6 ms·

Crazy new Swedish bill makes sharing music and TV as bad a “crime” as manslaughter

93 points by finnn 9y ago

some_account 9y ago
Ever seen the movie Idiocracy? I feel like society is becoming more and more like that. Laws like these are being passed and people are too numb to care.
- sschueller 9y ago
  I'm waiting for the day we spray our crops withe Mountain Dew and can't figure out why they don't grow...
- AnnoyingSwede 9y ago
  I have been saying this since i saw the movie. +1 (and a few more)
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Yeah. I see a society of uneducated people that want to elect the smartest folks they have to political power. I don't think we are going that route.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  The world of Idiocracy is a utopia. They're not only willing but eager to appoint the smartest man in the world to high office. President Camacho steps aside as soon as he realises that there is someone better qualified to be president. The movie shows a world that is deeply dysfunctional, but also devoid of any signs of bigotry, hatred or totalitarianism. There are no death camps, no migrations of starving people, no persecuted minority being scapegoated for the food crisis. We should envy those happy idiots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZOZjHjT5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZOZjHjT5E
sq_ 9y ago
Attempts at this type of legislation make me almost irrationally angry. 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.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Imagine- you leave a USB-Stick lying on somebodys desk- that USB-Stick contains pirated software. 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 I wonder if those taking the Lobbsters money here think there creation so ridiculous that it be repealed in an instant.
- kobrad 9y ago
  Are we still saying piracy loses money for somebody? Even after the EU paper about it? Why is it so hard to believe research? https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-study/ https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s...
  - speedplane 9y ago
    You cite a single article, which goes against the past two decades of experience, where illegal downloads have decimated much of the entire music industry.
    - scrumption 9y ago
      lmao, you sure know what you're talking about, the music industry is just in tatters these days huh
INTPenis 9y ago
I'm not surprised when I see on swedish news how a pedophile gets 3-4 years for molesting hundreds of children and a bank robber gets 5-8 years for not hurting a single person but stealing millions. It's a long standing dark gag here that financial crime is being treated much worse than violent crime.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Are you sure using bank robbery is a good example here? Some real financial crime like embezzlement would make more sense.
- temp987654 9y ago
  Which pedophile case are you thinking about and when was the last time Sweden had a bank robbery?
  - INTPenis 9y ago
    I used the phrase bank robber but what I meant was värdedepårån. Semantics, the point is that financial crime is often treated worse than violent crime. 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.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      > And they get psychological care very often. ...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?
      - 9y ago
rotorblade 9y ago
This, [0], appears to be the conclusion of the investigation that resulted in the bill, which contains a suggestion for a law. [0] (Swedish) http://www.sou.gov.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SOU-2018_6_webb.pdf http://www.sou.gov.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SOU-2018_6_...
blunte 9y ago
I don't know Swedish law, but I will guess that like American law, any parliament/house member can introduce basically any bill saying anything. Presumably the bill will not pass if it's terrible and the other members are sane/not-corrupt. So the presence of this bill is unfortunate, but I doubt it would get passed. 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.
- rotorblade 9y ago
  > I don't know Swedish law, but I will guess that like American law, any parliament/house member can introduce basically any bill saying anything. 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.
  - 9y ago
brisance 9y ago
This is frankly surprising to me. Didn’t the Pirate Party win seats in the Swedish parliament? What happened to them?
- rotorblade 9y ago
  They never got into the Swedish parliament, only to the EU parliament. 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.
- SiempreViernes 9y ago
  They won seats in the EU parliament, but didn't manage to enter the national parliament. 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.
  - chapill 9y ago
    Lesson learned: Don't mess with the copyright mafia. 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.
staticelf 9y ago
As a swede, I am unfortunately not surprised. While we have a surge in violent crimes mainly due to mass immigration this kind of shit gets pushed. 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=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnyheteridag.se%2Fsexualbrott-mot-barn-laggs-pa-hog-polisen-har-inte-resurser%2F&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=...
- dx034 9y ago
  > When I was young, explosions and gang criminality were extremely rare and uncommon 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.
AnnoyingSwede 9y ago
Comparing this to a bank-robbery doesn't really scale, being two completely different crimes. However, this suggestion came at the same time as the Swedish government suggested raised penalties for weapon crimes, meaning you can get up to 4 years for carrying a automatic weapon/hand-grenade you are not licensed for while you can receive a 6 year for providing copyrighted material to the public. Common punishment for rape in Sweden is 1-2 years. It's clear to me the Swedish government are not helping Hollywood in the best interest of it's citizen's but due to lobbying from the film industry. Just my 5 cents.
supercavv 9y ago
Sweden everything is possible. This is just a small matter, what is about to come.. I would move out immediately if I was living there.. Sweden is politically wounded them self so badly politically and they have antitrust problem!
yuhong 9y ago
Thinking about it, part of the reasons music labels got big is for economy of scale when mass producing CDs for example. Of course, such economy of scale was not needed anymore with the move to digital distribution. This didn't work well with the current debt-based economy where shareholders depends on stocks always going up for things like retirements and companies treat people as "consumers" to be extracted from. I assume that Hollywood has similar problems, right?
RickJWag 9y ago
In a just world, any musician, actor or artist that 'steals' time from an audience to espouse political opinions should be subject to unlimited free file-sharing of their content. Yes, I like that idea.

