The Pirate Bay Issue - English Translation

Friday, June 30, 2006

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

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