Swedish Police to Block Pirate Bay

An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish Police just can't seem to leave The Pirate Bay at bay. It's been a year and two months since the worlds largest torrent tracker, The Pirate Bay, was originally raided and shut down by police, and now they're at it again, but with claims of child pornography. Brokep, over at The Pirate Bay (TPB), got a 'heads up' from a friend that the Swedish Police are going to put the site on its porn filter blacklist; this means anyone who tries to access the site from Sweden will get redirected to another site with a message explaining that they are not allowed to visit child pornography sites."

Gosh!

[peterb (13831)]

How dare those jackbooted thugs be making life inconvenient for those who want to upload and download copyrighted materials without paying for them! We've got to take a stand here and nip this fascism in the bud. First it's keeping me from watching The Transformers or playing Lego Star Wars for free, and then the next step will be to set up the gas chambers! THIS AGGRESSION MUST NOT STAND.

Re:Gosh!

[proind (837269)]

This is not about fighting piracy anymore. In this case they just showed they can block any site, by claiming it's child porn related. if TPB broke any Swedish law that has to do with copyright infringement , the police would have no problem shutting them down. Since they couldn't do that , they decided to take another route, a route that shows exactly why censorship is bad (the ability to randomly block sites claiming the protection of children/adults/small furry animals ).

Re:Gosh!

[russ1337 (938915)]

>>> they decided to take another route

and if that didnt work , i'm sure TPB would have attracted the tax man, and if they were clean, Occupational health and safety (or equivalent).. until some random health officer finds an expired tub of yogurt in the fridge, or a parking warden finds their car parked 1cm over the line, they'd get shut down that using some obscure 18th century law...

My point is that if you throw enough sh*t, some of it will stick. There is a sig floating around slashdot that quotes along the lines of "give me 5 lines from the most honest man, and I will find a reason for him to hang"... or words to that affect....

Re:Gosh!

[aliquis (678370)]

TPB doesn't serve child pornography, they just offer a method thru which it might be possible to do it.

Re:Gosh!

[MightyYar (622222)]

I think the problem here is that a law meant to protect children is being abused to protect copyright.

Re:

[Dogtanian (588974)]

How dare those jackbooted thugs be making life inconvenient for those who want to upload and download copyrighted materials without paying for them!

Whatever the rights and the wrongs of The Pirate Bay doing what they do with copyrighted material, this has nothing to do with the reason given by the police for blocking them. (Mis-)use of the law and unsubstantiated charges (child porn, or "Y") unrelated to the actual reason (piracy, or "X") is an ominous development, even if the original charge is worthy of prosecution. Mainly because it doesn't matter whether X is legal or not (it might just upset the government), or even if they've done anything at al

Re:Gosh!

[robbiethefett (1047640)]

I've got dozens of albums out in the wild that are available only in torrent form. It's sort of a social experiment. I used to put a lot of time and effort into maintaining separate web sites for each of the 5 projects. I've long since given up paying money to give stuff away for free, so I just uploaded the torrents to a bunch of trackers and always seed them. Interestingly enough, I seem to get quite a bit more exposure from this method than I did from a pretty website and heavy shameless self-promotion.

Personally, I could care less if people listen to my music. Like I said, I don't make a dime off of it, so it's no skin off my back. But it will be interesting to see if this Swedish police nonsense has an impact.

I mean, after all, everyone knows torrents are only used for illegal activities like pirating software and spreading kiddy pr0n. Well, that and linux distro .iso's but those should be illegal anyway. Damn hippies and their free shit.

Re:Gosh!

[janrinok (846318)]

Have you ever walked down a street and seen a teenager. Did you think you were looking at pornography? Or perhaps, like any normal person, seeing someone else of whatever age you care to mention is, well, normal. Now if you know that TPB has been facilitating the transfer of images showing children in 'erotic' poses or actually being abused then you are correct in your assertion that it is child pornography. But please don't suggest that any image or someone under the age of, say, 16 years is 'child pornography'. It isn't. What about the images that are produced at each class graduation? Are they pornography too? And photographs taken on a beach during the summer holidays - do they count as pornography? I would say that it is perfectly natural for a boy of 16 years to want to look at images of girls of about the same age group. So what would make them 'Underage Teen Models'. I don't know how old you are, but have you been looking at them too? I don't use TPB but I am a keen amateur photographer. I get fed up of idiots who wish to impose their own puritanical views on the rest of the world, which just happens to be far more adult over this sort of thing and can manage without having others telling us how we should think. We don't have a problem with nudist beaches either, nor naked breasts on TV.

