Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Legogris 3042 days ago
Swede chiming in here. No. The typical Swede feels that it's one of the less serious crimes there is. Under speeding, far under DUI, under possession of drugs for personal use, maybe on par with parking violation.

We had quite a movement for digital freedom about a decade ago when the Pirate Party was on the rise and there was opposition against surveillance from FRA (Swedish equivalent of NSA), but the average person doesn't care and I think even the previous activists have been in a state of fatigue and silent acceptance for years now.
1 comments
Feniks 3042 days ago
I would imagine that Swedish politicians are also vulnerable from lobbying and US diplomatic pressure.
link
Legogris 3042 days ago
Indeed. Antipiratbyrån (The Anti-Piracy Bureau) was a lobby organization representing copyright holders in films and computer games until 2011. They surveilled people, breaching privacy laws but got exempted in court because it was done for a good cause. Infiltrated a Swedish ISP, tracked down filesharers online and took them to court and influenced the political debate a lot.

I don't have any illusion of lobbying and diplomatic pressure having lessened since.

link
acct1771 3041 days ago
> got exempted in court because it was done for a good cause.

Wow...as described here, your legal system sounds...useless.

link
rotorblade 3041 days ago
It is very bad indeed.

1. The judge in the pirate bay case was a member of an organisation "Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt"/"The Swedish Organisation for Copyright" (my own translation), and it was decided not to be partial to the pirate bay case. See for example [0].

2. Even if there were diplomatic pressures on Sweden from the US (which there were [1], their actual impact is what is in question), it should be impossible for a minister to influence the police directly [2]. Which makes for the pirate bay take down to be a ridiculous coincidence.

3. Sweden allows lawyers with their own, so called, "intellectual property" interests to defend suspects of file-sharing. See for example [3] which do give credit for this lawyer doing a good job, but just in principle this seems absurd (imo). I hope he is not allowed to be the defence lawyer if it is his own material at least.

[0] (Swedish, summary in English) https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/3800...

[1] https://torrentfreak.com/how-the-us-pushed-sweden-to-take-do...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerstyre

[3] (Swedish) https://overklass.wordpress.com/tag/fildelning/

link