|
[END OF
QUOTE]
One mass media organ which was very pleased with this raid was the main
international newspaper of the US imperialists, the International
Herald Tribune. It wrote, in its Net edition, on 31.05,
[QUOTE:]
Briefing: Raid in Sweden aims at illegal file sharing
The Associated Press
WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2006
STOCKHOLM Raid in Sweden aims at illegal file sharing
The police cracked down on illegal file sharing Wednesday, raiding
about 10 locations in central Sweden, detaining three suspects for
questioning and shutting down a popular site called The Pirate Bay.
Three Swedes, ages 22, 24 and 28, were suspected of violating copyright
laws but had not been formally arrested, said Ulf Goranzon, a police
spokesman. He said that they were linked to The Pirate Bay.
The actions were applauded by the Motion Picture Association of
America, which says that movie studios lost $6.1 billion to piracy last
year.
Last year, a Swedish court handed down the country's first Internet
piracy conviction, fining a man 16,000 kronor, or $2,200, for using a
file-sharing network to distribute a movie online. The verdict was
hailed by the entertainment industry as a first step toward stricter
enforcement of copyright laws in Sweden, which has been
criticized as a safe haven for online piracy.(AP)
[END OF QUOTE]
Mikael Viborg, the legal advisor of The Pirate Bay, recounted on 01.06
how the hit against him took place, at the English-language part
of his blog "The take
down of The Pirate Bay",
[QUOTE:]
Operation Take Down
For those of you not skilled in the Swedish language the
debate that has taken place in Sweden following the take down of The
Pirate bay may not have been that easy to grasp. I'll try to break it
down to you. First of all I am the legal advisor to The Piratebay. You
may or may not know me by my alias "Judas_I".
This is what happened. The
unedited truth, delivered to you from an insiders perspective.
On Wednesday the 31st of May I had just returned to my home in
Köping and just started to relax when I hear that there is someone
at the door. This "someone" turned out to be four police officers from
both Rikskriminalen (the equivalent of the FBI) and the local police.
They told me that they had come to arrest me and bring me in for
questioning. Being a trained law professional I immediately asked them
about the circumstances of this questioning and they replied that I was
a suspect in a copyright infringement case.
At this point I told the nice officers to kindly step outside and wait
for me to return. This suggestion did not generate the expected action.
They had no intention of leaving. They were there to stay. Kind of like
that bad hangover you get from drinking to much dark ale and moonshine.
Apparently they had an order do search the premises for eventual
contraband.
I'm then swiftly removed from the apartment and shipped with no further
delay to the local police station for questioning. I ask for a lawyer
to be present and my request is granted, which is more than can be said
in the case of Gottfrids (known as Anakata) questioning. He was
summarily denied the right to legal representation during questioning.
The "questioning", if it actually qualifies as that, begins. They only
seem to want to know answers to questions they already have the answers
to. Questions that I KNOW for a fact that they already know the answers
to. The hearing lasts for only about 15 minutes and I get a chance to
talk to the lawyer present in private.
While talking the officer conducting the hearing suddenly enters the
room only to inform me that an order has been issued by the prosecutor
to collect a DNA-sample from me. For an instant I think that she is
trying to make a tasteless joke. But I can tell from her facial
expression that she is not. Do I sense a touch of rapture from her? Is
she enjoying this as much as I am NOT enjoying it?
(Note that a court order is not needed to get a DNA-sample in Sweden.
Only an executive decision by the prosecutor handling the case. The
only criteria that he has to adhere to are that jail must be a possible
punishment for the crime and that the person forced to leave the sample
is under justified suspicion of the crime. However an infringement into
someone’s right to protection from invasive procedures of this
magnitude requires that a criterion of necessity and proportionality is
considered. "Luckily" in this case the prosecutor is not one know from
listening to whiny arguments about personal freedoms and other such
nancy stuff)
the spirits in Köpings small police station are high today. They
have finally caught one of the "big fish", a real menace to society,
one of the devils disciples on earth: A trained law professional that
ACTUALLY tells IMMORAL filesharingpromotors what the law of the land
says about file sharing! Finally all the good people of the Swedish
antipiracy agency and their good Masters in the west can breath easily
again.
