Swedish Pirate Party Launches ISP 356
WillDraven writes "Torrentfreak is reporting that the Swedish Pirate Party has launched an ISP. Starting with 100 residents in a housing organization in the city of Lund, Pirate ISP hopes to gain 5% of the market in Lund before spreading to other markets. Headed by longtime Pirate Party member Gustav Nipe (video interview in English), the company aims to provide Internet service with the sort of guarantees one would expect from the Pirate Party. Most notable are the promises to keep no logs of subscriber activity and thus to provide no data to law enforcement or private corporations."
Please spread to other countries... (Score:5, Interesting)
Please spread to other countries...
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There was an article a while back... They applied to be a party in Canada, and they have been approved (don't know if they've actually formed a party yet or not).
I imagine if its a big hit there, and it spreads over here... Well I mean we manage to slip past some of the more Draconian IP laws of the States by putting taxes on blank media and such - I wonder if offering this service to Canada would cause a stir...
Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:4, Informative)
Except that with no logs, it's impossible to match an IP to a MAC
(and yes, I know MACs can be spoofed)
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I doubt the FRA will answer any requests....
the issue isn't "will they?", it's "can they?" and "should they?". if the answers are respectively YES, NO, then why aren't they NO, NO.
Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sweden has exceptional political conditions. Germany is coming up to speed. But tentative national pirate parties exist in many countries.
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Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:5, Insightful)
"for the purpose of illegal activities"
Why would you assume this?
Believe it or not, there are people in this world who are just as law-abiding as you may be, but who don't want our every action cataloged by those in government.
There is no reason that anybody needs to know where I am, when I'm asleep, or when I poop, despite what the people pushing for National Healthcare might think (when you poop could be important, if you're constipated it'll cost us all more money to pay for your healthcare).
"for the purpose of privacy"
IS NOT
"for the purpose of illegal activity"
No matter what those in power would rather you believe.
Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:5, Insightful)
Defending the legalization of private sharing is legitimate (as any other speech, as in Free Speech), and it's their main platform. They don't need to "cover it" using other stuff - they call themselves the "Pirate Party", for crying out loud, do you really think they're trying to hide their motives?
Privacy is just another of their position, it's not a cover up for anything, because they obviously aren't trying to cover up their main motive.
Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:5, Insightful)
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You have to forgive the GP. He/she is a product of the Western school systems and media which are more interested in producing obedient consumers than citizens.
Obedience to the authorities and blind belief in the law are all hammered into people from the tenderest of ages and constantly reinforced by the media (consider how many TV series are about the "hero-like-cops enforcing the law" vs "hero-like-rebels challenging the law").
Some of us, when we get to adulthood become aware of how dirty and corrupt the
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And what if one thinks (as I do) that noncommercial copying and distribution of data should be legal? I should just STFU? Sorry, but I won't. I won't STFU about wanting drugs, prostitution, and gambling legalized, either. Noncommercial copying and distribution doesn't harm anyone, and study after study has show this.
As to drugs, prostitution, and gambling, how I piss my money away is none of anybody's business but my own.
Illegal activities need not stay illegal forever (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure nothing bad could ever happen from a group calling itself the "Pirate Party" taking money to provide internet services for the purpose of illegal activities.
Look past the "Pirate" and see the "Party". Should the Pirate Party get elected to a national legislature within the next decade or so, watch illegal activities become legal.
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They don't need to get elected, they just need to get sufficient recognition. In a truly diverse parliament (read: not the US), a party with 10% has enough influence to make other parties take them seriously.
In fact, it has already happened in Finland: remember that story on how the government asked the PP's opinion on the change on the wifi law?
Re:Please spread to other countries... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, I would buy a used car from one of them before I bought one from a politician. Well, maybe a used boat. Seeing that they're pirates and all.
I predict... (Score:2, Interesting)
That The **AA's are just going to love this idea.
I suspect that they'll just set up bulk mailers to send DMCA notices to this ISP's abuse@ address, every time a new movie, album or anything is released a mail gets sent to abuse@pirateisp.com because no doubt a copy of said work is bound to exist somewhere on their network.
Re:I predict... (Score:5, Interesting)
and I bet the Pirate Party and the network engineers and system administrators that they hire will be at least smart enough to straight filter, either at the packet level at the border, or application level on the mail servers, any traffic coming from IP ranges known to belong to the RIAA, MPAA, or constituent organizations. That's what I'd do. Or segment abuse@ off on its own area, let it take the hammering, and spit all the addresses back via feedback loops and get their email black listed. Or... run the mail server on OpenBSD, where spamd is linked to pf, and accept the incoming connections from their mass-mailer at 1bps, thus backlogging the sender and screwing them over (disk i/o issues, etc). Fun stuff like that.
