The Inquisitr » sweden

Pirate Bay founders told hands off the site

Steven Hodson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:43:00 +0000

I’m sorry but at what point are we just going to stick a fork in this one, call it quits and move onto one of the many other really good bittorrent tracking services out there. It was bad enough that some putz decided to buy the whole only to have the deal fall apart in flames as he got everything he own repossessed now we have courts trying to force judicial decisions upon people and companies that don’t even fall within their jurisdiction.

According to the team over at Torrent Freak the Stockholm District Court is now ordering that two of the site founder’s be banned from operating the site. The thing is here that neither Pirate Bay nor Gottfrid Svartholm or Fredrik Nelj are located in Sweden.

Ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, who appears to be excluded from the decision, is notably annoyed, noting that neither the founders nor the site are located in Sweden.

“The Stockholm City Court is located in Stockholm. Stockholm is in Sweden. Swedish borders apply. Frederick and Godfrid live outside Sweden, even outside the EU. The Pirate Bay is outside the EU,” he told SR.

“How then can the Stockholm District Court, Sweden, get to decide that people abroad must not work on a site in another country?”

Talk about the long arm of the law needing to be reminded that it isn’t that long.

Swedish man arrested for ripping off another guy’s pants

Paul Short — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:49:08 +0000

A man was refused entry into a night club in Helsingborg, Sweden because of the club’s dress code. The sweatpants wearing dude, desperately wanting to get into the club, proceded to knock another man to the ground outside the club and forcibly removed the victim’s pants, which complied with the dress code.

The embarrassed victim wouldn’t have gone without pants for very long because his assailant let him have the sweatpants in return.

Police in the area happened to roll by the club and observe the two men, both without pants now, arguing outside and stopped to find out what was going on. The pants-robber tried to assure the police officers that him and his ‘friend’ were merely swapping pants and that everything was ok. The victim and a bouncer at the club told the police what was really going on.

The 26 year old pants robber has been charged with theft at the Helsingborg District Court.

Swedish city legalizes topless bathing….at public swimming pools

Duncan Riley — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:00:47 +0000

Sweden’s third largest city has legalized topless bathing…at public swimming pools.

The City of Malmö decision after initially being asked to vote on a motion that would force women to cover up after a feminist group started appearing at pools topless. Instead they voted in an amended version that said that “everybody should wear bathing suits,” leaving the door open for topless bathing as long as the woman was wearing a bottom part of a bikini.

A council spokesman told The Local that “We don’t define what bathing suits men should wear so it doesn’t make much sense to do it for women. And besides, it’s not unusual for men to have large breasts that resemble women’s breasts.”

The leader of the feminist group behind the law said that “It’s a question of equality. I think it’s a problem that women are sexualized in this way. If women are forced to wear a top, shouldn’t men also have to?”

The Pirate Bay boys heading to jail and Google keeps serving up files

Steven Hodson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:28:33 +0000

So I gather by now you’ve all heard the terrible news about the guys behind The Pirate Bay torrents search site have been found guilty with lots of help from the US entertainment industry and their lackey trade groups. While everyone and their brother seems to be bemoaning this latest victory – which is pyrrhic at best – by the entertainment I am surprised by two things.

First – who in their right mind didn’t expect this outcome. Come on get your head out of the sand for five minutes and face the fact that the multi-billion dollar might of a global entertainment industry could have shit bricks and they would have still won.

Second – if you think it will stop here or that the decision in anyway will affect the Pirate Bay search business then you are sadly mistaken. The four people behind Pirate Bay have already made it clear that they have planned for this contingency and spread their servers around the world in such away that they are going to be very difficult to shutdown. As well it didn’t matter who won in court this time around because you can be assured that in either case the appeals would have been filed before the ink was dry.

What is interesting is to read all the various hyperbole that has been circulating throughout the tech blogosphere this morning. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström have been described as being everything from the ones responsible for the world’s most notorious file-sharing site to being money grubbing opportunists who caused the entertainment industry great financial harm.

