Crazy new Swedish bill makes sharing music and TV as bad a “crime” as manslaughter(privateinternetaccess.com) |
Crazy new Swedish bill makes sharing music and TV as bad a “crime” as manslaughter(privateinternetaccess.com) |
The money in politics problem has been increasing in much of the development world, so we have seen corporate interest laws pushed and often passed. The US of course is one of the worst offenders of this, and unfortunately this corporate-government system has been spreading to Europe and Scandinavia.
Fortunately for the world, the current US political circus has finally become so absurd that the global corporate right wing spread has slowed (based on elections in the last year). Maybe it will reverse once thinking populations finally realize the outcomes of the non-public-serving policies that their corrupt politicians have been pushing.
Yes this all sounds a bit dramatic, but there really aren't other adequate words to describe the direction of politics in the last 20-30 years. It really has been a problem of corporate money in politics, and it snuck up on "the people". But eventually the results begin to show, whether by excessive gun violence, increasing financial deficits (think "Kansas/Brownback"), perpetual wars, increasing first world poverty, etc. The absurdity reaches a point where it impacts enough of the comfortable people that they start caring what their politicians are actually doing, and then you start seeing big turnovers and upheavals as we're starting to see in US states now.
So this "bill" is the result of an investigation started by the government. The investigation concludes (document posted by me elsewhere in this thread (in Swedish)) that it would be appropriate to change the law, and what the "bill" should look like.
Have not found the stage of the bill yet, the suggestion for a bill in the final document of the investigation is what I found so far.
The investigation appears to have been performed by people from various instances; governmental, academic, and industry. Only one person from industry; "Film och TV-branschens Samarbetskommitté", whose role was "sakkunnig"/subject expert.
A clarification is that the investigation was about "If the existing sanctions for the most serious copy right crimes need to be increased", as well as some related issues.
Do you think that's accurate?
Why would the average person feel so strongly negative about this topic?
It's a long standing dark gag here that financial crime is being treated much worse than violent crime.
This is a quote from the article that the PIA post linked to (translated from Swedish by Google so wording may be slightly off):
"Today there is an organized online piracy that has major consequences for the whole community. Therefore, it is good that the punishment crimes for these crimes have been overlooked as the sanction is proportional to the seriousness of the crime"
I just fail to understand how someone causing a multi-million/billion dollar media corporation to lose some money is a crime so serious that that person should be imprisoned for up to six years.
Why is it so hard to believe research?
https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s...
If my neighborhood has someone sharing pirated media, it simply does not have major consequences for the community.
The person picks up that USB-Stick and keeps that USB-Stick- and just for this - setup you are clearly in the right to get him in for half a century.
Also, does this mean that you can get GPL-Infringers for six years sentenced?
I wonder if those taking the Lobbsters money here think there creation so ridiculous that it be repealed in an instant.
[0] (Swedish) http://www.sou.gov.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SOU-2018_6_...
Since then their main issue has mostly died, the law allowing FRA to spy on all our outgoing communications passed and the pirate bay people where taken down. But there's not been much action about these issues since then, and as a protest party option they are completely eclipsed by the racists.
They won America with DMCA. They're even beating computer nerds in Sweden. The only win we've had lately is Trump killing the TPP. Thank goodness for that man.
They did not perform very well in the Swedish elections (less than 1%, 4% is limit to get seats), and after their initial push their momentum seemed to die off.
According to my personal view, a large part why the Pirate Party would not succeed in Sweden was that the party members (not the 'sign up for free on a webpage'-members, but party leaders) and their activists were very different in ideology. Party members were strongly libertarian while activists were more on the left.
Yes, I like that idea.
When I was young, explosions and gang criminality were extremely rare and uncommon but today it is unfortunately being more common. I have several friends, including me, that has been the victim of either threats or violence in the recent years but the perpetrators always walks free due to our incompetent police and justice system that doesn't even investigate even the most obvious crimes where the perpetrator is known.