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any traffic coming from IP ranges known to belong to the RIAA, MPAA, or constituent organizations.
IMHO, that would be doing exactly what their enemies are doing. Their purpose is to let users access the internet without restrictions. Not to wall-off those things they find evil.
Re:I predict... (Score:4, Informative)
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Blocking incoming traffic that isn't in a TCP session already associated with an egress port is not the same thing as filtering internet access for their customers. It's responsible security administration. Besides, how many of their customers do you think even want to have any communication with the RIAA anyway? I'd wager not a lot.
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as a system administrator at a web hosting company who had to monitor abuse@ and all the crap that was associated with that... yes. yes i have.
Re:I predict... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I predict... (Score:4, Informative)
http://thepiratebay.org/legal [thepiratebay.org]
Re:I predict... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because the ** Association of America will send DMCA (an American law) notices to a Swedish ISP. You know what the Pirate Bay does with those letters now? They post them up on a page and laugh at them.
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Yeah but that does not really stop the **AA's does it?
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http://thepiratebay.org/legal [thepiratebay.org]
Which is awesome until... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't it better to trust people with freedom than to treat everyone like criminals?
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Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure if you're trolling or trying to be funny but that's just fucking scary.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem that you seem to be missing is that morals are subjective. Your morals may not apply to me. For instance, if I feel it is morally wrong for you to discuss football because I feel that football and it's "Us vs them" mentality has destroyed American politics, do I have the right to find you and stop you (or punish you) for violating my morals?
The fact that everyone doesn't automatically recognize this fact instantly is what scares the GP (and me).
In fact, I'm reluctant to hit submit because it's hard to believe it's not a troll, but it was written with a sincere sounding naivety so I'll give it a go :)
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A better analogy -- some people object to alcohol, while beer is one of my favorite pleasures. I say if you don't like alcohol, don't drink it. But that didn't stop people from getting a Constitutional amendment making it illegal (and turning my grandfather into an underground criminal, since he had a beer making kit in his barn).
But I think you misunderstood the GP. He asked "what is wrong with having morals?" and the answer is nothing, until you try to make others follow YOUR morals. And he's right that t
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a false dichotomy. You can be allowed freedom to speak while still being able to be found when you use that freedom to engage in criminal activities or to organize acts of terrorist destruction.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can be found and punished for that then you can be found and punished when you want to speak out against your government, when you want to say unpopular things, support unpopular positions or organize acts of civil protest.
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lovely strawman there.
freedom to speak anonymously != freedom to rape people.
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Now you're being deliberately obtuse, but that's ok -I don't need to waste any further time on you.
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I'm not going to make assumptions about how long you've been on the internet and what not, but in case you weren't here in the early days, an open and free network is what it was. The sad fact is is that there are enough people who abused the system such that what you have today is the end result.
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Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Downloading child pornography is a major crime?
It's better to let a guilty man go free than convict an innocent.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that'll be small potatoes compared to the fact that every black hat, spammer, script kiddie, phisherman, fraudster, terrorist, and mobster can safely do whatevery they want and not have to worry about it. If this ISP manages to grow to any decent size I'd expect it would turn into the pariah of the Internet with admins everywhere blocking the IPs becuase they don't want to put up with all the crap that hit's their servers.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that'll be small potatoes compared to the fact that every black hat, spammer, script kiddie, phisherman, fraudster, terrorist, and mobster can safely do whatevery they want and not have to worry about it.
You know what? I say good. Just like how the government needs a warrant to tap your phone, it's absurd to think it's ok for them to monitor everything everyone does on the internet. The government has no authority to stop people from having private conversations in person or on the phone, the internet shouldn't be any different.
This is just like how each time a new form of media comes out, the MPAA / RIAA try to sue for using it for "piracy" - just because the internet is a "new" form of communication, they want to ignore laws against spying on people.
Freedom doesn't just apply when you want it to apply.
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Now imagine there is a security vulnerability allowing the interception of such a communication. Accordingly, those responsible might patch that vulnerability, but you, as the user, are negligent and fail to install that patch. If that intercepted communication is subsequently used to prosecute you, it is partly your fault.
p.No, it's not. It's called "inadmissible evidence". Just like how the police can't use a phone call against you in court without a legal warrant to listen to your calls, they should be required under the same anti-wiretapping laws to have a warrant to monitor your internet activity. The only reason that this isn't the norm (applying wiretapping laws to the internet) is because corrupt government officials realize that it's their chance to get away from the restrictions of wiretapping laws.
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papers please.
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And as such the police cameras in your living-room and bedroom are a necessary evil to ensure that you aren't keeping any kidnapping victims in your home.
After all in the case of major crimes privacy isn't an issue.
