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posted by janrinok on Tuesday December 19 2017, @06:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the arm-twisting dept.

A series of documents released by the US Department of State have revealed how Sweden was pressed to take action against The Pirate Bay. According to US officials, this directly led to law enforcement's decision to shut down the torrent site more than ten years ago. Sweden, meanwhile, avoided a spot on the feared US Trade Representative's 301 Watch List.

[...] The trail starts with a cable sent from the US Embassy in Sweden to Washington in November 2005. This is roughly six months before the Pirate Bay raid, which eventually resulted in criminal convictions for four men connected to the site.

The Embassy writes that Hollywood's MPAA and the local Anti-Piracy Bureau (APB) met with US Ambassador Bivins and, separately, with Swedish State Secretary of Justice at the time, Dan Eliasson. The Pirate Bay issue was at the top of the agenda during these meetings.

"The MPA is particularly concerned about PirateBay, the world's largest Torrent file-sharing tracker. According to the MPA and based on Embassy's follow-up discussions, the Justice Ministry is very interested in a constructive dialogue with the US. on these concerns," the cable reads.

"Embassy understands that State and Commerce officials have also met with Swedish officials in Washington on the same concern," it adds, with the Embassy requesting further "guidance" from Washington.

Source : How The US Pushed Sweden to Take Down The Pirate Bay

[...]

Then the 'inevitable' happened. On May 31, 2006, The Pirate Bay was raided by 65 Swedish police officers. They entered a datacenter in Stockholm with instructions to shut down the Pirate Bay's servers and collect vital evidence.

A few weeks after the raid, the Embassy sent another cable to Washington informing the homefront on the apparent success of their efforts.

"Starting with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) visit to post last fall, Embassy Stockholm has engaged intensely with our Swedish interlocutors in efforts to improve IPR enforcement, in particular with regard to Internet piracy. The actions on May 31 thus mark a significant victory for our IPR efforts."


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:33PM (#611960) Journal

    Your advocacy has had little to no effect to date. Perhaps copyright will be extended even further within the coming decades. Disney-Fox has the power.

    By contrast we have widespread piracy using BitTorrent, online streaming, Kodi boxes/sticks, ebook download sites, and ebook/academic paper sites like Sci-Hub and Library Genesis. Add to that decentralized protocols such as Tor, Freenet, and IPFS. People are starting to throw blockchains into the mix.

    Advocacy is the right way, cyber™ is the effective way.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by unauthorized on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:52PM

    by unauthorized (3776) on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:52PM (#611990)

    Sometimes the course of society reaches an inflection point.

    Civil disobedience is a useful tool and often one of the pivotal steps in deconstructing an inferior position held in high moral regards by the public. Only a few decades ago, the active persecution of drug use was considered a righteous social policy, and frequently by hypocrites who themselves supported the legalization of their drugs of choice (ie nicotine and alchohol). Nowdays the tables have turned and we see mainstream support for the deregulation of many types of formally strictly regulated drugs.

    Who knows which of today's Absolute Moral Evils™ will see social acceptance in another few decades. The only absolute certainty is that nothing will change if nobody is willing to argue for it.

    cyber™ is the effective way

    I strongly disagree. We see more and more attempts to lock down your hardware and rob the consumer from the ability to use it without allowing the powers that be control over it. If this is allowed to continue unchallenged, one day you will not be able to play your pirated movies because VLC will be banned and only approved DRM-protected online-validating binaries run on secure (from the user) cryptoprocessors will be available.

    Sure, you will still be able to acquire open hardware, even if it is inferior, but that's a small consolation for the stifling effect media congloremates have on public culture, once critical mass is reached, they would be able to ensure that competition by small startups is simply impossible, just like the situation with Internet Provides in the US. And I'm not even getting into how closed hardware will ensure that the powers that be have absolute censorship power over the Internet and thus be able to gradually erode the second greatest democratizing force (after guns) in the history of mankind, like a frog who will allow itself to be boiled alive if you increase the temperature slowly enough.

    Trying to work around the powers that be is a losing strategy, they must be challenged on every step and attacked on every opportunity. No ground should ever be yielded freely to those whose interests align against yours.