93 points by finnn 9y ago

Ever seen the movie Idiocracy? I feel like society is becoming more and more like that. Laws like these are being passed and people are too numb to care.

sschueller 9y ago
I'm waiting for the day we spray our crops withe Mountain Dew and can't figure out why they don't grow...
AnnoyingSwede 9y ago
I have been saying this since i saw the movie. +1 (and a few more)
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
Yeah. I see a society of uneducated people that want to elect the smartest folks they have to political power. I don't think we are going that route.
jdietrich 9y ago
The world of Idiocracy is a utopia. They're not only willing but eager to appoint the smartest man in the world to high office. President Camacho steps aside as soon as he realises that there is someone better qualified to be president. The movie shows a world that is deeply dysfunctional, but also devoid of any signs of bigotry, hatred or totalitarianism. There are no death camps, no migrations of starving people, no persecuted minority being scapegoated for the food crisis. We should envy those happy idiots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZOZjHjT5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZOZjHjT5E

sq_ 9y ago

Attempts at this type of legislation make me almost irrationally angry. 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.

Pica_soO 9y ago
Imagine- you leave a USB-Stick lying on somebodys desk- that USB-Stick contains pirated software. 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.
kobrad 9y ago
Are we still saying piracy loses money for somebody? Even after the EU paper about it? Why is it so hard to believe research? https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-study/ https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s...
- speedplane 9y ago
  You cite a single article, which goes against the past two decades of experience, where illegal downloads have decimated much of the entire music industry.
  - scrumption 9y ago
    lmao, you sure know what you're talking about, the music industry is just in tatters these days huh

INTPenis 9y ago

I'm not surprised when I see on swedish news how a pedophile gets 3-4 years for molesting hundreds of children and a bank robber gets 5-8 years for not hurting a single person but stealing millions. It's a long standing dark gag here that financial crime is being treated much worse than violent crime.

Kiro 9y ago
Are you sure using bank robbery is a good example here? Some real financial crime like embezzlement would make more sense.
temp987654 9y ago
Which pedophile case are you thinking about and when was the last time Sweden had a bank robbery?
- INTPenis 9y ago
  I used the phrase bank robber but what I meant was värdedepårån. Semantics, the point is that financial crime is often treated worse than violent crime. 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.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    > And they get psychological care very often. ...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?
    - 9y ago

rotorblade 9y ago

This, [0], appears to be the conclusion of the investigation that resulted in the bill, which contains a suggestion for a law. [0] (Swedish) http://www.sou.gov.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SOU-2018_6_webb.pdf http://www.sou.gov.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SOU-2018_6_...

blunte 9y ago

I don't know Swedish law, but I will guess that like American law, any parliament/house member can introduce basically any bill saying anything. Presumably the bill will not pass if it's terrible and the other members are sane/not-corrupt. So the presence of this bill is unfortunate, but I doubt it would get passed. 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.

rotorblade 9y ago
> I don't know Swedish law, but I will guess that like American law, any parliament/house member can introduce basically any bill saying anything. 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.
- 9y ago

brisance 9y ago

This is frankly surprising to me. Didn’t the Pirate Party win seats in the Swedish parliament? What happened to them?

rotorblade 9y ago
They never got into the Swedish parliament, only to the EU parliament. 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.
SiempreViernes 9y ago
They won seats in the EU parliament, but didn't manage to enter the national parliament. 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.
- chapill 9y ago
  Lesson learned: Don't mess with the copyright mafia. 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.

staticelf 9y ago

As a swede, I am unfortunately not surprised. While we have a surge in violent crimes mainly due to mass immigration this kind of shit gets pushed. 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=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnyheteridag.se%2Fsexualbrott-mot-barn-laggs-pa-hog-polisen-har-inte-resurser%2F&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=...

dx034 9y ago
> When I was young, explosions and gang criminality were extremely rare and uncommon 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.

AnnoyingSwede 9y ago

Comparing this to a bank-robbery doesn't really scale, being two completely different crimes. However, this suggestion came at the same time as the Swedish government suggested raised penalties for weapon crimes, meaning you can get up to 4 years for carrying a automatic weapon/hand-grenade you are not licensed for while you can receive a 6 year for providing copyrighted material to the public. Common punishment for rape in Sweden is 1-2 years. It's clear to me the Swedish government are not helping Hollywood in the best interest of it's citizen's but due to lobbying from the film industry. Just my 5 cents.

supercavv 9y ago

Sweden everything is possible. This is just a small matter, what is about to come.. I would move out immediately if I was living there.. Sweden is politically wounded them self so badly politically and they have antitrust problem!

yuhong 9y ago

Thinking about it, part of the reasons music labels got big is for economy of scale when mass producing CDs for example. Of course, such economy of scale was not needed anymore with the move to digital distribution. This didn't work well with the current debt-based economy where shareholders depends on stocks always going up for things like retirements and companies treat people as "consumers" to be extracted from. I assume that Hollywood has similar problems, right?

RickJWag 9y ago

In a just world, any musician, actor or artist that 'steals' time from an audience to espouse political opinions should be subject to unlimited free file-sharing of their content. Yes, I like that idea.