Soon after this travesty I am released from custody and able to return
home only to discover that they have ceased just about all of my
electronic equipment. Even my keyboard, my microphone, two TFT flat
screens and a multitude of cables. I immediately understand that
especially the microphone will yield important information that will
help bring me to justice. They had found the ACTUAL "smoking keyboard"!
On Thursday the 1st of June some
of the smoke clears
Apparently the take down has been orchestrated by the MPAA lobbying the
US department of foreign affairs to in their turn put pressure on the
Swedish department of foreign affairs. This result in those
representatives for the Swedish authorities of justice visits the US.
Here they are told that there has to be a final solution to the pirate
bay problem, they also informs the Swedish delegates how such a
solution should be implemented.
Upon returning to Sweden the Swedish minister of justice, Thomas
Bodström, is informed about the situation and in short he acts in
a way that is way outside his sphere of legal influence, ignoring the
separation of powers and affectively, through his secretary of the
state, ORDERS the police and attorneys office to take action against
The Piratebay even though both the police and the attorneys office had
already told him that they lacked the legal grounds to launch such an
investigation.
[END OF QUOTE]
At the blog "The Pirate Bay Issue
- English Translation" managed by Piratpartiet, the Pirate Party,
which is a political party advocating the complete and unequivocal
legalization, by the Swedish state, of file sharing (that blog is
another good source of information on the question of this police
attack, its ramifications and how to combat such dealings; it recently
has reported among other things the creation of a parallel party in the
USA, and it should be noted of course that that party in Sweden is
something different from the organization Piratbyrån, the Pirate
Bureau, which started the The Pirate Bay website but which since
mid-2004 is something different from that website too), there on 31.05
was this press release, followed by a note by the blogger on some
background facts which I'm also reproducing here:
[QUOTE:]
PRESS RELEASE
To be published immediately
May 31st 2006
Movie industry tricked the
police into shutting down Piratbyrån.
Today, the police performed a razzia against The Pirate Bay, the
world's largest Bittorrent tracker. The site has been a meeting place
for people with an interest in culture for several years. With the help
of the Bittorrent technology, everything from school essays to obscure
japanese music to videos of the ESC final has been effectively spread.
There has been no illegal content on the servers whatsoever. The
torrent files, links used by people to connect to each others and
download the material simply contains descriptive text, text which is
certainly not copyrighted.
"Antipiratbyrån has obviously misled the police in this case",
says Tobias Andersson of Piratbyrån. "They seem to have convinced
technologically impaired police men that the servers are filled with
copyrighted materials. This is a severe misuse
of tax money".
"At the same time, several other pages residing on nearby servers have
been shut down. It is here we find their most severe violation.
Antipiratbyrån apparently tricked the police into shutting down
their antagonists, Piratbyrån."
"For three years, Piratbyrån has worked for an open debate on
copyright and patent issues. We are very disappointed in the fact that
the movie industry doesn't want to face us in a debate, but instead
tries to trick politicians and law enforcement into criminalizing their
opponents and a great part of the swedish people."
"In practice, this means nothing to the file sharers of the world.
There are thousands of other pages and networks where they can acquire
what they want. People will only move on to the next place. File
sharing is like a hydra; chop one head of, and two new grow back up in
its place."
Piratbyrån was started in the summer of 2003 in order to shine
light upon and discuss copyright issues. Piratbyrån suggests that
copyright in many cases has played its part, and instead of protecting
artists is currently hindering creativity as well as supporting the
few. Since its founding, about 60 000 people have registered as members
on the site, where they debate in the forums and exchange tips.
