Piratbyrån calls for Bodström to resign

I don't have to translate. Yay!

Sadly, there's no direct link to the particular article, just go to the temporary emergency solution piratbyran.org and read anything you can find in English. Oh, and the small text in the upper right corner translates to

As soon as bodström sobers up, we'll probably get our server back, but until then, this will have to do.

Just to be safe, I'll post the text here (if you don't find it or if it disappears when the real site is put back up or something):

*** *** *** Text start
Juridical Outrage Continues. Bodström Must Resign!

After the raid against the Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån and almost 200 other servers, information suggesting pressure from American lobby organisations as well as the US government was the reason for the police action was released. Minister of justice Thomas Bodström immediately denied all knowledge of that kind of foreign influence.

This Tuesday however, Swedish public service TV have presented evidence that shows how, shortly before the raid, the US justice department threatened with trade sanctions via the WTO if Sweden doesn't act harder on Swedish file-sharing sites – that is, the Pirate Bay.

- This is no more than a farce-like juridical outrage featuring Thomas Bodström as the main character, says Tobias Andersson from Piratbyrån. - If he has a grain of decency and self respect left, we expect him to resign from his post.

The Pirate Bay is a file-sharing site using the Bittorrent technique. The technique itself is in no way illegal, which is why the Pirate Bay has not been shut down before. The complexity of the technique is also why Bittorrent hasn't had its legal status tried in the US.
- We demand all cards to be put on the table immediately, says Tobias Andersson. We won't tolerate this kind of fiddling, lies and foul play. It's an attack on freedom of speech!

Piratbyrån has not yet gotten its server back after the raid, although it was not an official target for the bust. The police remain silent, contradictory and refer to prosecutor Håkan Roswall for more information. Roswall on the other hand has not given Piratbyrån any answers.
- We're convinced that this raid against the servers was meant as sabotage against the Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån and not as a juridical case, says Tobias Andersson. - Obviously we are an uncomfortable part of the debate, but it's alarming that freedom of speech is not worth more for copyright crazed lobby organisations and legal authorities

Piratbyrån is forming a critique against copyright by operating as a think tank and information aggregator for issues concerning intellectual property, file sharing, piracy and other related topics. We pursue no activity that could be considered a violation of Swedish law.

Press contact: Tobias Andersson, Piratbyrån: +46(0)734-072091 piratbyran.org@gmail.com

Letter from MPA to Swedish justice department

*** *** *** Text end

Also, be sure to check out this torrent. It's a swedish news report (subtitled!) on the stuff that's happened. Now with extra U.S. threats! Yay!

PRQ servers still not returned

Yeah, sorry about the delay folks. I got kind of tired of translating, and I didn't find anything really interesting, and then I was away for a week without a computer. Oh, the humanity! :þ

Rasmus Fleischer, an "official" member of Piratbyrån, maintains a blog named Copyriot. He has posted some info on the procedures of getting back the servers of PRQ and Piratbyrån.

*** *** *** Translation
Håkan Roswall compares Piratbyrån to terrorists and The Pirate Bay to... Something even worse

Now I've been told, by word of mouth from a person who was there in Stockholm district court this wednesday, what the prosecutor Håkan Roswall said at the first of many negotiations that will be held about the confiscation of different servers connected to the raid on The Pirate Bay.
The company PRQ wanted four computers back, used for bookkeeping and customer registers (also neccesary for PRQ to be able to pay their taxes). Håkan Roswall refuses and insists that the computers are to be locked away for at least another year. He claims this is important for the investigation.
When the district court looked into the case, it was time for Håkan Roswall to justify his actions. Now, how would he do that? Well, at first he supposedly talked in general about what BitTorrent is for about a half hour as well as (no one understands why) how wireless networks work. If you were to guess, jurymen and the judge were confused. Then, Håkan Roswall said, according to what I've been told, this, word for word:

I don't know how to express it, but you could say Piratbyrån is like IRA and The Pirate Bay is like the armed forces branch of IRA.

You're stunned.
The prosecutor's ignorance is one thing: IRA is "the armed forces branch" of the Sinn Féin party, something that should be common knowledge. Even more unintelligible is why he even put Piratbyrån in the mix. This negotiation was about the company PRQ, and the supposed importance for a crime investigation that their [the company's] accounts are not returned (not even as a copy).
What's worse is what Håkan Roswall obviously is trying to say: The fact that Piratbyrån is arguing for the right of indexing services like The Pirate Bay to exist, means that we can choose to disregard freedom of speech.

PRQ has appealed to the court of appeal, but until then, demands of more people and companies to get their computer equipment back will be tried by the district court. The confiscation of Piratbyrån's server will be tried, hopefully as soon as next week. But count on that Håkan Roswall will give a single inch. This is, of course, a political question, where pressure needs to be applied at as many points as possible, if we don't want to accept that a prosecutor can arbitrarily decide that one net voice be silenced for an undecided amount of time, without even a suspicion of crime.

PS.
If someone reading this was at the district court procedures, I'd be very grateful for some lines in the comments and any confirmation of Roswall's statement.

The confiscation of Piratbyrån's server has to be brought into the debate now. Among other things, maybe something like a petition. If anyone feels motivated, feel free to contact me.
*** *** *** End translation

Business owners demand reparations

Expressen.se reports that business owners affected by the raids demand that the state pay them a total of almost 2 million kronors (about 267 000 american dollars). Original article here.

*** *** *** Translation
IT business owners claim 2 million from the state

Today at 12.00, the IT business owners who had their servers seized during the Pirate Bay raid are gathering.
They're demanding that the state pay them almost 2 million in damages.
- Some have been afraid of bankruptcy because they have been unable to operate their company, says Clarence Crafoord, their legal council.

The police took all the servers on the premises - including the ones having nothing to do with the activities of The Pirate Bay.
It has spelt devastating consequences for several small business owners in the computer industry, who are completely dependant on the proper functionality of their servers.
Centrum för rättvisa [literally "Centre for justice"], an organisation that handles issues where [the rights of] citizens or businesses have been violated free of charge, has accepted their case. Today, tens of companies meet in order to agree on their demands. They demand between 10 000 [1336 USD] and 200 000 [26 730 USD] each.
- According to our estimates, it's a matter of a couple of millions. The numbers are not quite settled. Also, more business owners could join in, Clarence Crafoord says.

