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?".

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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.
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