always, strive to fix any such mistakes as quickly as possible.

One of the key things that we find in story after story around here is that those who have a particular business model seem to think that any disruption of that business model must be illegal (or, worse, immoral). Sometimes instances of this come from strange places. For example, the Swedish Young Pirates officially set up shop at a local municipal festival, where they had permission to make food and give it to attendees. They started making waffles and giving them away for free. What they didn't realize was that others at the festival were trying to sell waffles, and they complained. The end result? Almost bye bye, young pirates (see update above). Yes, they ~~got~~ were almost evicted from the festival not for breaking any rules -- but for annoying the existing waffle-sellers by disrupting their business models. Thankfully, they called the police, and were allowed to stay after first having to stop making waffles while everything was sorted out. It is, in many ways, the same story we write about all the time, just in a different context. Disrupting someone else's business model is not a crime -- and often (as in this case) makes things better for consumers. It's just too bad so many "officials" kowtow to the legacy players and seek to shut down any and all innovation... though, sometimes, in the end, they come through and fix things.

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Is A Petition Calling For A Pardon Of The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde 'Offensive'?

Mike Masnick — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:31:00 PDT

This is a little strange. We recently wrote about Peter Sunde's request for a pardon in which he lays out a fairly compelling argument for how the Swedish judicial system was railroaded into convicting him. Soon after that, a petition appeared on the site Avaaz in support of Sunde's request, with the idea being that if it obtained enough signatures, it would be delivered to the Swedish government. Avaaz was actually a very big player in the fight against SOPA, helping to stir up international interest against the bill late last year. But in a somewhat surprising move, as pointed out by TorrentFreak, the site has emailed users asking them if they find the Sunde petition "offensive, inflammatory or otherwise objectionable," in which case they may pull it down.

As TorrentFreak notes, this is odd for a variety of reasons. Beyond it being strange that anyone would think that a plea for a pardon is "offensive, inflammatory or otherwise objectionable," the petition site on Avaaz appears to have plenty of things that would be much more likely to cause offense to some people. TorrentFreak reasonably wonders why, of all the petitions on Avaaz, did it happen to pick out the Sunde one?

But I'd argue it goes even further than that. Why should Avaaz even be asking if petitions are "offensive, inflammatory or otherwise objectionable"? If someone posts such a petition, wouldn't it take care of itself by the fact that people won't sign it? Trying to pre-determine if a petition is acceptable seems to go against the very setup of an open petition site like Avaaz's.

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The Swedish Experiment: Spotify Helps Recording Industry Make Lots Of Money

Mike Masnick — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:11:54 PDT

We've mentioned before that Spotify shows how providing consumers what they want can really have a much stronger impact on "piracy" than any enforcement initiative. Both Spotify and The Pirate Bay started in Sweden, and both got tremendous penetration in the Swedish market. But as various studies have shown, infringement of music dropped drastically in Sweden as the service became more popular. A new report looks at the Swedish recorded music market, and found that it's up an astounding 30.1% in the first half of this year, due almost entirely to Spotify. Digital music now accounts for 63.5% of all music sales, and streaming services (mainly Spotify) represent 89% of all digital music sales. MusicAlly notes that streaming may be cannibalizing downloads, but the massive growth in streaming is more than outweighing the decrease in downloads.

This even has the labels (who, yes, have an equity position in Spotify -- more on that in a bit) talking about how they're making more money than they have in a long, long time, thanks to Spotify:

“We’re back to the same revenue levels as during 2004, and if the development continues in the same way we’ll be back on turnover similar to those during the “golden days” of the CD in just a few years,” says Universal Music Sweden’s MD Per Sundin.

“We’ve seen massive change in music consumption, where music fans are now listening to more music than ever, in an entirely legal environment. This means that revenues are increasing all the time, and artists get paid every time their music is played. Our artists get significant revenues from Spotify, which is our biggest income source for Sweden. A positive side effect is that we’re investing a lot in new talent.”

Mark Dennis, CEO of Sony Music Sweden, makes the same point: “One of the most gratifying consequences of this is that it gives us the opportunity to sign more artists, and record more new Swedish music than ever. In fact, for most of our artists, streaming music now represents the majority of the revenue.”