Ya okay we’ll let you roll with that for a minute or two while Sony Music Industry, Warner Bros., EMI and Columbia Pictures decide how to divvy up the $3.6 million award for damages. The thing is that for all the accusations of Pirate Bay being a file sharer the argument is fundamentally flawed. Pirate Bay as a site does not host any of the files that they are accused of sharing. All they are doing is providing a search engine interface for torrents that point to both legal and illegal content. It’s not like they are twisting anyone’s arm to download anything – they are providing a service not a file depot.

This would be like suggesting that Google or Microsoft Live are file sharers because they provide links to downloadable content. If the grounds that the entertainment industry used against Pirate Bay are valid by even the farthest stretch of the imagination then the same arguments should be used against Google and Microsoft. After all a simple search for Rolling Stones MP3’s on both of those search engines will give you a multitude of download links.

Think not? Then think again

While using torrents actually is more difficult until you get use to downloading them both Google and Microsoft through their respective search engines provide direct links to easily downloadable files. so what is the difference here?

As Paul O’Flaherty pointed out this morning

The entertainment industry is a monolithic conglomeration of companies that would rather litigate than innovate and have proven time and time again that the pursuit of money and protecting their outdated business model is all that matters to them. What better direction to take than to go after those with the deepest pockets? Especially now that they have a precedent ruling against what is essentially just a search engine.

Why is it okay for Microsoft or Google to use the exact same excuse that the guys running Pirate Bay used and yet while they go to jail, Google and Microsoft get a free pass. This story is far from being done but in the meantime everyone talking about this bullshit decision will carry on with misleading information about how these file sharers are getting what they deserve and racking up the pageviews as they go. In the end though there is no difference between them and any other search engine provider – they just made a better target and better press.

Swedish Court finds Q isn’t an acceptable name

Duncan Riley — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:17:32 +0000

A Swedish Court has ruled that the letter Q isn’t an acceptable name, after a local couple tried to change the name of their son.

The parents of a boy argued they’d been calling their son Q since he was born, that their son responds to the name and that no matter what official records say, everyone knows him as Q, local press reported.

The parents told the court that since this is what they consider his name is, and what the boy considers his name to be, he should be allowed to use Q as his legal name.

The court however called bollocks, finding that the name “failed to satisfy basic linguistic requirements.” It did however note that some letters may be acceptable, but only if those letters are already commonly accepted as a name, where as Q apparently isn’t.

Pirate Party Polling 21% in Sweden

Duncan Riley — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:17:17 +0000

The Swedish Pirate Party, the party set up to tackle copyright reform in Sweden has scored 21% in a nationwide poll.

As TorrentFreak points out, the figures are even more remarkable among men aged 18-29, where The Pirate Party polls a staggering 55%. If an election was to take place today, The Pirate Party would poll higher than the Greens, resulting in over 19 seats in the Swedish Parliament.

The Party, founded in 2006 aims to reform copyright laws, not abolish them. Their platform includes all non-commercial copying and use being completely free, and the encouragement of file sharing and p2p networking. They don’t however believe that copyright should be abolished, instead reformed so that copyright remains in place for a maximum of 5 years, as opposed to the death plus 70 years as is usually the case today.

Pirate Party’s have been setup or are currently being setup throughout the world. Here’s the links for the United States, United Kingdom (currently offline), and Australia if you’re interested in joining.

Not inviting a kid to an 8 year old’s party becomes a national scandal in Sweden.

Duncan Riley — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:13:55 +0000

The Swedish Parliament has been asked to adjudicate in a case that had rocked Sweden (and I’m not exaggerating), an 8 year old not inviting two of his class mates to his birthday party.

The complaint comes from the boys school, who claim (and again, I’m not making this up) that by not inviting the two children, the boy had violated the children’s rights by discriminating against them. The context is that the birthday party invites were handed out on school property, therefore the actions of an 8 year old on school property must comply with anti-discrimination laws.

According to a BBC report, the boy’s father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman, noting that “the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.”

We now crown Sweden as the winner of the ultimate nanny state award for 2008…and possibly all time. The case is said to be decided by the Swedish Parliament by September.