Very critical
He is very critical to the fact that the police took all the servers - instead of copying the information on them. Or figure out what ones belonged to the activities of The Pirate Bay.
- It's like a parking lot with pre-rented spaces where the police want a couple of cars. But then, they take every car in the whole lot. It's completely out of proportion, he says.
- These are small computer businesses, with one or a few employees. For them, being closed down for a week could be the difference that brings bankruptcy. Centrum för rättvisa has not yet decided if the claims are to be sent to Justitiekanslern ["Chancellor of justice"] today, or if they will wait for more business owners to join in.
*** *** *** End translation

"The politics of piracy"

"The politics of piracy" is the title of an article written by Bernhard Warner for the Times Online. It's a short summary of the Pirate Party and the recent events. Read it here.

Shameless plug

A friend of mine has a band named The Itch. I'm going to link to their website now, and you're going to enjoy it.

[/shameless plug]

Now move along, citizen.

U.S. Pirate Party started

Well, it appears an American Pirate party has been started. Check their website out.

I can't reach the web site right now. Maybe it's overloaded?

The Pirate party reaches 6000!

A minute ago, the Pirate Party crossed the 6000 member line. Their member count has quickly risen the last few days, from 2200 the day before the razzia.

File sharing becomes important during elections

After the activities of the last few days, some kind of expert has claimed file sharing to be this election's big question in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, SvD. Pirate Party goes "duh", youth organisations of the established parties go "yay, we're in".

Miljöpartiet (the Green Party) actually announced they wanted to legalize downloading in their election manifest:

Downloading music and movies should be allowed for private use, but the musicians[no, it doesn't say "artists"] have to be compensated.

This is very close to this quote:

File sharing technology in itself is good, and downloading is here to stay. However, our point of view is that the creators have to be payed for their work.

Want to know who said that? Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån. Miljöpartiet wants people to think they're pro-file sharing, when in fact they're just trying to ride on the wave of current events. Read my old post about Piratbyrån's speech at Reboot. It's not about downloading, stupid!

Pirate party cries for server help

The servers hosting the Pirate Party's web site can't cope with all the attention. They need help with web servers to ease the load. Check it out here.

National day of Sweden!

Today, June 6th, is the national day of Sweden. Since last year, that's a holiday! Yay!

Ok, now for some stats. Since the late evening of June 2nd, the counter has tallied 28 931 hits on this blog. By pasting the text from the blog into Openoffice.org writer, I can see that I've written 29 pages, with about 13 600 words and roughly 81 000 characters. Also, I have been linked to from all kinds of places. I'm glad to have reached out to so many people. The news will probably slow down the next couple of days, but I'll be sure to report if anything new comes up.

"Come out of the file sharing closet"

Swedish newspaper SvD reports that Ivar Wenster, head of culture in the Karlskrona municipality, had confessed to file sharing, encouraging others to do the same.

*** *** *** Translation
Head of culture wants more to come out of the file sharing closet

The Karlskrona municipality head of culture has admitted to file sharing and encourages others to follow. "I want more people to come out of the file sharing closet so that we can get a debate going", Ivar Wenster tells SvD.se. Later during the monday, he was reported to the police.

Head of culture Ivar Wenster commits crimes every day. He's one of the thousands of swedes who download music from the Internet.

- I want more adults to come out of the file sharing closet. We need to get a debate going that is about more than if it's right or wrong, Ivar Wenster tells SvD.se.

Since Juli 1st last year, it's illegal to download or supply copyrighted material. The crime can result in a fine or prison for up to two years. Ivar Wenster was reported to the police on monday morning, writes TT [a swedish news agency].

With his request, Ivar hopes more adults with established positions in society dares to reveal that they're file sharing, in order to make the industry rethink its position.

- The industry has to find new ways to refine their products instead of fighting against future consumers. If more adults got into the debate, the big companies would surely understand that this is not only about young people defying the law, he tells SvD.se.

The decision to reveal that he's a file sharer was made after last week's raids on The Pirate Bay and the following war between net pirates and the authorities, which, among other things, led to the web sites of both the police and the government crashed. Ivar Wenster believes the media reflect a simplified image of the problem.

- It seems it's only young net anarchists that are file sharing, but that's not true. Many adults who want to keep track of what's happening in culture download too, including me. In my work I meet lots of cultural workers making money on being able to spread their music, making more people discover them.

But won't it be hard for them to earn money on their music if people just download it instead of buying it?

- Of course, but the question is not that simple, and that's why I think a debate with more people involved is necessary. At the same time, you should keep in mind that the biggest losers are the major companies, and that it won't actually befall those without money.

So you want the new law which abolishes file sharing of copyrighted material to be annulled?

- Yes, it's crazy, it doesn't follow the evolution. Sweden has about the highest usage [percentage users of the population, of course] of broadband in the world. When new ways of exchanging information is developed, that law makers panic in fear of losing control.

Aren't you scared of being caught? This could be a matter of both illegal file sharing and agitation [encouraging others to do so].

- Nej, but I've been getting some crap from the local newspapers around here. But most people probably feel I have a point, it's just no one dares to say it out loud.

So you're not afraid of being fired?

- This is nothing I've done on the clock, I don't and download at work.

The chairman of the municipality board Mats Johansson (s) [social democrates] has, according to TT, had a serious talk with his head of culture during the day.
- I respect his opinion, but committing crimes is not acceptable. Part of Wenster's job is even to socialize with some of the concerned cultural workers, Johansson tells TT.

*** *** *** End of translation

Pirate party member info leaked?

In this article, Aftonbladet.se claims the info from the Pirate Party member database has been leaked. Aftonbladet says the list is circulating over the net, and claims to have the complete list of members, including birth dates, which city they live in, and their phone numbers. Piratpartiet broke the news to their members on the site some time before the article was published. However, the authenticity of the list has not yet been confirmed.

The reporter had called Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party, before the story broke. He claimed the list contained info from about 8 000 members. This is the main reason this information is currently considered a hoax by Pirate Party members. The Pirate Party forums have roughly 8 000 members. The list in the hands of Aftonbladet is probably the result of a script roaming through the member list of the forums. The information contained there is not linked with the member database. It is completely volountary to input this information into your profile, and the forums are open to non-party members too.