Re:Gosh!

[Goaway (82658)]

But please don't suggest that any image or someone under the age of, say, 16 years is 'child pornography'.

Ok, then you tell me what http://thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/ [thepiratebay.org] is, if it isn't pornography for pedophiles.

Re:Gosh!

[richie2000 (159732)]

From TPB's about page:
"To report child abuse or other similar unlawful activities please do so to your local authority. In Sweden you can contact ECPAT Hotline or email [e-mail] to report child abuse matters. Please do so."

If ECPAT and/or the Police has received complaints and seemingly ignored them in the past, it's either because they investigated them and found no illegal material (there are lots of misnamed torrents) or because they themselves put them there as a setup.
My money is on alternative #1.

Oh, and the reason that TPB wants you to report these kind of things to ECPAT and the Police is so they can investigate it and possibly apprehend the persons responsible. If they just delete the torrents without reporting it to the authorities, the Police are none the wiser.

Re:Gosh!

[janrinok (846318)]

OK. Let me clarify. Those who exploit children by forcing them to do something against their will are guilty of a crime. I think that is what your example was about. However, not every photograph taken of a child is the result of exploitation, or if it is, it can be with both the child's and parents' consent. That is, to my view, immoral but not necessarily illegal. The resulting photographs are not illegal. Therefore, the images shouldn't be banned because no crime is being committed.

I wasn't accusing you, per se, of anything at all. But if people look at photographs of clothed children and imagine them to be erotic images designed to arouse pedophiles then they should seek help. Children are not erotic images but, if someone thinks that they are, then they need help. The world is full of children and others, as I have pointed out. Unless they are doing something in particular to act in an erotic manner we must take them as they are. They are human beings and however they appear is entirely normal. The problem lies in those who are trying to say that a particular group (e.g. preteen clothed children) should not be photographed because that is wrong. It isn't. The fault lies in the opinion and emotions of those doing the viewing, not in the physical characteristics of the child.

If someone has reported a specific torrent I would assume that it will be viewed by TPB and checked. If it is NOT ILLEGAL IN SWEDEN then they can continue to host the link. It doesn't matter what the law states in the US (i.e. where your example came from), or anywhere else for that matter. Other nations should not impose their views on what pornography is upon Sweden, or anyone else for that matter. Each nation can reach its own decision and make the laws that it feels are appropriate. The problem with /. is that it tends to be US centric and many people quote US law and say such images are breaking the law. Perhaps they are in America, but the rest of the world doesn't care a jot about US law. We don't have to. The images being described vaguely on this thread are entirely legal in many parts of the world regardless of whether you, I or anyone who is not living in those countries might think. It might be that the complaints that have been made previously are referring to material that breaks the law in their own country but not in Sweden.

I stress that I am not accusing you of anything. But, quite understandably, you seemed to be declaring the images illegal without a. having personally seen them and b. not taking into account Swedish law which might differ from your own. If I have misunderstood I apologise.

If TPB have clear evidence that a specific individual was posting unsuitable material of any kind then I am not surprised that they pulled all of his torrents. We will probably find that they will cooperate with the police in providing any evidence that they may ask for. It would be in their own interests to do so. But just pulling torrents because someone is offended or objects to the content when no law has been broken is simply censorship by vigilante. I wouldn't want that, nor do I suspect would you.

think of the children!

[hjf (703092)]

Won't someone please think of the children!?

Re:think of the children!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Think of the children, eh? Filthy pervert! I'm reporting you to the Swedish police!

Re:think of the children!

[mpe (36238)]

Won't someone please think of the children!?

Slashdot probably needs a rating of "ironic". Putting TPB on a list of "Child Porn" websites, for political reasons. Somewhat defeats the object of having such a list. People might well wonder what else has been deliberatly misclassified.
This is a fairly common issue with commercial censorware. Do the Swedish police really want to be associated with "cowboy" software companies?

Re:think of the children!

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Won't someone please think of the children!?

Yeah, where are they going to get their free movies and music?

incorrect

[by Anonymous Coward]

Everyone with some insight in the matter and knows how to read swedish know that the chances of this actually happening are slim to none. But hay, go go go slashdot~

I wondered how soon this would happen...