Sure we could assume that you're not a kidnapped until you prove otherwise and it would be better if we lived in a world where these things weren't needed. But we don't. Innocent people need to be watched by the police so that guilty people can't go free.
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So you want to be like England, where they can search your car without cause and take you in for weapons possession for having a multitool in your briefcase [telegraph.co.uk].
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Really?
I read this sentence over at least a dozen times and I can't figure out a single way to rationalize the statement. I don't know whats worse, treating innocent people like suspects and criminals, or the idea of wasting precious law enforcement resources on innocent people.
My head is about to explode.
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Better to let a thousand guilty go free than to imprison even one innocent...
Of course none of us want to be the innocent guy in jail for a murder he didn't commit, but also of course, none of us want to be the victim of the thousand serial murderers you let free.
There's a reason for a standard of "reasonable doubt".
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ah so logs should only start being kept after a warrant has been issued then?
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in that situation I'd agree with you and I'd have a hard time seeing how they'd be able to refuse to keep records in the case of an official warrant asking them to keep logs on one of their customers.
What I oppose is the kind of general fishing expeditions that law enforcement seem to love- log every users actions then hand over anything and everything after a polite email from the police(without a warrent) so the police can snoop through the private lives of innocent people in the hope of finding a crime.
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I was going to make a real reply, but I can't think of one so I made an unfounded ad hominem attack instead and hoped nobody would notice the difference.
fixed that for you.
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Go fuck yourself you little coward. Is that a clear enough reply for you?
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Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you implying it would be better if they couldn't/didn't?
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to make analogies, do it right. There is no "just in case" recording of everything I do in my home so that cops can get a warrant and watch what I did. Even for "live" investigations, there's a high legal barrier before a cop can enter my home. If someone just accuses me of stealing something, it is not sufficient for a warrant. On the internet, with most ISPs, not only is there a record which ties my online activities to my identity, there's also almost no barrier if someone wants to access that information.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
logging every site that every user visits through an ISP just in case law enforcement want to check up on it later to see if they're viewing illegal material is like putting a camera in every bedroom just in case law enforcement want to check up on it later to see if you've been raping victims in the room.
an equivalent to a warrant to search your house would be a warrant to search your computer not having your ISP recording everything you view for future inspection.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
... people start using it for child pornography transfer and other things that SHOULD be illegal.
This is precisely why these things shouldn't be illegal. At least, possession and transfer of information (including child pornography) shouldn't be illegal. (Of course, abusing children to make child pornography should be illegal, and child pornography itself could very well be evidence of a crime.) The problem is, as soon as you make certain kinds of information illegal, then it would be impossible for ISPs to provide the kind of anonymity many of us would desire. Child pornography makes a wonderful excuse to impose strict data retention laws that affect a wide variety of users.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:5, Insightful)
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[citation needed]
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Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:4, Funny)
ECHELON is now on your tail. Good luck! :)
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How about when someone posts online that they plan to go shoot up their school the next day?
The person who first uttered the threat is committing a crime, just as is the person who created the child pornography, if real children are abused. Are you suggesting it should be illegal to possess a copy of a threat that someone else made?
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Do you think you shouldn't have to pay content creators?
When you get right down to it, yes. I think that. It should be optional at most; works of art that exist as purely commercial exercises will disappear. I'm ok with that. As for other types of imaginary property that don't fall under the term "art" (like patents for physical devices and computer programs) there are better ways to deal with the regulation of who gets to sell them than making ideas (information) illegal - something that should be avoided
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After 10 or 15 years, all copyrighted material, whatever its origin, should be free to copy, download, etc. Keep and protect your oh-so-precious trademarks if you want, and let the credit remain with the creators of the content, but let the content itself fall into the public domain like it is supposed to.
Surely you remember the concept of copyrights that eventually expire? Oh the horror -
Kind of Sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kind of Sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole argument that "only criminals require privacy" is really getting tired.
They offer privacy and anonymity (as the latter can't exist without the former), and there's nothing wrong with aspiring for the two.
People breaking the law, while unfortunate and wrong, is a lesser evil - a necessary sacrifice for a greater good.
Is it free? (Score:2)
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Limits? (Score:3)
How much will it be per month? How much can I transfer per month? Is there a time when downloading is unlimited (such as weekends or between 10pm and 8am). Will they throttle the line during peak hours? What speed can I expect?
Logging my BT transfers is the least of my concerns when choosing an ISP.
Re:Limits? (Score:5, Informative)
Swedish ISP's as a rule don't have limits and tend to cost something along the line of $10 to $40 depending on bandwidth and extra services.
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We currently pay about 300kr a month for a 30Mb connection. I think that's about 30euro / 25pounds / $40. We don't get throttled and there are no limits as far as I know. BT tends to max out at 3MB/s on popular torrents, lower than that if the swarm isn't big enough to saturate the line.