The article is written in a way as to cast doubt on the validity of the Pirate Party organisation. One example are the birth dates claimed to be on the list. They call them "födelsenummer", birth numbers. This is supposed to make people think of "personnummer", social security numbers, something you don't want to be spread across the Internet. Another example is that they have called people on the list to verify it. Some people had their phone numbers on their profile pages, others can be easily looked up if the name is rare enough.

The real question now is:
Is this faulty information supplied to the newswriter, or is this a masked attempt at an attack on the party directly from Aftonbladet? Aftonbladet has always had a critical attitude towards the pirates.

In conclusion, an attack on the party was not unexpected. This is a systematic attack on freedom, and after an attack on both the Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån, an attack on the Pirate Party was to be expected as well. I guess someone feels threatened by the work of Piratbyrån and the Pirate party..

Morning pirate debate

This morning, the morning news show on TV channel TV4 performed a short interview with Rick Falkvinge. While the interviewers were a little too hostile and too focused on file sharing, I feel he got through, proving the Pirate Party is here to stay, and that they're not only about file sharing, but also want to protect privacy.

The issue will be discussed during the morning. I'll tell you if something interesting is said.

More pirate humor

Piratbyrån forum moderator kenny_lex likes to draw.

Check this one out. It says:

- I'm sorry, but there's only one fish and one loaf of bread. Since copying is illegal, watch me eat them.

What would have happened if Jesus didn't copy and share things?

Another comic depicts the president of Swedish IFPI (kind of like RIAA) exclaiming "We don't want to exaggerate, but now we're hiring Al Qaeda in the hunt for those mean pirates!"

Demonstration speech. Pics!

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 churche'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 knowledy 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 competely 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 learnt 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 translation

Notes
Damn, his speeches and texts are always hard to translate.. I'm pretty damn exhausted from hanging out with my little brother all day, too. I keep messing the words up.. So, the rule about assuming what makes sense is even more important when reading this one.. :)

Right, I promised pictures!
There are lots of them here, and some of them here. Also, make sure you check out this picture (rffu!).

Addition: There are a couple of other translations of this speech, located here and here. I haven't checked them out properly, but if something in my translation seems sketchy, look it up there. Or read it all there.

Antipiratbyrån is off the Internet

First of all, the reason for the ~24 hours worth of inactivity is that I had to go babysit my little brother at his house. They don't have an Internet connection. So, the good part is I'm back, and bad part is that I never want to hear about Tony Hawk 3 again. Ok, enough of that.

Antipiratbyrån is now off the Internet. There have been ddos attacks against their site. They started by just removing all the pictures, but that didn't cut it. They took their own server offline in order to deny the attackers the satisfaction of succeeding.

According to Expressen.se, Henrik Pontén had this to say:
- We shut it down. Things are a bit lively on the Internet right now, so we thought that was a good move.

ddos attacks have also been noted against the website of the Swedish police. which, of course, is very unfortunate. It should be noted these attacks are not supported by any official organisation.

Swedish piracy culture

I thought I'd try to show you some of the piracy culture here in Sweden. It's not rare that arguments are lined with humor and satire, while still maintaining a to-the-point discussion of what it's all about.

Piracy is generally accepted in Sweden. I can sit at work and discuss the file-sharing applications, the latest Lost episode I downloaded or the quality of the X-men cam release with my colleagues. I can discuss the issues at dinner with my girlfriend's parents. Nobody is going to judge me, and so, most people are very open about their piracy.


Now, look at this picture from the May 1st demonstration (link 2) this year. This banner is a parody of rfsu, an organisation for sexual education. The banner says:

There are many questions
- How is it done?
- Why do you seed?
- Is my upload too small?

Of course, these questions are parodies of common sexual questions. This is just one of the examples of humor in Swedish piracy debate. In the 2005 demonstration, some people walked around sharing (handing out) fil. In swedish, file=fil.

I think we have a pretty unique view of the copyright issue here in Sweden. What's your opinion? Want to tell me how it is in your country? Feel free to leave a comment.

Piratbyrån's speech at Reboot

This doesn't really have anything to do with the TPB issue except showing you what kind of argumentation Antipiratbyrån is trying to get rid of. During the Reboot conference mentioned in one of the most recent posts, Piratbyrån held a speech. In English. A transcription is available here. Read it. It's quite long, so if you just want the most important part, find the one with the header "It's not about downloading, stupid!". This is really interesting stuff.

"I was denied a defender"

As I noted a couple of posts ago, Gottfrid Svartholm was denied legal representation during his interrogation. I had read the article, but when I sat down to translate it, the web site was so overloaded I couldn't get to it. Anyways, it's back, and here's the translation.

Keep in mind, this was published June 1st. There is lots and lots of new info that has been revealed since.

*** *** *** Translation
"I was denied a defender"

Updated: Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the men behind Pirate Bay and owner of web host PRQ, was arrested shortly after 11.30 AM yesterday[May 31st]. "The police denied me a public defender, so I told them nothing at all", he says.

On 11.31 on wednesday, May 31st 2006, Gottfrid Svartholm was on his way to work at the office on Norra Stationgatan [that's a street] he hires from Bahnhof.

At that time, he was arrested by the police who brought him in for questioning. According to Gottfrid Svartholm, the interrogations were pointless; when he was released six hours later, the police still knew nothing.
- I was taken in for questioning, and they started asking me about Pirate Bay, what I knew and what my connections [to TPB] were, Gottfrid Svartholm says.
- I didn't get a public defender, and my regular legal advisor had been apprehended as well, so I told them nothing at all.

Why were you denied a public defender?
- According to the policemen, I'm not risking a prison sentence for the crime I'm a suspect of, and hence they don't have to give me a defender.

Today, after the police razzia, Gottfrid Svartholm is busy with helping all the customers of PRQ, who, despite having no connection to The Pirate Bay, have been affected because the police seized the servers their sites were on.

What happens to the Pirate Bay now, when will you reopen?
- I'm not really involved in that work, but it'll be soon, Gottfrid Svartholm says.

Here in Sweden, or abroad?
- Abroad.

Ulf Göranzon of the Stockholm police force confirms that there are limitation in the right to a public defender.