[niceone (992278)]

after they opened their uncensored image upload service (bayimg.com).

TPB have been warned about this many times.

[Cosmicalstorm (1124967)]

This is a legitimate action to be fair.
I have followed the posting of this material on TPB for a long time, despite many complaints the administrators have done nothing.
The files have been easily accsseible for anyone and have not been hidden away.
Now the police is treating the site like any other site doing the same thing, and suddenly they are throwing a hissy-fit, just because they are The Pirate Bay dosent exempt them from this.
About time they do something about it.
(Sorry for my Swenglish.)

Re:TPB have been warned about this many times.

[Terrasque (796014)]

Yeer sweengleesh ess veery niece, bork bork bork.

Re:TPB have been warned about this many times.

[skrolle2 (844387)]

Legality has nothing to do with this.

The police maintains a VOLUNTARY blacklist that Swedish ISPs can use if they so choose. Many do, and believe it to be a SERVICE to their customers. Whether or not it is a service or a disservice depends on each customer, and it's bad that it's something many ISPs force on all their customers. It's ultimately up to the police to decide who gets on this blacklist and who doesn't, and I think in this case they abused this power.

Re:

[catman (1412)]

Norway does the same thing. Not that it slows down anyone who really want the stuff, of course,
or really bothers anyone who hates censorship. Trivially easy to get around.

Re:TPB have been warned about this many times.

[makomk (752139)]

The UK filter is interesting, because everybody involved is so secretive. For example, it appears that 4chan's /b/ board was blocked by it [wikipedia.org] for a while. Unfortunately, since the only messages the people who couldn't access it got back were generic 404s or redirects to the site's "banned" page, and since everyone involved denied it, it's hard to be sure. However, from the ISPs that blocked it and the fact that Google, when requesting information on http://img.4chan.org/b/ [4chan.org], gave back no results and a message that 1 result had been removed due to a report by the IWF [wikipedia.org], who maintain the list of blocked sites used by British ISPs, it seems fairly certain that it was in fact on the blacklist. (The Google results have since changed - take a look, it's interesting.)

Anyway, my main point is this: when your internet connection is being filtered, and you have no way to know if a site is down or if your ISP is actively blocking you from visiting it, it's worrying.

Re:TPB have been warned about this many times.

[QCompson (675963)]

So I can understand why the cops want to do this. I'm not sure they are legally in the clear, but I would like to see those kinds of torrents gone from pirate bay.

Great. Let's allow governments to censor the internet not based on any illegality, but because "you would like to see those kinds of torrents gone from pirate bay."

The original intention of most child pornography laws was to prevent the sexual abuse of children, not to ban pictures that make people feel creepy.

We need to find a truely safe country

[jonwil (467024)]

What we need is a country that:
1.Has a stable government
2.Doesn't care what the "western world" (i.e. the big US corps) have to say and doesn't enforce "western IP rights"
3.Has no non copyright laws laws that would make a site like PirateBay illegal
4.Can be connected to the internet via a sufficiently fast pipe or pipes
and 5.Has sufficiently advanced infrastructure in other areas like electric power and such that one could host there.

Find such a country (if one even exists) and host all the stuff like DeCSS, DeAACS, UnFairPlay, UnPlaysForSure, Transformers - DVD RIP - XvID, Windows Vista Ultimate - BootISO and other "illegal" crap there.

Russia would have made a good choice until the US forced them to enforce US IP rights in exchange for WTO membership.

Do any such countries exist? What would the "copyright cops" do if they found a "pirate bay" type site in a country that refused to enforce "western IP rights"?

Re:We need to find a truely safe country

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

Do any such countries exist?

I don't think so but you could create your own. How about calling it the isle of slash? [xkcd.com]

Re:We need to find a truely safe country

[gsslay (807818)]

Interesting idea. So you want a country to 'hold the stash' for you. One that doesn't care what the 'western world' says, but really wants to help the oppressed millions of the western world save money on DVDs. And preferably some place you don't have to live yourself, cos it would be a bit of a drag living in some backwater so isolated from world trade. Even it did have things like electric power and stuff.

Good luck with that.

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Do any such countries exist?

Probably not anymore.

What would the "copyright cops" do if they found a "pirate bay" type site in a country that refused to enforce "western IP rights"?

Send ICBMs.