Now, I've learned to take any claims from the major labels with a grain of salt, and there are some clear issues with Spotify. People have complained that the deals favor the majors so they get a larger cut than the indies. That's definitely a problem. Others insist that Spotify doesn't pay enough -- but multiple studies keep finding that, on a per listen basis, Spotify actually pays quite nicely. There may still be significant issues with how the labels pass that money on to artists, however.

The point of this isn't to say that "Spotify" is the answer. There are, clearly, some questions about that particular service. But it certainly shows that there are solutions that very effectively compete with free, and as they grow, they can certainly help make significant money for the copyright holders. Spotify, of course, had a head start in Sweden, and the adoption rates there are incredible. However, the point is pretty clear: let new services like Spotify grow and thrive and effectively compete with free, and they will do so -- and the business issues seem to pretty quickly sort themselves out. Obviously having even more competition would be a good thing as well, as competitors will keep trying to offer something even better (and put pressure on Spotify to advance as well).

In the end, though, Spotify is a classic case of giving the public what they want, rather than what the industry wants them to have. And yet, in doing so, it's also now providing massive revenues for the industry -- even as people continue to insist that such a result is impossible.

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Peter Sunde, The Pirate Bay Spokesperson, Details Why His Conviction Was A Farce

Mike Masnick — Mon, 9 Jul 2012 10:01:00 PDT

Last week, I noticed that former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde had posted the letter that he sent to the Swedish Administration as part of his plea to be pardoned. It was written in Swedish, and I wasn't comfortable that the Google translation was accurate enough. Thankfully, however, Rick Falkvinge has posted a full translation in English. Many of the points Sunde raises came out during the trial, but the key points -- on why he didn't actually do the things he was convicted of -- were new to me, and should concern anyone who actually believes in the rule of law and an impartial judicial system.

The serious conflicts of interests of many involved in the case have been covered before. The fact that the lead prosecutor was hired by the entertainment industry while he was still prosecuting the case, remains an astounding point that should have resulted in a clear mistrial. That multiple judges had strong connections to copyright maximalist groups or even competitors to The Pirate Bay should also be of great concern. However, even if we ignore all of that, Sunde's detailed explanation for his conviction is really quite incredible. He notes that he was specifically convicted of three things... which he did not do. Remember, Peter's role was as that of a spokesperson. He did not actually work on the technology of the site at all, but the prosecution needed to show that he did -- so Peter accuses them of concocting a story about how he set up a "load balancer" for the site, because he admitted that he knew what a load balancer was. However, as Peter notes (1) he did not set up a load balancer, (2) the server in question was put there by someone unrelated to The Pirate Bay and (3) it was never connected to the internet anyway. And yet he was still convicted because of it.

Among other things, I’m supposed to have installed a computer that operated as a so-called load balancer – a computer that makes it possible to distribute the workload of big web services among different computers. It reads clear as day in the Appeals Court verdict that I’m responsible for configuring this computer. Such a computer did indeed exist in one of the racks that The Pirate Bay was located in. On the other hand, it wasn’t connected with a single wire or cable in any way. Some computers have been investigated at the National Forensic Laboratory (Statens Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium). Some computers have been combed for details. In some cases, the prosecutor has called owners of computers to ask them if they want to press charges of electronic trespassing against Gottfrid Svartholm, as they found that he has had access to computers. Computers he has been maintaining for clients. The computer I’m supposed to have been responsible for isn’t mentioned with a single line of text, except in the seizing protocol from the raid. I cannot find the configuration I’ve been convicted of creating. The configuration I have created, beyond reasonable doubt, according to the Swedish Appeals Court. The configuration I can say with 100% certainty would have proven that this computer had never been used for The Pirate Bay. The owner had placed it in the rack by themselves just a few weeks prior to the raid.