- There is a discrepancy between the right to have a defender present and the right to a public defender.

But wasn't the regular advisor was one of the arrested?
- I can't comment on details in specific interrogations, but if Gottfrid feels something wasn't handled correctly, I think he should report it to Polismålsenheten at Åklagarmyndigheten [Some kind of internal affairs, I'm not sure.].
*** *** *** End of translation

Notes
The red updated note is not mine, it was in the article.

Oh, and the real one is on its way up..

The real Pirate Bay is on its way up!! Don't expect everything to work just yet, though. Hey, at least we have a pirate ship firing something that looks like cannon balls on the Hollywood sign!

And I'm even still logged in! Whoo! :P

Fake Pirate Bay up!

This link was posted on the Pirate Party forums: http://thepiratesbay.org/. It's a FAKE. Stay clear. They require registration and a fee. The real site is http://thepiratebay.org, nothing else. Also, The Pirate Bay would never force registration on its users; that has been a very critical point for the people behind it.

Make up your mind!

According to idg.se, Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the suspects, was denied a defender during his interrogation. I can't translate the article right now, since their server seems to be severely overloaded (except for the front page..), and it will probably not be fixed until monday. Anyways, the police said that since he's not risking prison on the suspicions, he's not entitled to a public defender during the interrogation.

Ok, now remember that last sentence.

Next, let's ponder the DNA sample the legal advisor was forced to supply. When confronted with this, the police responded that forced DNA samples are fully legal when suspected of a crime where a possible consequence is prison.

Ok.. So now, a question on many people's minds is.. "w00t?!?". If it's not on your mind, re-read the police's statements above, compare the possible consequences, and then agree with the rest of us.

On another note, Anakata seems to have some humor even now. Oscar Swartz reports that, according to sources near him, the person suspected to be Anakata (they're not sure?) has confessed the Palme assassination.

The Pirate Bay to be spread over six countries

Oscar Swartz, founder of one of the first Swedish internet companies Bahnhof (and he's done lots and lots more), reports from the Reboot conference in Copenhagen. Original article here.

*** *** *** Start Translation
Pirate Bay goes up in six countries + conclusion
Today, The Pirate Bay (TPB) informed us that the site will be back up tonight or tomorrow [June 2nd or 3rd]. They also said there will be four copies of the site in Holland, Russia, Ukraine and another country within the EU. This statement was delivered during an address of Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyrån and a representative from The Pirate Bay (TPB) here at the Reboot conference in Copenhagen.

As they were leaving, I tried to find out from TPB if they were only bullshitting, if it was just loose discussions or if people were really working on getting the site up at these places now. They insisted stuff is happening and people are working right now. They even added another two countries, one withing and one outside the EU, where announce servers would be run, that is, servers that store the tracker files but not the web site itself. "When we're on the web and say we're from Pirate Bay of Sweden and that we need help with hardware and hosting, we immedeatly get offers of loyal support. The Pirate Bay will be stronger than ever!".

It'll be exciting to see this unfold. If international loyalty and disobedience can be built, the copyright industry can get a tough fight against the users of the net. It seems to me that this raid against the world's most popular torrent site hardened the resistance rather than broke it down. After lots of years in the Internet business, in which I've seen the culture network technicians and "net characters" live in, I'd like to make the following sociological observation: After this trial by fire, where they may be destroying a whole Internet business (PRQ) where a couple of guys have put in years of work, and these now seem to keep pointing their fingers and mocking [their opponents], it makes you wonder what will be able to stop The Pirate Bay. These guys standing up for themselves has given them enermous amounts of respect in the Internet world and if international loyalties are built, it's not surprising that Anakata becomes a role model with many people out there wanting to walk in his foot steps. If they can stand up for themselves in the same way remains to be seen.

In a comment to my previous post["Pirate Bay, Department of Foreign affairs and the MPA"], someone wrote:
I've been trying to keep track of everything that's happening by reading the confusing newsflow. I think a play-by-play walkthrough of the chain of events, since both me and others were (and still are) confused, not quite understand what happened. What happened at PRQ? What happened at Bahnhof? What was confiscated at Bahnhof and PRQ, respectively? I beleive that you, Osvar, is very suitable for writing something like that since you know people at Bahnhof and also seem to have close contact with people at TPB (and also PRQ?). I look forward to an objective description of the events.

OK, I realize that this can be a bit messy. A short text in a pause from the conference:

On a request from prosecutor Håkan Roswall, the city court issued a search warrant for a number of places in order to get to those running The Pirate Bay and secure evidence. The Pirate Bay didn't exactly have an office with a sign on the door, so they struck at ten places at the same time. They suspected that three people were mainly responsible, two of which were running the Internet service provider and hosting business PRQ.

The servers of TPB where housed at Port 80 (a part of Rix Telecom) in their server hall located in Bankgirocentralen's [Bank giro transfer service central?? Dunno. It's used for wiring money around, and is very extensively used for paying bills and stuff.] building by the Globe [picture!] in Stockholm. The police struck there and took a large number of servers away. But, they also struck against PRQ's server hall, taking a large number of servers away from there, too. Exactly what servers and what their relation to TPB was, I don't know. But they were after both TPB as an ongoing activity as well as the people running TPB, thought to be the same as the PRQ guys. These people were suspected of copyright infringement, or accessory to copyright infringement (by helping people to share files, you'd presume). At the same time, they struck against the homes of the suspects and confiscated personal computers and more. One of the suspects were Mikael Viborg, who had been active as the legal advisor of TPB. The police acquired a DNA sample from him. Bahnhof isn't involved in any of this. However, they have a (far too) large office in Stockholm where they've been renting out rooms to external tenants, an accounting firm for example. Trustlab, an IT security business supposedly run be the same people as PRQ, rented a room. That's why the police also searched the office of Trustlab during the razzia.
*** *** *** End translation

Some design changes

I made some design changes with my 1338 (that's one more than 1337) javascript/css skillzorz. As you've probably noticed, all the articles are now collapsed to begin with, and can be expanded. The page was becoming far too long, and I think this will make it easier to get a quick overview of the posts. Another, more superficial, change, was that I replaced the large (53 kB) banner behind the blog's name with a simple green. It didn't feel right having a background larger than the rest of the whole page combined.

