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...
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.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you implying it would be better if they couldn't/didn't?
Re:I predict... (Score:3, Interesting)
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: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.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:1, Interesting)
>child pornography transfer
>things that SHOULD be illegal
You mean, things other than child pornography transfer? Because child pornography transfer definitely shouldn't be illegal.
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
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:IBTL (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:1, Interesting)
All the while I thought, "Is making a death list really illegal?" What about a list for other people might follow? Just wondering.
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 at all costs, regardless of consequences. Programmers can sell their labor instead of the finished product, and a reasonable and short (10-15 years) government granted monopoly can protect a person or company's investment into developing some product. Software patents however, should not in any form be allowed.
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.
Re:Illegal activities need not stay illegal foreve (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Wow, they're not lagging behind at all! (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.integrity.st/ [integrity.st] -- In Swedish, but what it is is a coalition of ISPs pretty much saying "We won't keep logs for longer than is necessary for our daily operations, and we won't go to more lengths than required by Swedish Law to keep and survey logs and traffic."
This PirateISP is, as is a curious trend among many "pirates", a commercial move -- nothing else. If you want your integrity protected, many of the major ISPs in Sweden will gladly boast that they're part of iNTeGriTY.
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 :)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Which is awesome until... (Score:1, Interesting)
> Innocent people need to be watched by the police so that guilty people can't go free.
That's a very naive view. In most cases the opposite is true.
For example, take the so-called child pornography filters that many European countries are considering to implement:
Currently when a citizen runs into said material he can report this to the police. The police can then investigate the matter and possible find and prosecute someone guilty. Additionally, if this citizen tells his friends or the media about the situation he can pressure the police to make the issue a priority. In short: ordinary citizens are able to check both what criminals and the police are doing and act if they feel this is needed.
When a filter is in place, this will no longer happen. Ordinary citizens will not run into the material, hence they are not able to report this to the police. The police themselves, with exception of a special (read corruptible) unit may not even be able to see the material. If nobody sees it, nobody will be bothered to do something about it. The issue becomes a low priority. Meanwhile the pervs continue to share using simple tools to circumvent the filter. Just this time around, they feel much less at risk of being caught because the filter is, essentially, protecting them.
Last but not least, let's not forget that child pornography/abuse has historically been something of those in power. See the Church, the Belgian goverment (case Dutroux), etc, etc. Why give those people a tool allowing them to hide?