Piratbyrån has also held speeches in riksdagen, started several
campaigns and founded the world's largest bittorrent tracker, The
Pirate Bay.org
[End of the press release]
Notes
The part about criminalizing a large part of the swedish population
refers to the new copyright law that was taken into effect Juli 1st,
2005. Before that, downloading files was legal due to the way fair use
was implemented (a loop hole, you could say). It was, however, illegal
to upload copyrighted files even before then. Antipiratbyrån is
the swedish version of the MPAA (maybe even the swedish section of the
MPA?).
Conclusion
As you've read, not only The Pirate Bay was taken down.
Piratbyrån's site was a popular meeting place for swedish
pirates, and was of course inconvenient for the industry. There have
also been unverified claims that other web sites and servers have
disappeared, all of which were hosted at the same place as The Pirate
Bay and Piratbyrån.
posted by QauNuckShin at 10:27 PM
[END OF QUOTE]
An article on 01.06 at that same blog of the Pirate Party's commented
thus on the events,
[QUOTE:]
Pirate hunt 2006
This is an article posted in the swedish magazine ETC. It is written by
Mika Sjöman, active in the Pirate Party, and a candidate for the
riksdag, should the Pirate Party get enough votes this fall.
Legal outrages flourish; pirates hunted in light of election
2006
Yesterday, Sweden once again became interesting in the international
news channels. The media reported about how the world's largest
(swedish) file sharing community, Piratebay, was haunted by the police
with the help of Antipiratbyrån, the lobbyists of the American
movie industry.
I've previously written in the ETC Magazine about how us pirates
politically protect every man's right to take part of culture and
knowledge. We believe that everyone should have the right to
participate in the digital culture, since it doesn't cost a single
crown to give everyone access to it. If the main issue is paying
musicians and writers, we can find an infinite amount of great
solutions. The record companies are no longer needed for the
distribution, but only for production, even though they refuse to
accept this fact. Why should they, when they're making billions on the
currently implemented, outdated copyright law? With the possibility of
file sharing, we have a fantastic opportunity to give everyone a social
citizenship, that is, public access to a modern version of the public
library.
When the law on file sharing from 2005, grouped with all the
established government parties [all seven of them; the Pirate party is
not one], supposed to imbue fear into the citizens and anguish,
terrible things happen.
Yesterday, one of the Pirate party's former board members was
apprehended by the police and brought in for interrogation because he
was also the legal advisor of Piratebay. He was pulled into a police
station and was forced to supply a DNA sample, even after pointing out
to them that his involvement with the organisation was simply that of a
legal advisor. The police told him that he should be more careful who
he chooses to represent, upon which he answered that this is exactly
what legal advisors are for [advising someone on law issues]. You see,
the legal advisor is currently on his last year of the lawyer education
at the university. If this is the way the police reasons, you may want
to think twice before becoming a lawyer in future Sweden.
Another legal outrage, originating earlier in the day, was the
confiscation of The Pirate Bay's servers by the police on orders from
the prosecutor. You see, the police didn't just pull the plug on the
servers providing completely legal torrent files, but also on the
political organisation Piratbyrån that is not affiliated with the
Piratebay organisation. A political organisation trying to affect the
ways their issues are handled in the election movement of 2006.
Those who choose to accept the fact that politically active legal
advisors and organisations are abused and forced to supply DNA samples
as described above can't relax just yet, however. There were other
things going on at the same time. Because of the prosecutor's blind
rampage, several web-based swedish companies without any connection to
The Pirate Bay were taken off the web. This is because the enforcers of
the law didn't make a separation between the Piratebay and the server
space of other organisations. Several business owners called activists
of the Pirate party, asking what the hell is up with Sweden. They felt
like outlaws. Even more subtly, the most important distribution channel
for free musicians, that is the musicians who spread the music without
record company contracts, disappeared. Some of the calls we had were
from insanely pissed off musicians who are using Piratebay as their
sole source of marketing in order to get gigs. What does the minister
of law [Thomas Bodström] have to say about this criticism?