Oh yeah, and there's a hit counter on the bottom of the page now. It started counting last night, and I must say I'm surprised by the numbers so far.. I thought there would be like at most ten people reading this. :P

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.

Henrik Pontén claims he was misquoted

Wow. Di.se has published a new interview with Henrik Pontén. Sure, this is hot news, but this interview feels very.. orchestrated. You'll see what I mean.

*** *** *** Start translation
Antipiratbyrån, are you taking legal action against Piratbyrån?

Hi there, Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån. An interview on di.se during the thursday created some debate and question marks around your stance towards your opponents in copyright-sceptical Piratbyrån.

Are you taking legal action against the lobby organisation Piratbyrån?
"No, there is freedom of speech in this country, and Piratbyrån has a right to their opinion. We've never pressed charges against Piratbyrån and doing it is completely out of the question."

What kind of parties are you taking legal action against?
"Those who commit crimes against the copyright law, in this case the file sharing site The Pirate Bay. Earlier, we've pressed charges against a number of single file sharers who have broken the same law, among others."

What is your view of Piratbyrån?
"We have a fundamentally different opinion, så we are certainly opponents. Piratbyrån's view of copyright is not compatible with ours."

What is the purpose of Antipiratbyrån?
"We fight for a functional copyright. In my point of view, the right to free speech is tightly connected to the creativity that the copyright holders behind the works we try to protect stand for. At the same time, we feel it's time for the file sharing sites to start separating material that is independantly produced and material that is protected by copyright, something they aren't doing at this point."

Foot note: In an interview with Henrik Pontén June 1st about the police razzia against The Pirate Bay, di.se reported that Pontén had 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."

This friday morning, Henrik Pontén felt he was misquoted. Because of this, the quote in the article with the header "Antipiratbyrån: They've caused great damage[link to my translation]" has been edited.

*** *** *** End translation

Now, didn't that just feel very orchestrated? I'm going to add a note about the contents being changed, and how it was changed, in the translation of the old interview.

This cannot be stressed enough

Christian Engström, riksdag candidate of the Pirate Party, has posted this thread on the Pirate Party forums.

*** *** *** Translation
Piratbyrån being silenced is the main issue

When we talk and write about the pirate razzia, it's important that we focus on the right aspect of it.

The fact that the police has struck against The Pirate Bay is bad. Multiple Swedish cases have shown that the activities of The Pirate Bay are not in violation of any swedish law. The fact that the police wants to "try the legality" of a site is not an excuse to shut it down - probably for a long time ahead.

But the real outrage is that Piratbyrån has been closed down, too.

Piratbyrån is a political activist organisation that promotes changes in the copyright law. Now, the police have taken away their right to express their opinion, by taking their computers away. The initiative for this raid came from Antipiratbyrån, the lobby organisation of the record companies, which represents the opposite political opinion in this matter.

Henrik Pontén tells Dagens Industri [I translated this interview before]:

- At the same time, we here at Antipiratbyrån have primarily worked against the copyright-hostile organisation Piratbyrån, the ones behind the site.

The validity of this statement will probably not be debated. Piratbyrån has been a thorn in the side for Pontén and MPAA since the beginning.

But the fact that they dislike the opinions of Piratbyrån doesn't mean they have the right to use the police to silence us pirates. It is such a severe violation of our constitutional right to free speech, that it's hard to express in words.

Powerful interests from the USA contact the politicians in the swedish government, asking them to use the police against their own political opponents. And happily, they[the swedish politicians] obey.

The fact this this happens, even at the beggining of an election campaign [the election is september 2006, I think] leads our thoughts to Belarus, or countries even worse. As I already said, it's hard to express in words.

We should focus on the political aspect of this outrage, not the legal one.

If we focus on what happened to The Pirate Bay (which in itself is an outrage), we'll only end up in lots of discussions about what's legal and what's not according to current law. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Our goal is still to change the law into something that makes it crystal clear that what TPB (and others who spread culture) is doing is legal.

Us pirates aren't interested in legal jibberish. We want political change. And, until we reach that goal, we'd like to keep our freedom of speech.
*** *** *** End of translation

Legal advisor blog

The legal advisor, Mikael Viborg, has started a blog explaining his experience with the ongoing investigation. There is a version in English, too, although I'm not sure if all the info is there.

Another important note is that SVT's [Swedish public access channel] news show Rapport has found out that the razzia was initiated on demands from the U.S. Apparantly, it went down like this: MPAA -> U.S. Government -> Swedish government. Then, the swedish government contacted the legal authorities, but had the answer that the case had already been looked into, and that it was their opinion nothing could legally be done. In spite of this, the state secretary of the minister of law ordered the police to perform these raids. I've heard that this is legal in Great Britain, but in Sweden, this is against the constitution. The government is not allowed to tell the authorities what do to in a specific case; the only way for them to step in is to change the law. This is a serious violation of Swedish law, and a severe limitation of our rights. If a foreign power is allowed to control Swedish law authorities, we need a new government, or our sovereignty is threatened.

Just one more..

The member count of the pirate party is rising rapidly today. Original article here.

*** *** *** Start translation
Over 3 000 members

The police razzia against The Pirate Bay has increased the member count with about 35% [as of this translation, it's over 50%!]. From roughly 2 200 members yesterday afternoon, to over 3 000 members 24 hours later.

- The criticism is unanimous from an absolute majority of swedish Internet users. This razzia is a legal outrage, an attack against an open and free society of information, a severe violation, especially for the young. They feel prosecuted and choose to become members of the party. If this increase in numbers continues, we'll soon be the largest youth party of the country, Rickard Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate party, explains.

For continuous updates of member counts at comparisons with political youth associationsm visit the page Member counts in comparison.
*** *** *** End of translation

Notes
Most of the groups listed in the comparison are youth organisations of the established riksdag parties. The exclusions are Feministiskt Initiativ, a new party aiming at feminism only, Ezenhemmer, which was a spoof party popular with modem users back in '94, and Miljöpartiet, which is one of the seven parties in the riksdag. We're catching up!!

..and now, I'm done. I hope. :)

That should keep you busy for a while.

I really need to take a break right now.. I think I covered most of the important articles and facts so far. I have a piece of glass in my finger that I can't get out, but I've been writing constantly today despite of that. Hurts like hell. My back is getting all sweaty from my chair, too. The time is 20:36, and I have only eaten two meals today..

