New Swedish anti-p2p law
p2pnet.net News:- The MPAA and RIAA claim file sharing is “devastating” their owners’ businesses, citing Sweden as a country where uploading and downloading from p2p networks is “rampant”.
Thus, after winning over the hearts and minds of the Swedish government, the entertainment cartels were among the first to know that as of July 1, a law banning the sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet “without payment of royalties” will go into effect.
“Members of parliament stressed in a debate prior to the vote that musicians, writers, filmmakers and others ought to receive fair payment for their work,” says The Local, going on:
“According to Henrik Ponten, legal council at the Swedish Anti-piracy Bureau, ‘the (piracy) problem is bigger in Sweden than in any other country in Europe.’ He said that at least 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million inhabitants use file-sharing programs to download and post illegal copies of films, music and computer games on the Internet.”
Antipiratbyrån’s Pontén is well known for his veracity.
The Swedish parliament also approved a proposal to sharply raise the price of blank CDs, DVDs, videotapes and cassettes to compensate for legal copying of material,” says the story, adding that the new copyrighting law, “will also apply to photocopies of whole books, which is common at Swedish universities where many students consider required reading material too costly”.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s justice minister, Thomas Bodström, wants to ban DRM.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
The Local – Illegal downloaders to face damages claims, May 26, 2005
Antipiratbyrån - Big Music’s Bahnhof Bust, p2pnet, March 22, 2005
Pontén – Swedish anti-p2p site hacked: more, p2pnet, March 15, 2005
Thomas Bodström – Sweden to ban DRM?, p2pnet, May 19, 2005
May 26th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
So does this mean that Pirate Bay will now be under fire from the RIAA and MPAA???
So we wont get to see them make fun of legal threat letters anymore? T_T
May 26th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
I urge all Swedes to start sending cheques to the pertinent institution. Royalties for downloads have been set at $5.00/month by Yahoo. So make out a cheque for that many crowns and mail it off to your government.
Perhaps p2pnet could coordinate this with its Swedish readers? If it takes off their, perhaps we could do the same thing in Canada.
May 26th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
Just like everyone else, their days are numbered – but enjoy it while it lasts. Then move on.
One day, they might find out what those “retractable batons” actually feel like.
May 26th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
I don’t think that it will be a problem. In the case of a torrent site EUCD (I believe that the new sweden act is based on that) is still “normal”.
But in most filesharing cases the practice is different from law. In the case of piratebay, they just offer a communication service. As one of my dc hub op. friend said: “how should I know, wheter he [the uploader] had distribution rights from Dreamworks or not”.
Only from changing the law the practice will not change. (I hope)
May 27th, 2005 at 6:15 am
http://linuxreviews.org/news/2005/02/10_way_to_go_sweeden/
May 28th, 2005 at 8:59 pm
well it’s always been illegal to upload and host files on web in sweden nothing changed there. They only thing it does is to make it illegal to download and to break copy protection on dvds but the law says you can make one copy so that really makes it meaning less. I might be wrong but to take civil action against someone in sweden first there has to be some criminal charges and, if police don’t actively inforce the law nothing will happen. Alot of this is just to come into compliance with the eu directive and if the sweden society does not care not alot can happen even with this new law. I believe the piratebay is still ok as long as there host keeps their balls.
May 29th, 2005 at 8:09 am
All that is crap.
RIAA, and all other asshole rich organization, star, etc make me vomit.
They never have sufficiently money.
Also P2P is good for crap agency like CIA, FBI, etc who want control everything, everybody on this planet.
The only place where they are some freedom again is Internet. The rest belong to fucking rich who want control all.
So why not say P2P is guilty of all and so make control all.
The ONLY thing againts “piracy” is put price lower.
And the fact that asshole RIAA or other spy everybody on Internet will not sell more stuff.
The real idea behind that is CONTROL everybody.
Also I find a lot idiot that 100, 200, few asshole politician have power to decide for million of people.
REAL piracy is to take something where the value is 1 cent and sell that $US 20.
Like asshole music, movies, software do.
Again just sell in a good price (not make 50%, 100%,…,2000% or more profit) and people will buy.
Sell CD/DVD at $2US and you will see people buy a lot.
Also another way is put minimum salary at $US 20/hour.
But sure fucking asshole rich NEVER want that.
They want people live in shit. They feel happy to see people die.
NOTHING change. Except technologies.
Human are same idiot that in past…
May 29th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Please don’t be confused by the translation of Antipiratbyrån (anti piracy bureau). This organisation is in no way connected to the government and is funded only by the entertainment cartels. Basicly it’s MPAA and RIAA in Sweden. Henrik Ponten is their head legal council, who for some peculiar reason doesn’t have any higher education in the subject (revieled by Swedish Piratbyrån (Piracy Bureau) who runs Pirate Bay, the largest torrent site still online (?). Piratbyrån’s Rasmus Fleischer is, btw, was recently ranked as the 10th most important IT-personality here in Sweden by technical weekpaper Ny Teknik).
// Stormmind
May 30th, 2005 at 8:12 am
i live in a nearby country Estonia where only downloading of music and movies for personal usage is legal – could EU force us to make everything illegal? i heard Netherlands is pretty liberal about it where even uploading is legal.