At the same time we must ask minister of law Thomas Bodström why
the social democrats are letting us down on their election vow to not
re-divide police and prosecutor resources to hunt down file sharers.
Maybe the minister of law is not a hypocrite, but isn't it time for him
and the leaders of the established parties, who only last week
criticised their own criminalisation of the file sharers, to blindly
trust the voices of the lobbyists?
Sweden is wonderful, but we must never allow the development of a legal
machine that in appears to almost randomly perform these atrocities. To
defend ourselves, we must protect the principle of the right to
privacy, one of the Pirate party's three corner stones. During the
spring, the head of police has propagated DNA registration of suspects
in papers like Göteborgs-posten. If the legal system is so easy to
abuse that even political organisation's legal advisors are tried, we
should stop taking their word on legally secure solutions.
Yesterday, the Pirate party's member count increased by 25%, and by
that, the place as the absolutely largest new party outside of the
riksdag was secured. It's sad it had to happen with the help of an
American lobbyist organisation, but we promise that if we get into the
riksdag, we will do everything it takes to stop it forever. The social
democrats will not be allowed to legalize their illegal surveillance,
and neither is the Anti-piracy lobby. They haven't earned that trust.
Mika Sjöman
Riksdag candidate of the Pirate party
[END OF QUOTE]
One of the outrages and utter illegalities pointed to in that article
was commented on more in detail in another, at the same blog,
[QUOTE:]
The Police seized the wrong servers in the raid against The
Pirate Bay
The police has seized many servers not affiliated with The Pirate Bay.
But the police refuses to even reveal who, what or what the raid was
directed at.
The police took many servers during the raid yesterday. Neither the
prosecutor Håkan Roswall nor the press contact of the police will
reveal at who the razzia was really targeted. As it seems, the police
went in and seized all the servers in the perimeter, without
determining to whom they belonged.
One of the servers confiscated by the police was a Counter Strike
gaming server owned by the gaming association Birdie.org, which was
physically residing in one of the web service providers the police
raided. Another was a private server run by Lezgin Bakircioglu [See the
article translated from SvD].
- The gaming server was the prize in a competition held in Uppsala
during the weekend. Fifteen 16-year olds had just won it. It was their
machine, Lezgin Bacircioglu says.
The prosecutor, Håkan Roswall, says he can't even answer the
question on who or what the razzia was targeted.
According to Port 80 that had servers of The Pirate Bay in their server
rooms, the search warrant said The Pirate Bay was the target. According
to a source close to Henrik Pontén [head lawyer of
Antipiratbyrån, sorely hated by swedish file sharers], the target
was the web service provider PRQ. On the web site of The Pirate Bay, it
says the police showed a search warrant on The Pirate Bay, and that
they [the police] were shown which servers belonged to The Pirate Bay.
Despite the fact that these servers were clearly marked [as being TPB],
the police also brought servers belonging to Piratbyrån with
them. According to The Pirate Bay, they are separate organisations.
Police spokesman Ulf Göranzon says:
- There is an investigation in progress, and we can't reveal under
which circumstances we struck, or against whom. The purpose is to
secure evidence to investigate suspicions of crime against the
copyright law. The investigation is protected by law of secrecy, says
Ulf Göranzon.
The police have published a web site where they encourage people who
have had their servers seized to call 08-401 04 11 or fax a description
of the server and its contents to 08-401 04 14. Since not even to staff
answering that phone will tell us what the raids were all about, it's
hard to know who can claim their innocence. Anyone wanting their
property back will just have to call and hope they're not suspected of
copyright crimes.
Säkerhet & Sekretess encourages everyone affected by this
razzia to contact us. Among these are regular citizens who have had
their e-mail [server?] confiscated, their web shops closed down, their
World of Warcraft guild web page eradicated, and the british company
Gameswitch, which has written a very critical protest against the
seizure of their servers from PRQ by the swedish police. One of the
employees of Gameswitch says equipment worth 90 000 crowns [about US
$12 200], and the police won't answer their questions. They only have
an invitation to fax in their information to the prosecutor about what
their machine contains.
