Lasse Penttinen
2 Jul 2005 1:58
Sweden has been a fertile ground for P2P filesharing and online piracy. Goverment policy has supported affordable broadband connections, while the copyright laws are very relaxed. Recently the BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay, has been receiving a lot of attention, but they have persistently continued to stay in operation.
It is possible however that things just turned more difficult for the Swedish file sharers, as their new strengthened copyright laws were put into effect at midnight. The new laws criminalize the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on The Internet. However, the law by itself doesn't change anything. It is interesting to see how the Swedish goverment and authorities make use of the new laws, or will they - us neighbouring Finns know that the Swedes get nothing done before they have had their long and thorough discussion about the issue concerned...
"A law in itself changes nothing," said Henrik Ponten, a spokesman for Antipiratbyran, a Swedish lobbying group waging a fierce campaign against the file-sharers. "There is nothing that indicates that (file-sharers) would change their behavior."Source: Businessweek
Previously, it had only been illegal in Sweden to make pirated material available online for others to download via so-called peer-to-peer networks.
While such behavior is rampant here, no one has been convicted of doing it. However, a court is expected to make the first ruling in such a case later this year. A 27-year-old man was charged in March with making a Swedish movie available for download from his home computer.