During the Appeals Court proceedings, prosecutor Hakan Roswall confirmed my story of this, that this machine had never been used in the operations of The Pirate Bay. Therefore, my lawyer put no energy into bringing it up in his final statement. And yet, Roswall said after this, that I had been responsible for it. And in the end, I was convicted because of it. There is not a shred of evidence anywhere that this computer has been in use, not for anything at all

I know that some who dislike The Pirate Bay won't care about the specifics here. They'll argue that the site itself is pure evil, and he was deservedly convicted. I think that, if you agree with the court's basic reasoning for the convictions, you might be able to make a credible case against the two actual founders of the site who ran it. But Peter wasn't one of those guys. He was just "the spokesperson," and it appears that he got railroaded here, based on a very questionable use of the law.

Of course, he admits that it's unlikely his plea will work, and he fully expects to spend some time in jail. However, as for the fine that's been levied against him, he notes that the 11 million euros he will owe is "fantasy numbers" that he knows is unpayable, meaning that he's likely to be effectively banished from Sweden, noting that "this debt is equivalent to exile, to deportation."

Separately, Peter posted a much shorter blog post, which I'm trusting the Google translation feature on -- so I warn you that accuracy may be slightly sketchy. In it, Peter notes that the prosecution has effectively admitted that he didn't actually do the stuff he was convicted of, but claims that doesn't change his responsibility. Seriously. Here's the rough automated translation:

That the work of the Court of Appeal found Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi begun in late 2005 may not have resulted in actual service until the time of the raid against TPB, does not affect the responsibility of the act for which Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi convicted.

In other words, he didn't provide the actual services he was convicted of, but that doesn't make him any less responsible for the things he didn't actually do. Swedish justice in action.

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Greenpeace Parody Site Censored Using Copyright Infringement Claim

Glyn Moody — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:13:00 PDT

One of the the reasons why legislation like SOPA and treaties like ACTA are so dangerous is that their loose definitions allow measures intended to deal with copyright infringement to be used to censor inconvenient opinions. Unfortunately, that's not just a theoretical problem with future legislation, but one that is already happening, as this post from Rick Falkvinge makes clear:

Greenpeace protests an oil company with a parody site. The oil company files a lawsuit against the ISP of Greenpeace, claiming copyright monopoly violation of the company’s look and feel. The ISP shuts down the Greenpeace protest site immediately, complying with the threat from the oil company, without fighting the lawsuit or waiting for the court. Yup: the abuse-friendly copyright monopoly is now abused by oil companies to suppress Greenpeace, too.

You can compare the original Web site, from a company called Neste Oil, with a (modified) screenshot of Greenpeace's version. The original parody site was located at nestespoil.com, a play on the nesteoil.com domain name. The company's not happy about that either: Nestespoil.com parodies the Annual report 2011 of Neste Oil and criticizes the company’s biodiesel business that aggravates forest destruction. Neste Oil has made a complaint to WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in which it tries to get Greenpeace’s Nestespoil.com domain for itself.
But it's the claim of copyright infringement that's more interesting. That's because the legal action against Greenpeace's ISP, Loopia, tries to address the issue of parody. The document (original pdf in Swedish) says that Greenpeace was seeking to stir up a "political debate", and claims that such "political propaganda" loses the protection of parody, and is therefore infringing on Neste Oil's copyright.

IANAL, and certainly not a Swedish lawyer, so I've no idea if that's true, although it would be disturbing it if were, since parody is an important part of political discourse. In any case, it's troubling that copyright is being used in this way to shut down legitimate debate about important issues like energy policy and deforestation.

And there's another concern, which is highlighted in an interesting offer by the Swedish ISP Binero to host Greenpeace's parody site:

As a Swedish web host shut down the Greenpeace parody site Nestespoil.com after a law suit from Neste Oil, competitor Binero invited Greenpeace in, with the new site Nestespoilreturns.com. Binero considers the EU E-commerce directive 2000/31/EG and the consequent local laws to be absurd and that all sites must be allowed to have their legality tried by authorities. Current laws put web hosts, ISPs and other middle men at risk of being sued for damages unless they immediately shut down sites in unclear cases. Large corporations can stop sites simply by threatening middle men and we believe this is a threat to free speech.