Among the sites that are gone are:
http://www.snabbstart.com
http://www.fragbite.com
http://www.istheshit.net
http://www.planka.nu
http://www.snatta.nu
http://www.anstalten.nu
http://www.prq.se
http://www.muffinmiltia.net
http://www.ccnordic.net
Many of those who have contacted us are upset as they feel as though
they were criminals simply because they placed their servers at a
low-price company.
Jonas Eriksson from Umeå writes:
I've been in contact with the police, but the only reply I got was that
I had to send a fax in, and they would determine if the release of my
server was to be prioritized. This is because they're low on resources.
You'd think that "You've taken my server without any just cause. Give
it back before jk [justitiekanslern, an instance for reviewing actions
of the law enforcement] eats you alive" would be sufficient, but
apparently not in this case. Furthermore, it's highly notable that the
police performed a raid which is bigger than they can handle themselves.
Apparently, the police, in spite of clearly marked servers, have
clearly crossed the line concerning what servers were seized. The
reason for this can only be speculated in. A broad definition?
Incompetent investigators? A conspiracy of Antipiratbyrån, who
are rumoured to have been represented both now and at the raid at the
Internet service provider Bahnhof a year ago?
Another reader writes:
We are struck by this, and have no relation to TPB or any "Piracy
activities" whatsoever. Our service were planned to be launched withing
2 weeks, and is mainly directed to an audience with an interest in
computer games, with some news and a community. The servers are using
unix and open source code exclusively.
We chose prq about a month ago, mostly because of their priceworthy
operation service. I called the police yesterday and was told to write
and fax a letter to them. I [have] done that, and I'm waiting for an
answer about what's going on with my servers.
Fabian Mossberg writes:
I run a community called Anstalten.nu, and we're about 120 000 members
wondering what the police's interest in our servers is. A meeting place
on the web for youth, where you can discuss politics, friendship,
music, books and movies. There has been no illegal content on our site,
and, most importantly, we have absolutely NO connection to PirateBay,
except the fact that we APPARENTLY were located at the same place.
For us operating these sites this means big problems. Partly because we
lose out on all the new members (about 2-3 hundred a day), but more
importantly, all our active members are finding other places to hang
out right nu, and there's a risk that we'll be losing members. This is
critical to us.
I thought Sweden was a democracy, a country where the work of the
police force worked, but here, many young business owners have been
sorely aware of the ignorance of the police. Photos of The Pirate Bay's
servers have been available on their site, so it shouldn't have been
hard to identify those.
PLEASE, help us to spread this problem through the news reports!
This article will be updated as we get more information.
[END OF QUOTE]
A tell-tale statement by the lawyer of the "Anti-Pirate
Bureau"
The same Pirate Party blog also has noted something which Håkan
Pontén, the Anti-Pirate Bureau's lawyer, said in an interview to
the newspaper Dagens Industri on 01.06 and later - obviously
untruthfully - denied having said, and which clearly shows that the
persons behind the police raid were quite conscious of its outrageous,
flagrantly illegal character as an attack against elementary democratic
rights of the people, and that this was precisely what they intended.
Here's the blog's report and comment on this.
[QUOTE:]
Antipiratbyrån: They've
caused great damage
[Quoting from the interview in Dagens Industri:]
Henrik Pontén, lawyer at Antipiratbyrån, are you satisfied
after this wednesday's police raid on the pirate site The Pirate Bay
which Antipiratbyrån has been fighting fiercely for a long time?
"Yes, I'm happy that the police have started working with these
matters. At the same time, we here at Antipiratbyrån have
primarily worked against the copyright-hostile organisation
Piratbyrån, the ones behind the site. The Pirate Bay is at the
bottom of the chain, even if the damage they've done is very extensive."
Why is it that it's taken so long before anything happened in this
case? The Pirate Bay has been around for about 2,5 years now?
