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Swedish clamp down on pirates

by on01 February 2017


Have they no sense of their history?


One of the nations who held Northern Europe in fear of another Viking raid and a History channel drama, has decided that pirates are not such a good thing.

Sweden has decided that the old ways of rape and pillage are over, especially when it comes to raiding the movie and film business.

Authorities in Sweden are mulling new measures to deal with evolving 'pirate' sites. As part of a legislative review, the government wants to assess potential legal tools, including categorizing large-scale infringement as organized crime, tougher sentences, domain seizures, and site blocking.

The idea is to work out a way to run future prosecutions of large-scale copyright infringement cases because it is worried about the more serious cases of copyright infringement.

The idea is to treat piracy sites in the same way they do organised crime. The Justice Department says that due to the way sites are organised and the subsequent development of revenue, treating them as self-contained crime operations may be more appropriate.

In the scale of things, putting that much effort into taking down pirate sites is a little odd. While there is no doubt that copyright infringement is a pain in the arse to the movie and music studios, it is not exactly on the same scale as organised crime. No one is killed because someone ran a website where you can download Game of Thrones or Vikings

According to the US State Department, organised criminal activity in Sweden is pretty light and low-level. It is mostly organised criminal groups such as larger motorcycle gangs and small numbers of organised crime elements from Eastern Europe. One of the bigger organised crime cases involved hand grenade attacks which is not something we have noticed with online piracy.

The film and music industry is suffering a lot lately as people move to movie and music streaming which has gutted the DVD and CD market. While Big Content gets a handle on the issue, it is easier to blame pirates for the effects on their bottom line. 

Last modified on 01 February 2017
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