THE PIRATE BAY BITTORRENT TRACKER APPEARS TO BE DOWN AGAIN
This story has been developing for quite some time now and it seems Anti-piracy laws are once again rearing their ugly heads in Sweden. The CCBW of
THE PIRATE BAY has long been an advocate for freedom on the internet, in fact he seems to enjoy the controversy it brings, often thumbing his nose at international law firms and publicly outing all the attempts at
SHUTTING DOWN THE PIRATE BAY by posting letters on
THE PIRATE BAY.
This is not the first time
THE PIRATE BAY HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN, back in May of 2006, Swedish authorities
RAIDED THE PIRATE BAY and confiscated their computers. Now it appears
THE PIRATE BAY is scheduled to be back in court on Monday February 16th, why then the current
SHUT DOWN OF THE PIRATE BAY. Visitors to the popular
BITTORRENT TRACKER PIRATE BAY are currently being greeted with a message stating
"Could not connect to caching server" Either there is a server problem at
THE PIRATE BAY or court authorities got a jump on the February 16th court date.
Below are some excerpts from the blog of Snild Dolkow of Malmö, Sweden, an avid supporter of
THE PIRATE BAY Trial in 3, 2, 1...
The TPB trial starts on Monday, February 16th.
I started this blog at the day of the Pirate Bay raid, May 31st 2006. My purpose was to translate Swedish news articles to English, in order to allow non-swedes to keep up with the news flow (the very first post can be found here). As the news flow died down, so did my blog's activity. With the trial approaching, I expect lots and lots of news, and so I am reviving the blog.
Since most of you will be new to this blog, I'll start with a short introduction.
My name is Snild Dolkow. At the time of the raid, I wasn't really politically active in any way. I had joined the Pirate Party a couple of months earlier. After the raid, I became more active, and helped during the 2006 elections. Now I'm on the Pirate Party ballot for the 2009 European Parliament election.
Okay, so I may not be the most objective person you'll find. But I'll try. I hope you will find it useful.
And this time, I've made sure comments will be visible on the page (yay!).
posted by QauNuckShin at 4:46 PM | 0 comments links to this post
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Piratbyrån comments on TPB case delay
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall was, once again, granted extra time to press charges against TPB. The case has been delayed to October 1st. Swedish pro-piracy organisation Piratbyrån has commented on this, and even released an english translation.
I'll quote their press release here:
As expected, the prosecutor Håkan Roswall got prolonged time to bring a legal action against The Pirate Bay until October 1st 2007. More unexpected is the reasons given and the grounds for the decision.
- For a discrict court the reasons might seems sufficient, but for someone familiar with the case and the technique the arguments doesn't add up, says Magnus Eriksson of Piratbyrån.
Lets analyze the reasons given one by one:
"That the analyzis of confiscated equipment are still under way and that the equipment to a large extent consist of servers, which makes the work much more time-consuming."
- A server is not a multi-purpose machine like a regular computer. Contrary to what Roswall claims, it's often adapted to only one purpose. Therefore, the investigation of a server should be less time-consuming than that of a personal computer. Still Roswall claims that he can't return the servers even after a year of investigation.
"That he awaits the opinion of the state crime lab regarding analyzis of scripts and documentation of the torrent database."
- TPB consists of around 6000 lines of specially written code, or 16 lines of code to analyze each day. Up to three police officers have been dedicated to this for a year. What The Pirate Bay tracker and torrent site does should be obvious for everyone today.
"That the investigation regarding economic exchange in the activity of the Pirate Bay is still going on."
- If you haven't found anything illegal in an investigation of economic activity after a year, there is nothing there. No matter how much you wished it was!
"That encrypted information has been encountered in some of the confiscated computers that hasn't been cracked."
- This encrypted data does not belong to The Pirate Bay, but to the customers of Internet service providers PRQ. But only confiscation and investigation of equipment belonging to The Pirate Bay was allowed. Besides, a standard level encryption today takes about 40 years to crack. That's a lot of appeals for prolonged preliminary investigation!
"A large number of people have been actualized in the investigation. These must be questioned before the investigation can be completed."
- What is a "large number"? Two, five, a dozen? Who are they and why haven't they been actualized until now? The few people working with The Pirate Bay have been public and there are no army of secret co-workers!
These reasons given to the district court was found sufficient to grant the prolonging of the investigation. As we can see they do not stand up to a closer examination.
[Contact info and a paragraph about Piratbyrån removed]
posted by QauNuckShin at 11:52 AM | 0 comments links to this post
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Pirate Bay charges delayed
From Sydsvenskan (lit. "The South Swedish"):
***Translation
The charges against the three suspects after the razzia on The Pirate Bay last year will be delayed even further.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall has to June 1st to press charges, but tells magazine Ny Teknik [lit. "New Technology"] that he will request that the deadline be moved to October 1st.
***End of translation
This is pretty much what was indicated in The Local a few days ago. The article in Ny Teknik specifies the problem: there are encrypted disks. I find myself proclaiming "Wow, how unexpected" in an excessively sarcastic tone.
posted by QauNuckShin at 6:22 PM | 0 comments links to this post
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Prosecutor to press charges against TPB
Last week, prosecutor Håkan Roswall announced that he is pressing charges against TPB.
The Local has an article in English here. Good for me. I don't have to translate. :)
posted by QauNuckShin at 3:45 PM | 0 comments links to this post
Heh, sorry about the comments..
Just like many of you, I was wondering why there were no comments at all on the blog. I mean, it's been read quite a number of times.. Well, it appears I had comment moderation turned on. And I never noticed the comments, so they were never approved. So, when I logged in today to add a post (which will probably be the one after this one), the new Blogger interface said in big letters: "401 unmoderated comments waiting" or something like that. Two hundred of them were spam. Luckily, they were the latest 200, so they were easily marked and rejected. Sorry if I managed to reject any valid comments in the process.
Anyways, so now there are about 200 comments on the blog. I'll try to read them through and answer them if I think it's still relevant. :P
(don't worry, comment moderation will now be turned off.)
Edit/addition: Today at 5:35 PM, I got over a hundred notifications proclaiming new comments on my blog. I was very excited.
posted by QauNuckShin at 3:39 PM | 1 comments links to this post
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The Pro Piracy Lobby
We're going international, baby!
The Pro Piracy Lobby has been started. It's an international cooperation between pro-piracy groups, including Swedish Piratbyrån. Check them out at http://www.propiracy.org.
posted by QauNuckShin at 3:31 PM | 2 comments links to this post
Friday, June 30, 2006
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!
posted by QauNuckShin at 9:23 AM | 1 comments links to this post
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
posted by QauNuckShin at 8:43 AM | 0 comments links to this post
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
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.
It seems racism is rapidly becoming the keyword of the current US administration, which begs the question... Is the US really ready for an almost Black President?