That's a hugely important point at a time when supporters of copyright maximalism are belittling people's concern that proposals like SOPA and ACTA will lead to censorship. That's not because of any claimed "right" to make unauthorized copies, but because those laws will be abused to shut down commentary sites in the same way that Greenpeace's was muzzled.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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How Sweden Handed Its Official Twitter Account Over To A Troll

Mike Masnick — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:14:00 PDT

Over the weekend, the NY Times profiled the fact that Sweden hands its official @Sweden twitter account over to a different citizen each week, and lets them control it. It was the brain child of the Swedish Institute and the national tourist agency -- with the idea of showcasing some of Sweden's quirkiness. And, from the sound of the NY Times article, it had been mostly working. Some of the tweets were a bit edgy or weird, but nothing too crazy. Until now. Right after the article came out, Sweden handed the account over to a woman named Sonja Abrahamsson -- who proceeded to surprise a lot of people (including many new @Sweden followers, due to the NY Times coverage) with a series of tweets that one could deem offensive to just about anyone -- including ignorant or offensive statements and questions about Jews, gays, Africans, those with downs syndrome, those with AIDS and a variety of other people/groups as well. An example:
This has, not surprisingly, received a fair bit of media attention, with people questioning what happened.

Of course, the most obvious answer is that Sweden handed its Twitter account over to a troll. The topic choices are so troll-worthy that it's hard to believe that the person behind the account is genuinely saying these things. It seems quite clear that it's standard troll behavior: say stupid stuff to get people to react -- and tons of people are feeding the troll in response. The really stunning part, of course, is that the folks who manage the account didn't realize this ahead of time. As multiple people have pointed out, Sonja's own blog has plenty of evidence of similar trolling activities on a smaller scale.

And, perhaps, the Swedish tourist board actually did this on purpose. A spokesperson defended giving Sonja control of the account:

“It’s very important for us to let everyone take a unique viewpoint,” said Tommy Sollen, Social Media Manager at VisitSweden, in a phone interview. “Every one of our curators is there with a different perspective.” ....

“Some of them have been talking about music, some of them have been talking about food,” he said. “Sonja is more focused on her own brand of humor and asking probing questions.”

So they seem to recognize that trolling is a "brand of humor." And I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the fact that the NY Times article was sent from the town of Trollhattan, Sweden. It's like they were born to troll...

Of course, if Sweden is going to let @Sweden be trolled, it was only a matter of time until Stephen Colbert asked for control of the account, and urged the Colbert Nation to convince the Swedish tourism bureau to allow non-Swedes to control the account -- something they've said they might consider "in the future." Oh, and while having a troll be your official representation online for a week may, at first pass, seem like a bad thing, it is worth noting that it looks like the number of people following @Sweden has more than doubled since the NY Times article came out -- with much of the increase happening in just the last day or so after the whole trolling thing started to get more attention.

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Tougher Enforcement In Sweden Doesn't Slow Down Public's File Sharing

Mike Masnick — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:37:00 PDT

For years we've argued over and over again that stricter enforcement does nothing to slow down or stop infringement. Often it does the opposite -- either by making more people aware of the possibilities to infringe, or driving people further underground. The industry insists that it needs stricter enforcement on a bizarre and widely discredited theory that such strong enforcement is effective as an "education" technique. You hear this all the time from entertainment industry execs. They're so bought into their infatuation with copyright, that they think the only possible reason why people don't respect the law is that they haven't been "educated" enough about it -- and what better way to "educate" than to crack down hard?

Except, it never works. It never has and it never will. Increasing enforcement has never -- not once -- been shown to be an effective long term solution to stopping infringement. It does appear to have short-term effects, as it makes people scatter from actions that are easily trackable, but within a few months (six seems to be about the consensus), file sharing activity tends to find a new path and get back to the same trajectory it was on before.

We've now got some more data to support this. A few years back, Sweden passed a very draconian and aggressive enforcement law known as IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive), which had the result of a temporary blip in file sharing that disappeared pretty quickly. And now, a new research report has come out showing that just as many 15 to 25-year-olds share unauthorized content online as did so at the time IPRED became law. In fact, a larger percentage of that age group share "heavily," rather than in smaller amounts.