Re:We need to find a truely safe country

[Eravnrekaree (467752)]

I do not have any problem at all with the copyright laws which prohibit the redistribution of copyrighted works. This is well within reason, that an author in order to support themselves has a right to make some money off their work. I do think the penalties have been much to harsh however, for copyright infringement. Fining persons tens of thousands of dollars who live paycheck by paycheck, something they could not do without driving themselves into bankruptcy or poverty, especially for what is a fairly non-violent and minor crime, really is going overboard. I would much rather see a few hours of community service used instead.

I also against however DRM, and DMCA, and think the DRM anti-circumvention laws are deeply unethical and go against many of the principles of a free society, by banning the distribution of intellectual works (software) oneself has produced and owns the copyright on. Media companies have demanded hardware and software to include restrictions whereby a consumer cannot even make a copy for personal archival purposes of a work that they legally purchased, including perhaps transferring it to a different device that they own. All of this should be completely legal, a person should be able to make as many copies of something they purchase for their own personal use as they wish, including transferring a video from their DVD to a VCR, or from their computer to ipod for instance. Obviously these were overintrusive restrictions which took away some very natural rights people should have to be able to personally use things they have purchased. It is understandable that there has been work to work around this technology, if only so people could truly legitimately use the videos and other material that THEY bought on their own equipment in their own homes, such as playing a DVD on their Linux machine or making some extra copies of the DVD in case one got scratched. It was a further outrage that this very understandable workarounds which really wasnt stealing anything from anyone, just allowed people to use what they bought for their own personal uses, was made illegal by DMCA. The DMCA was a further outrage since, I believe it contradicts the first amendment by making it illegal to distribute software works oneself has produced. It is a lot like saying, you are not allowed to distribute you wrote books which have certain plot lines. In case, what should be the completely legal distribution of software, which truly violates no ones copyright, and simply allows consumers to use the DVD and other items for their own personal use on their own software and hardware, illegal. DeCSS and other such software have completely legitimate and legal uses, and for most that is the only use they have, so they can easily archive and store, and view DVDs on their system, for their own person al use and convenience. they are not distributing them with anyone else.

We already have laws to protect copyright holders, if a copyrighted work is being resold in an illegal manner. The DRM nonsense and the DMCA goes quite a bit too far and is rather unneeded given copyright law already provides the tools necessary to prevent illegal redistribution among different parties of copyrighted material.

I have heard the point made that the recording companies due to take an awfully large cut off the music sales from artists, to the point where artists make very little off the sale. if this is true then perhaps there should be more independant labels, and the internet has made setting up such a company and distributing and advertising music even eisier to do than it was previously. Indeed, we need to support Net Netreuality so ISPs could not basically turn the internet into an online-version of MTV, or a modern reincarnation of AOL, where content from major corporations would be given preferential treatment, those who can pay not only for interconnectivity into their own office, but also for that of all of the hundreds of end user ISPs. This is very dangerous and threatens to destroy the internet as a medium where anyone

Re:We need to find a truely safe country

[liangzai (837960)]

Yes. China is a solid candidate.

Finally

[mhannibal (1121487)]

Finally an end to illegally distributed child porn - finally the copyright holders who created the movies will receive the monetary compensation they are entitled to. Oh wait...

Here's how it works.

[skrolle2 (844387)]

There's no Great Firewall of Sweden, it's not gonna be impossible to reach the site from within Sweden, it's just a DNS blacklist. The police maintains a small list of sites that they think/know traffics in child pornography. All Swedish ISPs can subscribe to this list and add it to their DNS servers so that any of their customers that tries to lookup these addresses will instead get the IP to a webserver that informs you that the site you wanted is bad.

If you use an ISP that does not subscribe to this list, nothing happens. If you don't use the DNS that your ISP supplies, nothing happens. You're not blocked from the content, your DNS lookup is hijacked in some sort or attempt at policing the internets.

It's kinda hard to say that the idea was bad from the start, but I can't say it was very good either. However, what we have now is a perfect example of the slippery slope in action. There is a censoring system in place, and someone decides to use it for their own agenda. Annoying, but in the end everyone that cares is just gonna switch away from their ISP's DNS servers to open alternatives such as http://www.opendns.com/ [opendns.com]

Re:

[OgGreeb (35588)]

Which is a swell solution until the Swedish authorities tighten the screws by blocking alternate DNS resolution, either blocking out-of-band port 53 access or just blocking the specific IP addresses of known alternate DNS resolvers. Or making it illegal to use non-sanctioned domain name servers. The Internet will route around this, and they will combat it, and the pressure will build. Which is why using technical means to resolve a social problem will always be a stop-gap, flawed and frustrating process.