Some examples:
- My uncle was beaten down and had to be in the hospital for tring to stop 3 people from stealing a bike. No further investigation.
- I am/was being threatned several times by a guy, which I reported to the police several times and they haven't even started to look at my case yet (this was several months ago). I am very certain that the preliminary investigation will be canceled.
- Several sexual crimes towards children isn't even being investigated due to "heavy work burden" [1]
The development is really pissing me off and I am even thinking about moving from Sweden since I often times don't feel secure anymore. If this bill gets through it is simply more proof how insane our politicians are. They don't give any reason to believe that they even care the slightest about civilians security, just the image of the country as a whole. This kind of legislation will be used in the same way the drug policies are used, they increase the statistics for the police to make it look like they solve a bunch of crimes when in reality they do not solve most crimes of importance.
[1]: https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=...
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
But embezzlement, etc... Are often punished harder because these are deliberate crimes, often thought-out by rational people. And these crimes are done by people to who a great responsibility was entrusted.
Most violent crimes, most crimes in fact, are not even remotely thought through. They are extremely impulsive, or unlike to be financially motivated.
Finally, crimes like corruption and embezzlement constitutes serious threats to society. Because they erodes peoples trust in institutions, rule of law, police, etc.
Americans would trust wall street more if there was fewer financial crimes..
Harsh sentences for those cases are not about the money lost by an insurance, it's about the willingness to hurt or kill people for some extra money.
Sweden have historically had very weak laws when it comes to private citizens doing piracy. But that's also very different from a commercial piracy enterprise.
Our whole society is cashless and one of the official reasons are to prevent robberies. But we haven't changed sentences for pedophiles.
Pick a case. I just googled "dömd pedofil" and found several cases of them being convicted to 2-4 years prison for molestation and rape.
And they get psychological care very often.
There's one in Falkenberg that raped 3 girls for several years and he received a sentence of 9 years, which is 1 year longer than a famous unarmed cash robbery performed in Sweden.
Even when they get relatively harsh sentences it doesn't seem enough to me.
Are you sure about this? Crime has decreased significantly over the past decades in most countries. I also can't remember any crime from when I was young but my area was much more dangerous back then. But as a child, you don't notice subtle signs of crime and won't get beaten up because you try to prevent people from stealing a bike. And even if that happens to a family member I'm not sure parents tell their children the truth. But asking your parents won't help, memory is always biased, my memory of the area I lived in as a student is also much better than it deserved.
More communication by social media has probably also played a role, it's much easier to track crimes nowadays. But even where crimes were reported back then it's really hard to compare that unless you use official statistics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...
https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1637&ar...
http://www.dagensjuridik.se/2017/09/sverige-i-topp-med-antal...
> In Germany [solved crimes involving shooting] they are close to 90 percent and in Finland more than 90 percent. In Sweden, as the firearm has increased, the level of clearance has also declined steadily since the late 90's.
But yeah, downvote me for stating facts.
When it come to gang criminality, the biggest change was seen between 1990 and topping during 2010 (2015 was the immigration crisis). The government department for crime statistics (BRÅ) links the increase in blackmail and protection rackets to an increase in gang criminality, resulting in a report 2012 which describing a increase from 500 cases during 1990 to 2500 cases in 2010. [1]
BRÅ do not have data over explosives, but the raw data from the police gives 8 reported cases with hand grenades during 2014 and 52 for 2016. This is a large increase that did happen during the immigration crisis and is speculated to be connected, and the weapons themselves is tracked to Yugoslavia. [2]
For the anecdotal cases in the parent post, violence has both gone up and down in the last 10 years but it did go up between 2014 and 2016 by 28%, which is the highest point since 2007. There is a potential link here for immigration, but 2007 is not that long time ago so it could also be variation.[3]
Threats and harassment did also go up between 2014 and 2016 by 36% and is currently at the highest it ever been for the reported dataset. [4]
The clearing rate for sexual crimes has gone down and is at the lowest it ever been at 11% for rape, but this is a long lasting trend since 2009 where it was as high as 31%. The cause of this is a bit complicated since the number of charged criminals has remained the same and the number of reported cases has increased by almost 50%. There is no correlation to 2015 immigration crisis. [5]
[1] https://www.bra.se/download/18.1ff479c3135e8540b2980007523/1...