“We can safely say that the repressive legal developments in this field have very weak support in informal social control mechanisms of society”, says Mans Svensson, Ph.D. in judicial sociology, one of the researchers doing the study. “The social pressure is close to non-existent.”

So why is it that we keep seeing countries pass these kinds of laws? And why do entertainment industry lobbyists keep pushing for them when they're so woefully ineffective in doing anything positive?

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Broadband In Crisis: Does The US Need Regulation To Force Meaningful Competition?

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:31:00 PDT

Susan Crawford believes telecommunications in America are going through the biggest crisis ever, and this is just as bad as the banking crisis was. Monday, at the Freedom 2 Connect conference, the Internet law scholar and former Special Assistant for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at the White House, laid out what's wrong with broadband in America, hinting and what needs to be done to fix it. It's not going to be easy.

"The stakes are extraordinarily high, this has been an incremental crisis for a long time but now it's an actual crisis," said Crawford, whose book analyzing these issues, Captive Audience, will be published in November. The central issue is the so-called digital divide and what Crawford refers to as the "looming cable monopoly." Due to deregulation, which was predicated on the premise that the free market and competition would protect consumers, cable companies have found themselves with an inordinate amount of power to control the Internet and broadband access while, at the same time, traditional phone companies like AT&T are struggling to keep up and veering towards wireless services.

To support her thesis, Crawford presented some stunning numbers. In the last two years, Comcast market share has grown from 16.3 million subscribers to 18.5, a 14 percent growth. Time Warner Cable has grown 10 percent, from 9.2 to 10.7 million customers. Meanwhile, DSL subscribers have plummeted: AT&T and Verizon market share is down 22 and 21 percent respectively.

So, while it's good to be Comcast, it's not good to be an American citizen. Without competition, there's no drive to improve the service. The average speed of an Internet connection in the United States is around 5Mbit/s. An astoundingly low number if you look at other western countries. South Korea, for example, has an average of 50Mbit/s. And faster connections are starting to be implemented around the world. One gigabit connections are available in countries like Japan, Portugal or Sweden and at much better prices than in the U.S. – in Hong Kong, connecting at one gigabit per second costs $26 a month while in Chattanooga, TN, it costs $350.

What does this mean to the average citizen? It means the United States are giving up their leadership. Crawrford said this means “the next Google won't come from America.” And, even within U.S. borders, there's a fundamental problem: you either pay premium for a mediocre service or you are left behind.

“We end up with two Internets, two societies in America,” Crawford said to me in an interview.

One America does some tweeting and Facebook on their inferior, slower wireless devices. The other America not only gets to enjoy video online, but they can also apply for jobs, do video-conferencing, get an education online and, ultimately, live in the 21st century. Crawford argues that this digital divide ends up creating inequality between the haves and have-nots in America.

The only solution, Crawford argues, is for the government to intervene and regulate. Internet access, particularly high-speed access, should be treated “as a utility, just as electricity, gas and water.” Doing so would make the Internet a natural monopoly in which the government would provide the pipe and guarantee equal opportunity of access to everybody.

It might not happen immediately, but Crawford hopes that, with her influence and that of other thinkers like her, this will come to the forefront of the public discussion. She believes that, eventually, in every district, there will be elected officials who understand and care about these issues. That will be when we'll be able to look for a solution. "We make this a voting issue, that's how we fight back."

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EU Court Of Justice Says ISPs Can Be Forced To Reveal Info On Accused Infringement

Mike Masnick — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:01:00 PDT

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.

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The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde Questions Why We Let Dying Industries Dictate Terms Of Democracy

Mike Masnick — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:52:57 PST

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.

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Supreme Court Denies Appeal For The Pirate Bay Founders

Mike Masnick — Wed, 1 Feb 2012 12:05:00 PST

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...

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If SOPA's Main Target Is The Pirate Bay, It's Worth Pointing Out That ThePirateBay.org Is Immune From SOPA

Mike Masnick — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:42:41 PST

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?

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Kopimism Approved As Official Religion In Sweden: File Sharing Now Protected Under Freedom Of Religion Laws?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 4 Jan 2012 15:14:29 PST

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...

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