Despicable police corruption

[Raven737 (1084619)]

The reason this is wrong is becuase they know full well that TPB never had any child porn and never will!
It's not about downloading copyrighted works either, it's only about payback for not being able to find any evidence
of any wrong doing and the embarrassments this has caused them.
Of course this was done with the 'help' of the BSA, MPAA and RIAA, i'm just waiting for them to
brag how thier 'influence' has 'saved the world' (and the children, of course) again.

This even goes beyond just despicable corruption and right into treason,
forsaking their own laws and people for some foreign cooperate payoff.

Well time to mail: [e-mail] [mailto] and tell them
how little we like corrupt, treasonous, scumm of the earth police abusing their power. :)

Bending the laws to achieve censorship

[Iloinen Lohikrme (880747)]

This is the perfect example on why governments should never be given a blank cheque: they will eventually use it wrong.

Here in Finland we have the same system in place as the Swedish. The police keeps a secret list of sites and their ip-addresses that they claim serve child pornography, and the ISPs will use this list to filter these sites in voluntary basis. I would say in this case voluntary means "voluntary" as all ISPs are using the list to filter out content, and all though there is no law regarding this list and it's usage, it's still a form of government inflicted censorship as when this subject was in conversation, basically everybody that was against this system were pointed out to be supporters of child pornographers. In my mind the system in place in both Finland and Sweden are illegal and they are against our constitutions. It's just to bad that nobody has had the stand up and but the system and it's sponsor in court.

I think that the whole system is wrong, and definitely think putting TPB to it is very wrong, but then again if the Swedish police could be so stupid as to but TPB to the list, there would be some strong case for TPB to take the matter in to a court on basis of illegal government censorship. Even thought the government is not breaking the letters of the constitution they definitely are breaking the spirit of the constitution and the freedoms it grants.

Humanity thanks you, Sweden and China!

[momofuku (1124995)]

One of the most popular sites in Sweden - about to be censured - and this without the case being tried in court.

Regardless of what you think about TPB, this is just state-mandated censorship.
They couldn't shut down TPB with legal means so they decided just to try and shut it down anyway.
Everything on TBP is also reachable from google. So assuming this isn't politically motivated, google is next. Right?

But the headline is inaccurate: Access to TPB won't actually be blocked, thepiratebay.org just won't resolve to TPB's servers, instead you will be routed to some other site. And only if your ISP is one of the 15 that has agreed to do this (although these ISPs share between themeselves the majority of the swedish broadband-market).

Using a different dns-server or simply adding
        83.140.176.146 www.thepiratebay.org
        83.140.176.146 thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.227 tracker.thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.228 a.tracker.thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.228 vip.tracker.thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.228 tv.tracker.thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.227 tpb.tracker.thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.68 open.tracker.thepiratebay.org
        83.140.176.156 torrents.thepiratebay.org
        83.140.176.148 static.thepiratebay.org
        83.140.176.149 rss.thepiratebay.org
        83.140.176.150 upload.thepiratebay.org
        85.17.40.68 tracker.prq.to
        85.17.40.227 tpb.tracker.prq.to
        85.17.40.228 tv.tracker.prq.to
        83.140.176.146 trackerwww.prq.to
        83.140.176.146 www.thepiratebay.se
        83.140.176.146 thepiratebay.se
        83.140.176.156 torrents.thepiratebay.se
        83.140.176.148 static.thepiratebay.se
        83.140.176.149 rss.thepiratebay.se
        83.140.176.150 upload.thepiratebay.se
to /etc/hosts will circumvent this, which makes this "block" kind of lame.

Thank you Sweden and China! Safe at last! /Children of the world

Re:Humanity thanks you, Sweden and China!

[deftcoder (1090261)]

I feel like pointing out that the equivalent of /etc/hosts on Win32 systems is C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, should some non-Unix users need to override this censorship.

Well

[suv4x4 (956391)]

I'm surprised it has been going on for so long. I actually expected the appropriate copyright sedish las to be patched in sync with most other countries, thus outlawing the act of hosting bittorents to illegal content (not direct hosting only).