There are cheaper packages available, and our ISP goes up to 100Mb/s symmetric.
how do I get there from here? (Score:4, Funny)
Reason for server logs (Score:4, Funny)
That's going to be fun for the admins when the server falls over and they need to figure out why. /var/log is there for a reason.
Idiots! (Score:4, Insightful)
The stupid pirate party and the stupid Swedish government have just handed a huge propaganda victory to the RIAA. Within a week the entire swedish economy will have ground to a halt and terrorists will be overrunning sweden and building WMDs! Then the RIAA will say "We told you so! Look what happens when ordinary people are allowed freedom!"
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how would you feel if i was able to call up and get your IP from this post - then call your ISP and get your address, along with usage logs so i can approximate when you will be home.
then i'll just go sit on your door step and say hi and talk to your neighbors that i'm just watching you for suspicious activity because you where online talking about keywords "child pornography & terrorism"
now - does it make a difference if i'm wearing a uniform or not?
what if i was a politician and you happened to say so
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Considering those are highly unlikely outcomes, well below the odds of say dieing from the result of a farm animal attack, we can safely ignore it. Terrorism is a very rare way to die.
In those cases they can get warrants and do some wiretapping, this is about wiretapping and logging for later. See the difference?
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And without records you're going to know who to wire-tap how? exactly?
That's right, you're not.
Also, what good is wiretapping going to do when they're not talking over the phone since they don't have to because they can communicate anonymously over the ISP that can't be arsed to save vital documentation?
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I would assume via normal police investigation. You know the kind of stuff you would not need a warrant for.
You can wiretap other wire than just the phone lines, dummy. With a warrent, no need to be logging everything before.
I guess we should come to expect this level of cowardice from english folks.
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If someone said they where going to X school to shoot it up - i would go to the school to stop them
if people where coordinating bombing a subway i would go to the subway to stop them
if i want to speak out about censor ship or have a different view than the current government i don't want them tracking a posting down and throwing me in a dark hole
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Keep your grubby ass backwards notions in real life where they belong. We don't need that kind of bullshit on the internet!
Re:IBTL (Score:5, Insightful)
"... this age of terrorism and child pornography ..."
What the hell? You think this age is "different" some how?
Terrorism is certainly not rampant. Look back a few decades, to say, the fifties or the sixties when there were riots all over the USA.
Child Pornography, hell. Look back a century, "children" were getting married to middle-aged men and having their babies. The only difference is, back then nobody arrested you for it, or even thought twice about it.
"This age" is noted only for everybody being declared a criminal and living in fear that their government is going to lock them up if they happen to say something ... like, say, this post on SlashDot RIGHT HERE.
Re:IBTL (Score:5, Insightful)
Child Pornography, hell. Look back a century, "children" were getting married to middle-aged men and having their babies. The only difference is, back then nobody arrested you for it, or even thought twice about it.
I know, that always kills me. People try to say that they're "kids", yet not that long ago they would be married at that age. Hell, people try to talk down on teenagers and say that they're stupid and such, but it's only because society changed to make them less responsible. 100 years ago many of those high schoolers would have had a job and a family already. That's how things were for thousands of years, then all of the sudden society goes batshit crazy and decides that anyone under 30 is incompetent and needs the government to tell them what they can and cannot do.
I'm all for punishing people who intentionally harm others. However, I'm not for having blanket rules because a few old people who had crappy lives decide that they know better than everyone else.
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Not that much, actually. The apprentice system tended to keep teens under their master's thumbs.
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And really, in this age of terrorism and child pornography is it even a good idea to have an anonymous isp?
Yes, in this age of very real abuse of our rights in freedoms for the sake of fighting largely imaginary and/or irrelevant threats such as terrrorism and child pornography, it is an extremely good idea to have an anonymous ISP.
Oh yes, the promise to pay for a one-way ticket to North Korea applies to you as well, and I'm dead serious here: you get your Big Brother wet dream come true (with minor inconveniences such as a mostly-grass diet, but it's a small price for safety, isn't it?), and we get one less per
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And a hearty fuck you, sir -the health and physical well-being of my family and neighborhood are far more important than your so-called 'right' to download content of questionable legality
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Coward. There is no threat but the imagined one, yet you wish to give up all your rights for a little bit of safety theater.
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the health and physical well-being of my family and neighborhood
Let me put you and your family in a prison I design and I'd be almost certain that your health and physical well-being will be ensured. I'm not sure you'd enjoy it much, though.
***BZZZZZZZT*** wrong (Score:2)
This paves the way for government (through the dominant political parties) to own the ISPs.
This is a BAD THING, do you really want your login and user data being held on neo-conservative servers?
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Yes. I'll watch 1 man 1 jar and post daily in the efukt forums and they'll abandon the policy immediately.