Yeah, 'nuff feeling sorry for me. I'm gonna go grab an apple and maybe some lemonade, then I'm gonna call my girlfriend and talk some. If I find something really important, I'll try to get it translated before I go to bed. Otherwise, see ya during (if I have time) or after work tomorrow!

Interview with Henrik Pontén

Every swedish file sharer's nemesis, Henrik Pontén, leader of Antipiratbyrån, has been interviewed by di.se. There is a very important note, but I'll make that point after the translation.

*** *** *** Translation
Antipiratbyrån: They've caused great damage

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 fiercly 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."

*** *** *** End of translation

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 opinons? 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.

Swedish rap group Fattaru affected

The established Swedish rap group Fattaru's web site was taken down in the raids. This is stated in a fan chat with the group on aftonbladet.se.

*** *** *** Translation (not complete interview, since only this question is interesting)
Kim says: Hi! I got stuck on you after your first single :)
I'm wondering if you're playing anywhere this summer, so I can finally get to see you?

Fattaru says: We'll be playing all of the place, check out www.fattaru.nu, right now it's down because of the police raids, but it should be up by the morning
*** *** *** End translation

What about the constitution?

Some guy named Peter J Olsson has written a small article on the issue, called "Grundlagen då?". Translated, it would mean something like "What about the constitution?".

*** *** *** Start translation
What about the constitution?

Laila Freivald's shutdown of the Internet newspaper that publushed a cartoon of Mohammad [no, not the really famous Jyllandsposten] was not a one-time single example of censorship without legal backing.

Laila Freivald's shutdown of the Internet newspaper that publushed a cartoon of Mohammad [no, not the really famous Jyllandsposten] was not a one-time single example of censorship without legal backing.
Yesterday, there was a police action concerning 50 policemen against the file sharing network called The Pirate Bay. Servers were seized, which also affected others.
File sharing itself can be discussed. Most, but not all of it, constitutes spreading of copyrighter material.
It is a kind of violation of the right to possession, and without protection for property, the society will be uncivilised and poor.
But those who share simultaneously own their copy of the item as well as letting a friend take part of it have always been a part of the mutual help that binds us humans.
You may say that sharing it over the computer with someone hundreds of miles away is past a certain line.
On the other hand, it's not self-evident that file sharing is as harmful to the commersial copyright holders as is often claimed. It increases the interest in movies, music and e-books. File sharers buys four or five times more legal music than others. And the pressure from file sharing will force more modern ways of distribution.
Swedish law has, even after the unnecessary tightening last year, has kept a cool stance. The two file sharers were convicted for a certain kind of communication [_uploading_ on Direct Connect] were only fined. This means a search warrant is out of the question [the punishment has to be at least "villkorlig dom", which is kind of letting you go free, but with supervision and certain rules to follow].
The more advanced form [of communication] The Pirate Bay supported was considered harder to attack. Above all, the Pirate Bay has been considered legal, since it only supplied an index in order to help file sharers in finding each other.
Yesterday's razzia will probably be pointless.

What's worse is that the police at the same time confiscated the server belonging to Piratbyrån, an opinion organisation aiming to change the file sharing laws. And the fact that the raid also closed down at least one left-wing anarchist site, planka.nu, which wants free bus and train rides.
Many others were affected by the raids.
Maybe the recent rise of left-wing anarchist violence campaign, affecting both centerpartiet [one of the riksdag parties] and arbetsförmedlingen[a place where you can find jobs], contributed to an increased acceptance of police actions.

Whatever your opinion of file sharers or planka.nu is, it's far worse that the police can stop legal, and even constitutionally protected opinions to be spread. If you accept this, you've crossed a line that may never be crossed.
*** *** *** End of translation

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.

*** *** *** Start translation
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 democrates are letting us down on their election vow to not redevide 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 democrates 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 translation

MPAA confirms American meddling

News article from the Pirate party, about involvation of MPAA and American government officials.

*** *** *** Translation start
In yesterday's Rapport [a Swedish news cast show on one of the public access channels] segment on the razzia on Piratbyrån, it was stated that the USA had excercised political pressure on Swedish politicians, who in turn had told Swedish authorities to act on it, according to the sources of SVT [the TV channel].

This statement is partially confirmed in the press release sent out by MPAA, the American movie industry's pirate hunting organistation, yesterday. They write:

[T]he film industry has work vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down.

It appears American government officials in Sweden have been working hard to acheive these raids, which lead to the closure of political activist organisation Piratbyrån's web site.

- Is this really the way we want the Swedish democracy to work, asks Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate party.

- Do we want to enable American government officials to decide what organisations get to express their political opinion in Sweden, and who doesn't?
The Pirate party doesn't want that.
*** *** *** End of translation

The police took the wrong servers

Säkerhet & Sekretess, a swedish computer magazine focused on security, has published this article. In short, it's about all the servers that were taken in the raids, even though they had no connection to The Pirate Bay at all.

*** *** *** Start translation
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 perimiter, 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 apparantly not in this case. Furthermore, it's higly notable that the police performed a raid which is bigger than they can handle themselves.

Apparantly, 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 APPARANTLY 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 translation

Notes
*Prosecutor is åklagare. The original article said kammaråklagare. I don't think there's much of a difference, though.

I won't be updating the translation. The additions will probably be the list of web sites that are down, so check the list in the original article out every now and then.

File sharing razzia affects companies

Sorry, I was referring to SvD, not DN, in the previous post. Anyways, the article is about innocent companies and how they have been affected by the raids. Original article can be found here.

*** *** *** Start translation
Razzia against file sharers strikes companies

In many cases, the servers confiscated during the polce razzia against The Pirate Bay belong to citizens and companies totally unrelated to the illegal file sharing. Now, the web server host fights to save its business.


Yesterday, the police struk against file sharing site The Pirate Bay. At the web server host PRQ, roughly 200 servers were apprehended. According to the company, only a few of those belong to The Pirate Bay. Most of the belong to single citizens or companies, not involved in illegal activities.