But this is plain wrong. And smart at the same time. You see, people are predisposed to think more about some situations, and reply automatically to other situations. What the powers-that-be want here, is automatic answers, and no discussion.

Let's try:

Police: "Is hosting links to copyrighted content illegal"?
Public: "Well hmmm... that's something to think about. The border definitely isn't clear. We can discuss it"

Police: "Is sharing your personal collection of CD-s with your online friends illegal?"
Public: "Well, sharing has always been going on, even before the Internet was round. We did mix-tapes etc. Of course the scale of it demands a discussion.. The border isn't clear again.. "

Police: "They host CHILD PORN. We should block them"
Public: "OH YEAH! Definitely, block 'em right now! Monsters!"

if there isn't any...

[hcmtnbiker (925661)]

A press release from the Swedish police is rumored to soon be published, saying, "it's not decided that we'll put The Pirate Bay in the list - if the content is still there next week we'll put them there."

I bet if there isn't any next week the Swedish police will make sure there is some.

Food for conspiracy theories

[mmcuh (1088773)]

1. Thomas Bodström, who was minister of justice until the election in september 2006, was accused of putting pressure on police and attorneys to act against The Pirate Bay (which is illegal under the Swedish Constitution) after high-ranking employees at his Ministry of Justice had met with representatives for MPAA and the US Department of State. Bodström is now, among other things, the chairman of ECPAT Sweden who together with the IT crime section of the Swedish police compile the list of websites to put in the DNS blacklist discussed in this article. Thomas Bodström is not a fan of The Pirate Bay.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=3969&date=20 060602 [thelocal.se]

2.An anti-copyright website run by some of the same people as the ones who run The Pirate Bay was placed on this list a few weeks ago because the front page had an animation of a naked kid doing the "Copy Me" dance. There was absolutely nothing pornographic about this animation (see for yourself: http://kopimi.se/ [kopimi.se] ), which the attorney told Stefan Kronqvist, head of the IT crime section of the Swedish police, while they told him to remove the website from the blacklist after the people behind the website had made a formal complaint. They also sent a mail to Kronqvist requesting financial compensation for the time their website had been blocked but received no reply. Rumours say that Stefan Kronqvist is not a fan of The Pirate Bay.
http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/2007/07/polise ns-hmnd-m.html [typepad.com]

3. The US Chamber of Commerce recently arranged a seminar for pro-copyright lobbyists in Sweden with the title "Sweden - a safe haven for pirates?". In this seminar a guy from a Danish anti-piracy organisation explained how great it was to use child pornography as an argument to establish the principle that information carriers like websites and ISPs must be responsible for the information they distribute. Once that principle was established it could easily be extended to cover things like copyright infringement as well. He higly recommended lobbyists in other countries to use the same technique.
http://forum.piratpartiet.se/Topic79221-15-5.aspx# bm79282 [piratpartiet.se]

Most of the links are in Swedish, sorry about that.

Re:Swedish police have that much control?

[by Anonymous Coward]

And Europeans try to claim that the United States has police-state problems?

Yeah right, because Sweden IS Europe.

But hey... don't let that stop you making stuff up, to fit your view of the world.

Re:

[someone1234 (830754)]

This whole fuckup is forced by USA private companies (RIAA & co) on Sweden, so, well, you can say that Europeans got a problem with USA as a police-state. But, it is even worse, we got problems with (RIAA & co) acting as police even outside the USA.

Re:Swedish police have that much control?

[hjf (703092)]

the latter is just the excuse for the public. People won't give up their rights to prevent terrorism (which is likely to happen in Europe), but they will in order to stop "child abuse", which is not likely to happen in Europe or the US (it does happen, it happens everywhere. But some countries, especially asian and other poor regions, suffer more from that. And those places don't have the resources to combat that).

If the US and Europe are interested in protecting the children, they would be better off spending some money to stop child prostution in asia, instead of busting 10 basement-dwelling pedophiles and making a big fuss of it.

Re:Swedish police have that much control?

[TapeCutter (624760)]

The rock spiders in the basement are the ones who fund the asian child-porn. No matter how much I loath these people I do recognise that most need therapy more than they need prison. That said, "therapy" starts with cutting off their access to the "trade" and simultaneously providing other oportunities for the "workers".