[2] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/halland/handgranatsattacke...
[3] https://www.bra.se/brott-och-statistik/statistik-utifran-bro...
[4] https://www.bra.se/brott-och-statistik/statistik-utifran-bro...
[5] https://www.bra.se/brott-och-statistik/statistik-utifran-bro...
Interesting times.
If you really want to know, I am currently dating an immigrant but I do not have many friends that are immigrants.
Yeah, was not sure how to explain the distinction, hence my quotation marks. Sorry for being vague.
But I think it is impossible to say one is objectively worse than the other. It depends so much on how the crime affects people. If you steal a million from a multi-billionaire, he might not even notice. If you scam a clueless person out of a million that they got in debt to hand over to you, that will ruin their life.
There seems to be a vocal contingent of disenfranchised young white males with a sense of entitlement. Most of them will grow out of it, and any sane political environment is flexible enough to accommodate them in the meantime.
Like so many things, the Internet makes it seem interesting, but I'm not sure there will actually be "interesting times" ahead in the classical Chinese sense.
Imho these severe penalties on victimless crimes, based on foreign lobbying shows ... something, but it is not the will of the people, not independence, not justice, not really functional democracy.
We had quite a movement for digital freedom about a decade ago when the Pirate Party was on the rise and there was opposition against surveillance from FRA (Swedish equivalent of NSA), but the average person doesn't care and I think even the previous activists have been in a state of fatigue and silent acceptance for years now.
I don't have any illusion of lobbying and diplomatic pressure having lessened since.
Well... I'm not sure that's how you should see it. For example, skimming the document I mentioned, they have a section "Konsekvensanalys"/Analysis of consequences. There they address for example socio-economic impact, but not "popular opinion on the matter", or similar.
I think it would be more appropriate to see the investigation as objective (to some degree), and the final voting by the parties (on a potential future bill) as their considerations how this would impact their popularity. If the objective conclusion is that X should be done, a party may still not vote to implement X because of peoples opinion on the matter.
People who torrent music – I am still one myself – can be passionate about it, but we are a shrinking minority.
Law is based in the norm that you can't pay two times for the same crime. I had paid yet "for copying a few titles". I pay each time I buy a computer, a telephone or an SD target, so I feel morally vindicated to take a modest profit of my pre-crime also.
They shunned digital distribution and preferred to bet on ill-conceived retrofitted DRM on CDs. They attempted to instigate a migration to new DRM-laden formats (DVD-A and SACD) with false claims of better sound quality. They completely neglected streaming possibilities until Spotify et al. came and caught them with their pants down. Now they are trying to milk the streaming companies as hard as they possibly can, killing their Golden Goose in the process.
They are seeing record profits from streaming, but they continue to tighten the leash.
Fortunately I don't have to. Statistically, at some point you're going to find something that is important in your life, and you will find out that, "Hey, Sweden is actually a pretty neat place to live!"
The goal of the "politically correct people" in the meantime is to call out racist bullshit for what it is, and hope other angry young people don't get caught up in the narrative.
Isn't that very true for yourself as well? Even more true most likely since I rely on data and experience when I make my claims. Please point out what "racist bullshit" I have written for example. I know some of what I have written is anecdotes and of course not everyone will have been a victim of crimes but I still think it is interesting for non-Swedish people to read stories from people that actually have experienced crimes and the changes the society have undergone.
I have never once stated that Sweden is not a neat place to live, in fact, I very much like Sweden. But there is a big difference in liking a country and feeling secure, isn't it?