Those affected will now have a hard time keeping up their business without their web pages, mail and other Internet services. Gottfrid Svartholm, operative of The Pirate Bay and owner of PRQ, says that the customers of PRQ take it pretty well, considering their difficult situation.
- Luckily, most of them are very understanding, but many are becoming desperate. They are in a very difficult situation, he tells SvD.se.

Gottfrid Svartholm understands that the police may strike against a site like The Pirate Bay, but maintains that it shouldn't be allowed to affect the innocent.
- Destroying a legit company that sells legal internet connections is something I can't accept, says Gottfrid Svartholm, who was interrogated yesterday.

According to Ulf Göranzon, head of information at länskriminalpolisen [the province police force], several people have contacted the police, wanting their equipment back, but he can't say when the servers can be returned.
- We will go through the contents. If it's not in our interest, it will be returned, he tells SvD.se

Ulf Göranzon claims the goal was never to cause problems for companies, but that the confiscations have been conducted according to existing rules.
- This action is completely according to routine. We'll do what is necessary to complete the investigation.

Lezgin Bakircioglu had two servers at PRQ. Both of them were seized. He feels ordinary small-time businesses should not be caught in the middle of this.
- We bought this service and stayed within the constraints of the law. We should not be victims in this, he tells SvD.se.

Lezgin Bakircioglu thinks the reason the police dared to do this was that the customers of PRQ were mostly small-time businesses.
- If they had done this to the large corporations, there would be hell to pay.

Gottfrid Svartholm says his clients will file a group complaint against the government as well as demand that damages to their business be compensated. Ulf Göranzon says no compensation is possible for measures like these.

Anyone wanting their seized server back is encouraged to contact länskriminalen in Stockholm.

*** *** *** End translation

Next article to be translated: Säkerhet & Sekretess on this same subject, including a list of some of the companies stuck in the middle of all this.

List of concerned web sites

As we've already established, not only The Pirate Bay's servers were taken away, but also several other web servers and sites, both those of small companies and small hobby projects. On the forums of piratpartiet.se, a list of currently known cases has been created. I don't feel I have to translate this; just try out some links. Most of the web sites seem to have been able put up some kind of text about what has happened. The forum thread is located here.

The next article to be translated will be about this, from the swedish newspaper DN. I'm kind of swamped right now; there is lots and lots of information, and I'm trying to stay in the loop at the same time as I'm translating. So, as to quote Anakin: "I say patience".

Short interview with Falkvinge

The newspaper Expressen has published a short interview with the leader of the Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge. Original article here.

*** *** *** Start translation
Pirate Party: "Legal outrage"

The raid on the Pirate Bay is a legal outrage and proves that the police is controlled by interests of the american industry. This is the opinion of Rickard Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party, which is pro-file sharing.
- The police has no business being there, he tells Expressen.se.

According to Rickard Falkvinge, several previous trials have shown that the activities conducted by the people behind the web site The Pirate Bay is not illegal. Because of this, he is very skeptical to today's bust.
- This is a legal outrage. Which company would have accepted that the police came in and interrupted the whole business before being proven guilty of breaking the law, says Falkvinge whose party doesn't have a tangible connection to The Pirate Bay.
- Of course, we know who they are, since their opinions are pretty much the same as ours.

"Authority in this field"
According to him, the police has been controlled by the lobby organisation of the movie industry, Antipiratbyrån.
- The police considers Antipiratbyrån an authority in this field; they will do whatever they ask, Falkvinge says.
The Pirate Party was founded Januari 1st this year, and takes a stance for an open society with easily accesible information.
- We're going to election on the intent to stop this kind of foolishness, Rickard Falkvinge says.
*** *** *** End of translation

Forced DNA samples

Säkerhet & Sekretess ("Security & Secrecy", litterally), a swedish computer magazine, managed to get an interview with The Pirate Bay's legal advisor, Mikael Viborg, who was also taken in by the police yesterday.

Original article here.

*** *** *** Start translation

Suspected pirate forced to supply DNA sample

Mikael Viborg, legal advisor of The Pirate Bay, was picked up by the police at his home yesterday. At the police station, he was forced to leave a DNA sample.

Säkerhet & Sekretess has talked to Mikael Viborg, 24-year old home business owner and law school student, one of the three people who were apprehended on suspicions of crimes against the copyright law. Personally, he claims to have nothing to do with copying files or maintenance of the servers, his only role being The Pirate Bay's legal advisor.

On wednesday around noon, the bust was executed, coordinated on several locations in Sweden, and Mikael says it was just before 12 o'clock the police knocked on the door in his home in Köping.
-There were four policemen from Rikskriminalen [the federal police force, I'd guess..], and as far as I know, they had also been cooperating with the Köping police force. Of course, I wanted to know what it was all about, and eventually they told me I was a suspect of copyright infringement. During the bust, they took all my computers, including peripherals like speakers and other stuff. They even took my cell phone. Then, I came with them to the Köping police station.

-Since I don't really have anything to do with The Pirate Bay other than being its legal advisor, I though this was odd. I don't think I couldn't have handled it myself, but before I said anything, I requested a lawyer, so as to feel safe. They started asking about The Pirate Bay, the workings of bittorrent and about my part in it all.

The real chock was when the prosecutor* decided there would be a DNA test.
-My lawyer, Ingvar Backman, contacted the prosecutor* to ask why, but the only answer was that a DNA test was "completely legal", without any in-depth motivation. I consider a DNA test to be a severe violation of my constitutional rights. This action could hardly be justified in light of the charges and my part as the legal advisor. I don't understand what they want to prove, or what they need the DNA sample for.

About three o'clock in the afternoon, Mikael was released. The suspicions still stand, and they concern violation of the copyright law, or, alternatively, being an accesory to violation of the copyright law.
*** *** *** End translation

Notes
*Prosecutor means åklagare. The original article said kammaråklagare, but I don't know what the English/American counterpart would be. I'm not even sure what a kammaråklagare is, but it's some kind of prosecutor. ;)

MPAA press release

"Yxan" posted this link on the Pirate party forums. It's in english. Yay!

MPAA press release

Notes
There is some fun to be had at the expense of this press release. Let's look at a few quotes. This blog entry will be riddled with my own opinions, so if you're looking for (relatively) objective translations, skip this particular post. (Oh, and I'm still trying to get the quotes to look good.. bear with me.)

[...] the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down.