Banning TPB however is not going to work, what "works" is using the evidence to track the producers & regular consumers down. Unfortunately it ain't gonna happen, one of the problems is that some of these people also walk the halls of power, as they found in Denmark in the 90's, no funds - no investigation. It's not just the EU, remeber the guy in congress who liked 14yo boys and "championed" the sex offenders list. If you think about that last one the intent would seem to be to trivialise "sex offender" by lumping porn lovers, streakers, skinny dippers, ect in with rapists, pedophiles and the child slave "trade".

Disclaimer: I also realise what constitutes a child can sometimes lead to gross injustice [wikipedia.org] (surely that poor bastard is more deserving of a comute than Libby?).

Re:Swedish police have that much control?

[shaitand (626655)]

The wilson case is bad on the age marker. I don't care how many daddies with little girls protest otherwise, teenagers are coherent and capable of making decisions. They may lack experience they will gain as they age but adults make bad decisions everyday because they aren't experienced in a given situation.

More importantly, nature declares when boys and girls are ready to have sex. Amazingly, you will never catch your eyes drawn to a little girl who hasn't reached the age of nature's declaration (unless you really are a pedophile) but we've all seen jailbait nature has declared fit. It's easy to tell with girls, they start bleeding and develop a figure.

That is one thing, the worst thing about the wilson case is the aggrevated rape thing. Because it was oral sex and not simply an 'indecent act'? What is this the 1700's? Do we really still live in a naive world where we must pretend there are types of sex that are bad?

Re:Swedish police have that much control?

[HeroreV (869368)]

If a 17-year-old gets punished for having sex with a 15-year-old, it's a gross injustice, but when adults look at images of naked 15-year-olds they're loathsome basement rock spiders that need therapy? That is a completely absurd double standard!

Even "real" pedophiles (attracted to pre-pubescent children) aren't harming anyone just by looking at child porn. They are only encouraging the creation of cp if they pay for it or trade. You can tell yourself that they just need some therapy, but you'd be lying, because therapy often does absolutely nothing! Pedophiles have a horrible problem that's a huge burden for them, and child porn is a harmless victimless way to deal with their feelings. Pedophilia should be treated more like cancer or autism, not murder!

Did you know that even simulated cp, including drawings, is currently illegal in the United States despite the Supreme Court already deciding twice that such laws are unconstitutional? Does that not sound like irrational hatred to you?! It's not going to help anyone to call pedos sickos and freaks and say they need harsher punishments and more therapy.

No law, no fault in EU

[Iloinen Lohikrme (880747)]

This is bullshit anti-EU rhetoric. There is no EU directive that says "police can keep an secret list of sites and ip-address that they think are serving child pornography and police can give this list to the voluntary ISPs who will use the list to filter the Internet". NO NO NO, this all is the making of Swedish government. The blame rests entirely on the Swedish government and the culprits behind this attack against personal freedoms can be found from there.

God damn, there maybe many faults in EU, but don't make up lies to oppose it.

Re:This isn't necessarily bad.

[joe 155 (937621)]

"Were they hosting child porn?"

Nope. TPB does not host any illegal content. All they have on there site is what is ostensibly text files saying "this guy (ip address) has this file (file name)"... thats really all there is to it. Nothing illegal under their laws, no matter that file or ip address it actually says. Torrent actually makes it easier to track people who do host child porn because the police can just download the torrent and then leach the porn whilst grabbing the ip addresses of the people who have it. A quick look up and raid later and you have yet another peado in prison.

Re:

[Goaway (82658)]

They may or may not have been tracking any actual "child porn", but they are definitely tracking large amounts of pedophile material.

Re:Libel?

[trewornan (608722)]

It reminds me of SCO. You've got child porn on your site but we won't tell you where it is! You'd think it's fairly obvious that (if they believed what they said) the Swedish Police had two proper courses of action:

Ask for Piratebay's help in trying to track down the real source of the material or arrest and prosecute someone at Piratebay for criminal offenses.

That they've done neither means:

a) They know nobody at Piratebay had anything to do with this and they could never successfully prosecute them.

b) They don't really care about tracking down producers and distributors of child porn and are more interested in protecting business interests than children.

Of course the most reasonable explanation for their complete failure to properly carry out their jobs would be - they were lying to begin with.

It seems pretty damning of the Swedish Police whatever way you look at it. It's a shame that this sort of behaviour tarnishes the reputation of all the good officers along with the despicable ones.

Re:

[MightyYar (622222)]

If they were the USA's bitch, they'd be blocking access to the US - this, perversely, only affects Swedes.