"That's a question I'll have to refer to the police."
How will you proceed in this matter?
"It's all in the hands of the police now, so we'll have to wait and see
what happens in the investigation. But in the future, there is
certainly the possibility of demanding that damages be payed."
Are you worried The Pirate Bay will be resurrected?
"The people behind it have already announced a promise, but that's in
line with their outwards profiling. You should remember the servers
seized by the police will cost hundreds of thousands crowns to replace.
We'll just have to wait and see."
What's your view on the web hosting company Bahnhof, which you earlier
have reported to the police, last week announced an appeal for
Integrity marking among the service providers in order to protect their
customers? Is this something that will make it more difficult for you
in the fight against pirates?
"It's worth lots of welcomes and appraisal if the service providers
want to pick up the debate on on-line integrity.Of course, they have
never supplied information on their customers before, so the real
difference won't really be that huge. It's a punch in the air, really."
Now that one of your largest targets are gone, what happens?
"Our goal is to make the Internet something good for everyone involved,
for both consumers and producers. Our work is to first supply legal
alternatives, something that is expanding as we speak, and after that
reach people with our
information. Legal actions are our third choice. Going as far as it has
in this case is rare."
Notes
Ok, now read his first answer again. Unless Pontén has been
severely misquoted, this means bringing Piratbyrån down was the
main purpose of all of this. It is true that Piratbyrån started
The Pirate Bay, but since it shadowed its other work, they were
separated in the middle of 2004. Piratbyrån is simply a web site
with news and discussion forums concerning copyright law and patents.
Can it be that Antipiratbyrån has actually aimed for, and
succeeded at, violating our constitutional right to free speech and our
own opinions? It certainly seems so. The worst part is that they
managed
to trick the police into doing this for them. It also seems
Pontén is aware that the charges pressed will not lead to
anything; he seems pleased that the investigation will cripple The Bay
for a while, since all the servers will be kept for as long as the
investigation is going on. He seems very smug about it..
Addition (June 2nd)
Read this. Henrik Pontén claims to have been misquoted in this
interview. The quote on di.se has been changed. The part that
previously said
Yes, I'm happy that the police have started working with these matters.
At the same time, we here at Antipiratbyrån have primarily worked
against the copyright-hostile organisation Piratbyrån, the ones
behind the site. The Pirate Bay is at the bottom of the chain, even if
the damage they've done is very extensive.
..now says
Yes, I'm happy that the police have started working with these matters.
For a long time, The Pirate Bay has been a large distributor of
copyrighted files. The damage they've caused is very extensive.
Wow. Just, wow. This is clearly a post-construction. There is no way
they could've misquoted him that severely. Personally, I'm hoping for a
recording of the interview to be released. I'm guessing that won't
happen, though.
posted by QauNuckShin at 8:12 PM
[END OF QUOTE]
The important demonstrations on 3 June
On the preparations for these, again at the Pirate Party's blog,
[QUOTE:]
Friday, June 02, 2006
Demonstrations ahoy!
It appears a couple of demonstrations will take place tomorrow, on June
3rd, in Stockholm and Göteborg (the two largest cities in Sweden;
Göteborg may be called Gothenburg in English). They will be
arranged by mainly by Piratbyrån and the Pirate Party in
Stockholm and Gothenburg, respectively, but there are some youth
sections of the established riksdag parties that will be there showing
their support, too.
The demands are that all the seized servers are returned, all
investigations are dropped, and that the DNA samples be destroyed. They
also demand explanations from everyone responsible, in extension
minister of law Thomas Bodström.
Sympathizers have been told to bring CD's and a good mood, and while
they are encouraged to leave their sabres at home, parrots are welcome.
posted by QauNuckShin at 5:59 PM
[END OF QUOTE]
As already mentioned above, some 600 people demonstrated in Stockholm
and 300 in Göteborg.
Here's the speech by one of the speakers in Stockholm, in translation
at the Pirate Party's blog, which also has pictures from the
demonstrations.