Why were there U.S. government officials involved? Sweden is not a state of the US. Furthermore, why would U.S. government officials run errands for private interests? This proves that the industry has corrupted not just the swedish law enforcement, but also certain U.S. government officials?

thepiratebay.com

Wow, they don't even know the right domain name..

The Pirate Bay was the 479th most visited website in the world ranking 21st in Sweden and 312th in the U.S. In comparison, CNN.com is the 125th most popular site in Sweden.

That proves nothing. There is no reason for casual swedes to go reading american news on CNN.com.

We applaud Swedish law enforcement[...]

Hooray. And here I thought swedish law and its enforcers were supposed to protect the interests of the citizens of Sweden.

The major motion picture studios lost an estimated $6.1 billion to piracy in 2005. Internet
piracy alone cost the studios $2.3 billion.

So, where did all that money go to then? You can't speak of losing money, unless you mean all the money you spend on financing MPAA and such organisations, as well as bribing N.Y. policemen and buying reports that conclude $6.1 billion losses.

By shutting down Razorback2 and sites like The Pirate Bay, the ease with which pirates can obtain illegal content online can be slowed dramatically.

This changes nothing. There are lots of other sites still active. It may slow down those who completely relied on The Pirate Bay (and don't have any sources for a new tracker) for a few days. Soon enough, word of mouth will reach those people too, and it will all be the same again.

That's about it for this time folks. Sorry for the rant, but this whole issue is really frustrating, and I felt I had to vent. I'm at work right now, but I'll try to get a few more articles translated by tonight. This has turned out to be quite the outrage all over Sweden, especially the part about the DNA sample (Read the Rick Falkvinge translation below).

Rick Falkvinge's discussion

Rick Falkvinge, the leader and founder of the Pirate party, has posted his comments on what has been going on. Keep in mind, the Pirate party isn't affiliated with The Pirate Bay or Piratbyrån.

Original forum post here.

*** *** *** Start translation:
Five legal scandals at a time

As all of you probably know by now, the police - 50 of them, to be exact - has gone in and closed down The Pirate Bay, the world's larget bittorrent tracker.

This alone is a huge outrage. Those servers do not contain any copyrighted material. The Pirate Bay doesn't violate the copyright law; this has been proven in previous trials. The police has been used as a tool for private lobbyist organisations, organisations that consider their interests threatened. As everyone with an understanding of Bittorrent technology knows, there is no copyrighted material on The Pirate Bay. Swedish law has been used by the industry lobbyists to harass the innocent. This is a legal outrage.

But there are more pitch-black sides to this story.

Let's start with the fact that one of the three arrested was the legal advisor of The Pirate Bay. Everyone knows that a legal advisor is a person who can help you with advice about the law, as well as help you in writing legal letters and other documents. In this case, the legal advisor of TPB was arrested as though he was a part of the activities, and a DNA test was force upon him. This is a legal outrage.

Independant artists have been calling me during the day, artists that pointed at the fact that The Pirate Bay has been their way to spread their music to the fans, music on which they later earn money through live concerts and other revenue streams. In effect, there is a situation where the established record companies has used swedish law as a way to hinder competition from new, creative artists. This is a legal outrage.

A number of small-time company owners have also called me during the day, desperate, since the prosecutor, Håkan Roswall, had decided that everything in the room was to be seized. All the servers, said to be between 100 and 1000. The servers of The Pirate Bay were clearly marked as such; the law on searches is clear on the fact that there should be a reasonable judgement on what is seized. This is clearly not the case here. The result is that all the companies hosted by the same company [as The Pirate Bay] lost all of their web services. Company owners have called me in despair, feeling helpless, as though they were outlaws. Their only crime is to house their equipment resided in the same room as the accused, but because of it, their business is closed down for an indefinite amount of time. This is a legal outrage.

Finally, there is Piratbyrån, the servers of which were also next to the servers of The Pirate Bay. Here, the situation means that an industry interest has used swedish law to close down another organisation[*], where the organisation is the ideological opponents[*] of that industry. They're closing down people with opinions[*] they don't like, and to top it all off, it's in the start of the election movements [The election is fall 2006]. This is a legal outrage.

There will be much happening around this issue the next few days. One thing's for sure, the upholders of the law made many mistakes today. I hope this is the last time the make the mistake of confusing industry interests with independant [and objective] sources.

Because we are going to remind them of this.
*** *** *** End translation

Notes
*I didn't know how properly translate the word "opinionsbildare". It would litterally be "builders of opinion".

ThePirateBay/Piratbyrån temp page is up

There is a temporary page up on http://www.thepiratebay.org. There is some english info and links to some english articles. Check it out.

Antipiratbyrån's news article

Antipiratbyrån is the swedish version of MPAA. If I recall correctly, they're even the swedish subdivision of the MPAA. It appears they were at least one of those behind the razzia.

Original article here (don't know if it's a permanent link..).

*** *** *** Translation

The Pirate Bay closed down

Today, the police performed a series of raids against places where The Pirate Bay operates. Thepiratebay.org was shut down at 12.30 [12.30 PM, GMT+1].

Up until last night, The Pirate Bay was the place for a large part of the illegal file sharing of the world. According to their own numbers, there were about a million users who could upload and download mostly movies, games and music. With its size and expressed goal to expose and make fun of concerned copyright holders, The Pirate Bay was made famous all around the world. Sweden became internationally known as a safe haven for those committing copyright crimes on the Internet. This was exploited economically, selling ad space, porn ads and collection of donations.

It's good that the swedish police is prioritizing this type of crime. Copyright pays for the creation of movies, computer game, music and other culture. Those who defy the copyright law steal from the creators and movie watchers of the future. This is why shutting down The Pirate Bay is good for all those who appreciate new movies and entertainment, says Henrik Pontén, lawyer of Antipiratbyrån.

Swedish productions are highly damaged by the illegal file sharing, says Per-Erik Wallin of Föreningen Sveriges Filmproducenter [Litterally: Association Swedish Movie Creators]. If swedish movies are available on the net before they open, there is a lesser probability of the movies getting back the production cost, and even less to pay for the next movie. This damages both script writers, directors, actors and the movie crew.
*** *** *** End translation

Notes
There is not much to note here. Perhaps that swedish movies are subvented, and partly payed for with tax money.