I have a lot of things I consider important in my life, but just because I do doesn't mean that I am blind to the changes I see in the society around me.
You haven't called out any racist bullshit, because what I have written is unfortunately not bullshit. It is very disrespectful of you to even claim that. In fact, you haven't called out anything except downvote and try to humiliate a person you don't agree with. You at least do a good job at that.
...Should they not? I mean, granted those sentences seem awfully lenient, but unless their sentence is life or death, they're going to get out eventually, and we want them to be less rapey when they do, right?
Problem is that when pedos end up in normal prison they need 24/7 guards because the other inmates will hurt them. So in psych care they end up with others of their own kind and more lenient environments.
Wow...as described here, your legal system sounds...useless.
1. The judge in the pirate bay case was a member of an organisation "Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt"/"The Swedish Organisation for Copyright" (my own translation), and it was decided not to be partial to the pirate bay case. See for example [0].
2. Even if there were diplomatic pressures on Sweden from the US (which there were [1], their actual impact is what is in question), it should be impossible for a minister to influence the police directly [2]. Which makes for the pirate bay take down to be a ridiculous coincidence.
3. Sweden allows lawyers with their own, so called, "intellectual property" interests to defend suspects of file-sharing. See for example [3] which do give credit for this lawyer doing a good job, but just in principle this seems absurd (imo). I hope he is not allowed to be the defence lawyer if it is his own material at least.
[0] (Swedish, summary in English) https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/3800...
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/how-the-us-pushed-sweden-to-take-do...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerstyre
[3] (Swedish) https://overklass.wordpress.com/tag/fildelning/
Where exactly are you getting this? I find it extremely unlikely, and I'd bet the opposite. Just because it's now easier to discover artists, does not mean that there are more of them. My position is based on the many former artists I know who abandoned what they did b/c of the futility of being able to support themselves.
But the issue is bigger than just creating the most amount of art. On a moral level, an artist should have some ability to control how their art is distributed. Just because it can be easy or free for others to enjoy it doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to it.
Where exactly are you getting this? I find it extremely unlikely, and I'd bet the opposite. Just because it's now easier to discover artists, does not mean that there are more of them. My position is based on the many former artists I know who abandoned what they did b/c of the futility of being able to support themselves.
There are absolutely more bands now than ever before. In the olden days, you needed a studio full of expensive gear, and sound engineers to work the gear. You needed production facilities to press LPs/CDs and you needed distribution and promotion deals to get your name out there and make something for people to buy. All of this necessitated a big investment, so the concept of the record deal was born, and the labels grew fat and happy, mostly because they exploited the hell out of the struggling artists, with onerous contracts.
Even just being a garage musician was more expensive back then, as instruments and gear used to cost a lot more than it does today.
Today everyone with a PC can record music inexpensively. Reaper is an absolutely fantastic DAW and very fairly priced, and high quality audio interfaces with good preamps can be had for a couple hundred dollars. That's not to say that these people will produce anything of notable quality, but the bar is so low now that basically anyone can give it a go.
For promotion, you can very successfully go by word of mouth on social media, instead of relying on traditional promotion.
For distribution, it is easier now than every before. Anyone can create a Bandcamp profile and upload their music. Bandcamp handles the layouts, tagging, re-encoding and provides streamlined shopping, both for downloadable tracks and for physical merchandise. Their terms are easy and uncomplicated, there are no long confusing contracts, and they're extremely friendly and easy to deal with, in my experience. They take a 15% cut, which reduces to 10% if you sell over a certain amount per year: https://bandcamp.com/pricing
>But the issue is bigger than just creating the most amount of art. On a moral level, an artist should have some ability to control how their art is distributed. Just because it can be easy or free for others to enjoy it doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to it.
Yes, the artist should absolutely have control over how their art is distributed, which is why the big labels need to die, along with their onerous contracts and manipulation.