[QUOTE:]
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Demonstration speech.
Pics! [For links to those, see the blog]
This speech was held by Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge during the
Stockholm demonstration on June 3rd.
*** *** *** Translation
Friends, citizens, pirates:
There is nothing new under the sun.
My name is Rickard Falkvinge, and I'm the leader of the Pirate Party.
During the last week, we've seen several examples of legal outrages.
We've seen the police abusing the measures available to them [the DNA
test]. We've seen the actions of the entertainment industry. We've seen
high-profile politicians mobilizing in order to protect the
entertainment industry.
All of this is scandalous without parallel. That is why we stand here
today.
The entertainment industry wants to convince us it's all about payment
solutions, about the way a certain group of workers will be payed. That
it's about their diminishing sales figures, about dry statistics. It's
a pretext. It's about something entirely different.
To understand today's situation in the light of history, we need to go
400 years back, back to when the church had a monopoly on culture and
knowledge. What the church said, went. Pyramid communication. There is
one person at the top, talking to a number of others down a pyramid.
The culture and knowledge had a source, and that source was the church.
And may God have mercy on the one who dared to challenge the church's
monopoly on culture and knowledge! They were subjected to the most
horrible legal abuse conceivable, at the time. Under no circumstances
did the church allow the citizens to spread information on their own,
they governed the whole law enforcement; prevention, punishment and
harassment.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Today, we know the only right thing for the evolution of society was to
let the knowledge go free. That Galileo Galilei was right. Even if he
was infringing on the knowledge monopoly.
We're talking about a time when the church went out in full force,
promoting the idea that citizens didn't have to learn to read and
write, since the priest would tell them everything they needed to know
anyway. The church knew what it would mean if they lost their control.
Along came the printing press.
Suddenly, there was not only one source of knowledge to listen to, but
several. The citizens - who had started to learn to read - could take
part of unsanctioned knowledge. The church was furious. The royal
families were furious. The British royal family even went so far as to
forging a law that said only printers specially approved by the royal
family were allowed to print books, multiply knowledge and culture for
the citizens.
That law was called "copyright".
Then, a couple of hundred years passed by, and the freedom of the press
was created. But everywhere, the same old model of communication still
existed: one person talking to the many. There were different people to
listen to, but everywhere, one person talking to the many. This was
used by the state in introducing a system of a "liable publisher".
The citizens will indeed be able to take part of knowledge, but there
will always be someone to answer if they - oh, horrible thought - take
part of the wrong knowledge.
And this is what is changing in the foundation today. Because the
Internet no longer abides by this model. We no longer simply download
culture and knowledge. We upload at the same time too, to others [like
I do! Yay!]. We share files. Knowledge and culture have, amazingly,
lost its central point of control.
This is the central point of my whole address, so I'm going to go into
it in deeper detail:
Downloading is the old mass medium model where this is a central
control point, a control point with a responsible publisher liable,
with the risk of their press subsidy being revoked and so on and so
forth, where everyone can download knowledge and culture from the
central point of control, that can give and take away rights as they
see fit.
Culture and knowledge monopoly. Control.
File sharing constitutes simultaneous up- and downloading from every
connected person, and completely lacks central control; it's a
situation where all culture and information organically flows between
millions of different people at the same time. Fundamentally different.
This is something completely new in the history of human communication.
There is no longer anyone to hold responsible if the wrong knowledge is
spread.
That is why the companies talk so much about legal downloads. Legal.
Downloads. Because they are trying to make the only legal thing to be
fetching from the central point under their control. Downloading, not
file sharing.
And this is exactly why we are going to change the law.
During the last week, we've seen how far a player is prepared to go to
prevent loss of control. We saw the constitution being violated. We saw
how forced measures [poor translation; it refers to the DNA sample] and
restrictions of personal integrity were used by the police, not for
fighting crime, but for the obvious purpose of harassing the ones
involved and everyone who have been anywhere near them.
