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Piracy Crime Government The Courts

Swedish Govt Mulls Tougher Punishments To Tackle Pirate Sites (torrentfreak.com) 70

Authorities in Sweden are mulling new measures to deal with evolving 'pirate' sites. As part of a legislative review, the government wants to assess potential legal tools, including categorizing large-scale infringement as organized crime, tougher sentences, domain seizures, and site-blocking, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: Sweden is now considering its options when it comes to its future prosecutions of large-scale copyright infringement cases. As part of a review now underway, the government is accessing the powers it needs to deal with more serious cases of copyright infringement. Police national coordinator for intellectual property crimes Paul Pinter hopes that any changes will enable police to operate more efficiently in the future. "If you have a felony, you can get access to a whole new toolkit. In the terms of reference for the inquiry, the government mentions almost all of the points that we have previously proposed," he told IDG. Considering the way anti-piracy enforcement has developed over the past several years, few of the suggestions from the police come as a surprise. At the top of the tree is treating pirate site operators as more than just large-scale copyright infringers. The Justice Department says that due to the manner in which sites are organized and the subsequent development of revenue, treating them as self-contained crime operations may be appropriate.
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Swedish Govt Mulls Tougher Punishments To Tackle Pirate Sites

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  • Sweden (Score:2, Insightful)

    Doesn't Sweden have bigger problems, like Muslim rape gangs making it the rape capital of the world?
    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      Are you saying that the Swedes are so mentally challenged they can't fix their rape gang and copyright infringement problems at the same time?
      • I say that they're probably not going to solve either problem.

        If they can, the rest of the world would certainly want to know HOW!

    • Re:Sweden (Score:5, Informative)

      by muffen ( 321442 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @11:27AM (#53774573)

      Doesn't Sweden have bigger problems, like Muslim rape gangs making it the rape capital of the world?

      No, but Sweden does have a very broad definition of rape, things that in many countries wouldn't even be considered illegal, are considered rape in Sweden.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      Anyways, why bother with facts when you can use #alternativefacts, the latter doesn't even require any references.

      • That would only be applicable to the situation if Sweden had high rapes rate that remained unchanged. Instead, it has steadily increased as more and more refugees arrive.

        • Did you know that in the last 15 years there is a very high correlation between the rate of margarine consumption and the divorce rate in Maine, so obviously we if we want to protect children from divorce we should ban margarine (which is a french invention anyways).

    • by drquoz ( 1199407 )
      Short answer:

      No.

      Long answer:

      The Sweden story has become absolutely viral. You’ve probably read a version in a Facebook post, or heard it in a speech or debate. It is the argument-ender of the intolerant: To make the case against refugees, or immigration, or “Islam,” you recount a couple of stories about refugee-camp horrors, some random anecdotes of sex crimes involving brown people in various countries, and then drop the Sweden story.

      Behind it you’ll find the resurrectio
      • by ezdiy ( 2717051 )
        Curious, I always wondered why people in this camp parrot "immigrant rapes are cherry picked cases by nationalists" - and while that is definitely true most of the time, you can still find direct police statistics that african immigrants, per capita, are about 5-10x (depending on city) more likely to commit a crime compared to slav immigrants (read white immigrants). And there's a lot of to compare to, including warzones (yugoslavia 20 years ago, ukraine now). They integrate almost perfectly within few mon
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Rakarra ( 112805 )

        Why the difference? Because people who go to Sweden are poorer, and crime rates are mostly a product not of ethnicity but of class. In a 2013 analysis of 63,000 Swedish residents, Prof. Sarnecki and his colleagues found that 75 per cent of the difference in foreign-born crime is accounted for by income and neighbourhood, both indicators of poverty. Among the Swedish-born children of immigrants, the crime rate falls in half (and is almost entirely concentrated in lesser property crimes) and is 100-per-cent attributable to class – they are no more likely to commit crimes, including rape, than ethnic Swedes of the same family income.

        In other words, do NOT import poor refugees. Sounds like an important lesson to take away.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      What "rape gangs"? You would think that European media would report these, but there is nothing. Seems to be FakeNews that is part of a propaganda campaign serving to keep the US in fear because of "how bad it is in Europe already". Fact is, except for some isolated incidents, this does problem does not exist.

  • by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @11:05AM (#53774349)

    Treating copyright infringement the same as organized crime sounds like an MPAA/RIAA-controlled alternate reality. I guess a lot of money went into "convincing" the right people for this legislative "review".

