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."
Related Stories
A decade ago this week, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Carl Lundström were all found guilty of 'assisting in making copyright content available' via their site, The Pirate Bay. Each was sentenced to a year in jail and their fines totaled over $3 million. Now ten years on, the site has a life of its own without those four. It has been the target of a many takedown notices and has even been blocked multiple times.
Ten years ago this week, four men were found guilty and sentenced to prison for running The Pirate Bay. At the time, Peter Sunde said that the site would continue, no matter what. A decade on he has been proven absolutely right and that in itself is utterly remarkable.
Earlier on SN:
The Pirate Bay Turns 15 Years Old (2018)
How The Pirate Bay Helped Spotify Become a Success (2018)
The Man from Earth Sequel "Pirated" on The Pirate Bay - By Its Creators (2018)
How The US Pushed Sweden to Take Down The Pirate Bay (2017)
What's a Digital Copy Worth? Not Much, Says Peter Sunde's New Machine (2015)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday December 19 2017, @06:11PM (13 children)
Likely as with FATCA: extra-legal threats of financial consequences.
Copyright is so out of control that it needs to simply die. Nuke it from orbit. After the dust settles, we can look for a replacement solution.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @06:23PM (3 children)
Advocate for legal changes if you want, but focus on the technical. Untraceable and decentralized filesharing undermines copyright, no matter how out of control copyright length and other aspects have become. And by focusing on the technical side you can prevent broader censorship and surveillance as well.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:06PM (2 children)
I advocate for the legal and lawful abolition of copyright. Unnatural monopolies should not be allowed to exist.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)
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
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.
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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:11PM (5 children)
Hollywood asked our local coppers to get their guns out and raid Kim Dotcom's house. I'm not sure any threats were needed as they seem pretty keen to act like Rambo if they can. It turns out some of what they did was actually illegal, but I don't imagine anything will change.
Here's Kim settling [arstechnica.com] out of court over the actual raid. I would imagine that everyone involved was keen to keep the details hushed up.
I am still unsure why copyright infringement is even a criminal offense.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)
> I am still unsure why copyright infringement is even a criminal offense.
Because life is all about making and spending money. Anyone trying to enjoy themselves without spending money is a dirty commie hippie unamerican terrorist.
And also because distributors and agents need to be paid, so that some money may trickle down to the original "artist" entertaining you.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:13PM (1 child)
Copyright infringement is not IMHO the problem. We put broadcasts on tape and taped TV shows and the entertainment industry was stronger than ever.
The problem is the P2P nature of the early internet. Which meant YOU could pick ANY song from ANY one without leaving a trace.
In other words, the propaganda, pardon, entertainment industry was losing CONTROL OF DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS.
When you fsck with money, nobody important cares, because you inherently submit to its power by stealing it.
When you fsck with wealth, yellow card.
When you fsck with control, you are enemy of the system, which will look for any way to restore its proper authority.
The two pronged approach has been 1. criminalizing p2p 2. offering next to free, but CONTROLLED channels of distribution. Being centrally controlled they can be made for profit as soon as the people is not likely or able to return to p2p.
Instead of the old charts we have page/video views, which are easy to manipulate. Instead of djs we have influencers.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:18PM
Pretty accurate. Money is more or less just a proxy for power. Power, as in, I can make you do something you do not want to do. I can make bad things happen to you and you have no recourse. Mess with the source of power and expect to be targeted.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:23PM (1 child)
I am still unsure why copyright infringement is even a criminal offense.
cui bono... there's always somebody
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:16PM
cui bono?
Bono
(oh wait that was the joke? autowooosh)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:58PM (2 children)
it is no surprise that the same system that openly promotes peace love and hates borders and missiles and cannons adopts the weapon able to hit anyone, anywhere, with absolute precision, in few milliseconds. Money.
"Sure, what about the military-industrial complex", you will reply.
The MIC is useful to suck money out of the people, and it works well as a diversion to hide the truth. Today's arms are called dollar, uterus, and network packet.
About TPB, I have a theory...
- hey sweden
- what
- stop the pirate bay
- well burgerland, remember we did not lose the war like the krauts, you cannot dictate...
- else we flood you with muslim immigrants
- (oh fuck did we sign something about war refugees? oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck) eerrrr.... OK
- very good HAR HAR
time passes...
- hey where are all these muslims coming from? u promised!!!
- those are not our own, ours are sent to canada HAR HAR HAR
and they all lived happily ever after (except for TPB and sweden and canada)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:33PM (1 child)
Interesting taste to call the life in burgerland a happy one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:48AM
It is, for the aristocracy.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @06:59PM
He who has the gold, makes the rules. Peasants, obey.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:09PM (1 child)
Why the fear?
It's better to preemptively ask to be put on the list. If the US refuses, ask what actions would be required to earn a place on the list.
Get it over, with pride.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Crash on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:13PM
Yeah B*tches. Canada's on the list every year. Fear Canada. Fear.
Sorry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:16PM (1 child)
Had the media companies had more innovation, they would have realized if they made their own torrent site, one even bigger than The Pirate Bay, then the bay would no longer be the largest threat. They won't have to waste all that time and money playing wack-a-mole with it anymore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:00PM
1. It could recover less money than the whack-a-mole strategy
2. It could encourage people who wouldn't normally pirate to do so, lessening sales
3. It could be treated as a honeypot and ignored by the pirating community
4. There would be no way to get all media companies on board with a single "bay", see how Hulu [wikipedia.org] has operated (soon Disney will have its own streaming service)
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