There is nothing new under the sun, and history always repeats itself.
This isn't about compensation for a certain group of workers. This is
about control over culture and knowledge, because he who controls them,
controls the world.
The entertainment industry has tried to shame us, telling us what we're
doing is illegal, that we're pirates. They're trying to push us down
under some rock. Look around you today - see how they've failed. Yes,
we're pirates. But one who thinks being a pirate is a shame is
mistaken. It's something we're proud of.
Because we've already seen what it means to be without central control.
We've already tasted, felt and smelled the freedom of being without a
central monopoly of culture and knowledge. We've already learned to
read
and write.
And we're not about to forget how to read and write, just because it's
not fit in the eyes of the media of the yesteryear.
MY NAME IS RICKARD, AND I'M A PIRATE!
[END OF QUOTE]
On the character of the 31.05 attack (Comment by me)
Although this was not a sanguinary event, it must be characterized as
really a terror attack, not only because of its many flagrant
violations of (bourgeois) Swedish law, but above all because it
was spearheaded against the freedom of speech on the Internet.
That freedom is very important today, namely, most of all in its
political aspect, since the Internet is a most important tool for
international political discussions on the questions of today's social
system, above all on whether, and if so how, the present world "order"
must be brought down by joint actions of the people in all countries
and replaced by one by which the vast majority of people really rule
this planet.
By this attack, the ruling bourgeoisie in this country showed - one
more - that it's really nothing else than a reactionary mob, which
thinks nothing of breaking its own so-called laws when it comes to
attacking ordinary people and defending its own exploiting and
oppressing rule, and also that it in such matters is liable to kowtow
to that international "overlord" of all bourgeoisie in the world, US
imperialism.
What was at stake in this case, most directly, of course, were some
commercial interests (of some very big international companies'); it
was above all this that caused the recent police attack here in Sweden.
But the effect of such things concerning the question of
political democracy will be most serious too, if they are allowed
to occur and perhaps to continue. They must be combated by the people
everywhere, as was done for instance by the demonstrators in this
country on 3 June and as is being done by many others in other ways
too.
One limitation which the abovequoted Pirate Party has shows up in a
statement at its website (in translation by me):
"...Unfortunately, the lawmaking has developed in a quite contrary
direction [to that of expressly allowing filesharing]. On 1 July 2005,
suddenly over a million of ordinary Swedes got classified as criminals,
just because they are downloading movies and music. This not only is
detrimental to our possibilities of acquainting ourselves with the
culture. In the long run, it also undermines the confidence in the
entire judicial system. The development in that direction must be
stopped."
That statement on the whole of course is quite correct. Only, one
should not be sorry but on the contrary pleased, when certain actions
engaged in and certain laws passed by the ruling bourgeoisie (in
Sweden, for instance) are undermining ordinary people's confidence in
those persons' judiciary system, since that system doesn't deserve any
confidence at all.
There are several other instances of flagrant breaking of its own laws
by the ruling bourgeois mob here in Sweden, several of them for
instance in connection with that other desperate attack against modern
civilization, likewise orchestrated internationally above all by US
imperialism, the campaign against the peaceful utilization of nuclear
energy. On this, see several articles of mine under
"Anti-nuclear-energy campaign" in my homepage section "Subjects in postings". Also
in connection with their striving to cover up the real background of
the assassination in 2003 of foreign minister Anna Lindh -
undoubtedly by the US imperialists too - both prime minister Göran
Persson and the minister of justice, Thomas Bodström, flagrantly
violated elementary constitutional principles by publicly declaring the
later convicted scapegoat for that assassination to be "guilty"
before he had even been charged with that crime, let alone put to
trial for it. On this, see for instance Info #213en, part 1/2.
The struggle for freedom of the Internet is an important part of the
struggle against that entire imperialist bourgeoisie which still rules
the world.
More information on that struggle and how it continues now you'll find
for instance at those websites from which I have quoted above. The
website Flashback is another
good source of information in English on this.
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