waffle

I promised I’d report more on the Swedish implementation of the optional to implement IPRED EU directive. I stopped last time because I was getting seriously depressed. I just read a good summary of what’s going to happen to you if you’re targeted, and the list (and only the list) that’s about to follow translates many of those points. The author of the summary is the leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, and every fact replicated here is verifiably correct. There’s not a thing in there that I haven’t heard before about this law, but it paints a very shocking picture when put together.

The phrase “Industry” below will refer to the music, video and general media industry and media rights owners. These new powers of accusation and enforcement are bestowed upon large trade industry organizations, and I haven’t been able yet to find a formulation in the 452 page source document that spells out the criteria for such trade organizations.

• The Industry will start by running a private criminal investigation — something otherwise forbidden. They are exempted from the Data Protection Directive, which is the law regulating the existence and contents of databases containing personal information.

• The Industry will force an ISP to release personal information regarding the owner of the account which was allocated access to the suspected IP address at the time of the alleged crime. No branch of the Swedish police can force this information to be released. Note the previous discussion on the guarantees that the IP address, never mind the owner of the account, was even involved — none. Nothing that’d hold up in criminal court. For the purposes of the following items, the owner, it turns out, is you.

• The Industry will freeze your bank account and temporarily seize the place of dwelling to such an extent that while they can’t make anyone move or evict you, they can search the premises with access to the entire contents on any computer in the household.

• The Industry will send you an extortion letter to the sum of up to several hundred thousand SEK, which translates to tens of thousand US dollars or Euros. (This has been documented and seems to be a standardized form letter with quantifiable lump sums in other countries.) In a radical departure from other civil cases, the money demanded does not need to be proportional to provable and actual damages, but instead enough to be a powerful deterrent — to ensure that the alleged crime won’t be repeated. The letter will contain an offer to abandon the court case provided you pay half the sum within ten days. If you’re not so easily persuaded, the Industry will remind you that you’ll have to pay their court costs in case you lose, and that their lawyers would be happy to inform you what their hourly rates are as soon as they finish parking their Bentley.

• The Industry will then actually take you to court, where you’ll have to prove your innocence without a lawyer by your side since you can’t afford one, because they froze your bank account.

• The Industry will finally collect the enormous damages and, to top everything off, in some cases force you to take out a magazine ad proclaiming your guilt.

This is totally fucking batshit insane. This makes Kafka look like a goddamned optimist. I wouldn’t expect this kind of shit from North Korea.

This is not proportional. This bestows a private industry with legal capabilities far beyond the reach of any actual government agency in the precise area they’ve been having wet dreams about getting them. This breaks several human rights, including the rights to privacy and due process.

There’s absolutely no reason that this should have passed. There’s absolutely no one that can claim that it’s in the best interests of the country, the open market, society at large or the people.

And most of our mindless politicians not only actually claim to support it but voted for it.

So if I keep going on about the trial against The Pirate Bay, about DRM schemes, about the Pirate Party, I hope it’s obvious why I feel I have to do so.