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Meanwhile, Switzerland decriminalized "piracy" for self-use (i.e. cannot sell pirated materials) as perfectly fucking fine... and nothing bad has happened.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The process was a bit differently though: First, the government commissioned an independent scientific study, i.e. one done by actual reputable scientists, not industry lobbyists and the like. That showed what everybody not utterly dumb already knows: Piracy hurts the big artists somewhat (they still have large profits), but is a boon for the small ones, because they get exposure and more customers that way. Overall, the study concluded that the second effect is a bit stronger than the former and that the g

    • by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @11:23AM (#53774537) Homepage
      While I think the MPAA / RIAA efforts are misplaced, at least they are focusing on the pirate sites instead of everyone else. Like mass lawsuits / extortion letters / settlements with individual downloaders. That approach sure won the hearts and minds of potential customers. Or going after Google because (in their delusional thinking) Google IS the intarwebs, and controls piracy. Or removing Google's links to pirate sites somehow magically makes the piracy disappear. Not even realizing that there are other search engines. Or that people discover the pirate sites by other means than Google. Or realizing that Google might have been a helpful tool to discover pirate sites. And the MPAA / RIAA going after individual online posts of mere links to infringing material. Free clue: If you take down the infringing material, the link becomes irrelevant -- including the hundred additional links that you don't even know about. Then there is the clueless attempts to shut down entire sites, or even entire domains containing multiple sites, over one infringing link -- and thinking this is somehow okay. No concept of the economic damage the MPAA / RIAA is causing. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

      Going after the actual pirate sites is a step in the right direction. It only took these imbeciles ten friggin' years to figure it out. That said, I will still snicker out loud every time I read about pirate sites evading the RIAA / MPAA. I don't visit any pirate sites. But I am far more sympathetic to them than to the RIAA / MPAA.

      Finally, some of these 'pirate sites' are not actually pirate sites at all. Megaupload, for example. Sometimes the RIAA / MPAA goes after an entire 'technology'. Like suing Diamond Rio for making one of the first mp3 player devices! Or the ridiculous Megaupload raid because some people used it for copyright infringement.

      It would be off topic to mention things like Hollywood Accounting, or how record labels screw over artists, or "collection societies" which are nothing more than extortion rackets -- sometimes trying to "collect" on music that they don't even represent. Or the stretching the bounds of copyright beyond recognition, such as playing the radio in an auto mechanic garage counts as a public performance and needs an expensive annual license. So I won't mention those things, since they are off topic.
      • My fave part of the whole DMCA Google thing is that now it's really easy to find what you wanted. Just click the DMCA note at the bottom of your search, and it shows all the sites removed c/o the DMCA. Those are probably the droids you're looking for.
      • While I think the MPAA / RIAA efforts are misplaced, at least they are focusing on the pirate sites instead of everyone else. Like mass lawsuits / extortion letters / settlements with individual downloaders. That approach sure won the hearts and minds of potential customers.

        I think you missed a key word.

        While I think the MPAA / RIAA efforts are misplaced, at least they are NOW focusing on the pirate sites instead of everyone else. Like mass lawsuits / extortion letters / settlements with individual down

    • by muffen ( 321442 )
      This was the result of an "investigation" asked for by the goverment, and the reason for treating large-scale copyright infringement more harshly is because the rules in Sweden mean that the police are very limited in what they can do, if they crime in question cannot end with a prison sentence of minimum 2 years.
      Combined with that, the recent case against "Swefilmer" shows that they made euro 1 400 000 from advertisement, so they goverment feels that slapping a fine on an operation such as swefilmer is n
      • Combined with that, the recent case against "Swefilmer" shows that they made euro 1 400 000 from advertisement, so they goverment feels that slapping a fine on an operation such as swefilmer is not sufficient.

        Prolly not, as is. On the other hand, if the fine were Euro 2 000 000.....

    • by Phusion ( 58405 )
      a.i. capone
  • Mobile pirate sites in Swedish waters are already subject to Swedish law. [telegraph.co.uk]

    I'm pretty sure it's already a felony.

  • I'm all in favor of dealing with those who make a profession out of breaking the law, but the the basis of those laws must be reasonable. Clearly though, IP litigators have been give the keys to the kingdom and free reign to make their own laws. Culture is not an IP. And fair use has always been a key point of IP law that historically rests on perpetual ownership of an instance (book/record/disk/painting/etc) of that IP. Licensing IP for a limited time to people as you would to another company is uncon
  • by Roger Wilcox ( 776904 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @04:03PM (#53776743)

    20 years later and there's still no solid evidence that online "piracy" actually financially harms anybody.

    Information wants to be free and that is never going to change. How many times do we have to go over this?

    • Like global warming being increased by carbon dioxide releases, it pretty much makes sense that it would have _some_ effect. Even though 95% or so that get it free probably would just go without if they had to pay for it.
  • I'd recommend keelhauling them!
  • In case Sweden hasn't been paying attention, the Hollywood backed President together with his Best-Buddies-With-MPAA-Boss-VP are out the door. What they have now is a President that has been treated by Hollywood (right or wrong doesn't matter) with utter contempt and disrespect. So what happens if those same people come begging for "strengthening IP protections" and the usual demands? Stop kissing up the boss's behind for now.

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

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