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Comment by ronjouch | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: why is this surprising / newsworthy?

It need not be "surprising" to be worthy of discussion.

The fact that the US has so much control over international copyright law enforcement is a big deal.

The fact that a site that does not host copyrighted material was taken down in the name of copyright law is a big deal.

What he says is not that he doesn't know it. What he says is that everybody knows it since years and the article doesn't contain anything that hasn't been known already.

I wouldn't fully agree with that, but his question is quite clear, imo.

Well, since it was about things that long ago, new people grew up for whom that might be newsworthy.

At least to me a Swede, this [datacenter] "... was raided by 65 Swedish police officers" is so incredibly out of touch with normal reality in this country, on so many levels.

* Copyright infringement case assigned to that many officers? Unheard of. High profile murder investigations don't get that many.

* We have this peculiar law, that ministers are NOT TO meddle in the running of government agencies. Yet, this is what we got.

* From cautious "see what happens" attitude among prosecutors with regards to copyright infringement and copying for personal use - to a big leap: not only an attempted (though only partially successful) witch hunt of Pirate Bay founders, but also inventing a whole new crime, called "accessory to copyright infringement".

Not that I don't agree that what Pirate Bay did was at times shady, but the whole thing made me believe without a doubt a few things:

- US as a case of "wag the dog". The trade associations (RIAA etc) in the US can easily make the state do their bidding. And the US state as an institution is quite weak, when it does these things so quickly. What that implies, is that there is no thinking things through. No serious cost/benefit analysis can possibly have been made. "How much ill will from foreign countries is this move worth? Fuck that, do it now."

- That Sweden would be pushed around so quickly. I must have been naive, but it was surprising how not even a symbolic attempt at saving face was made here. Our domestic response was decisive and swift. Can't help but make you wonder what we could be made to do to ourselves over something more serious than fucking copyright infringement. Dance, monkey, dance.

My wife had her credit card info stolen, and used it for about $3000, which was all that was on it. I recognized the site they used for purchases (also in Sweden), and called them up. They were very forthcoming and froze the account/purchases upon number verification (the card was already locked to be disposed at that point). They obviously couldn't give out any personal information to me, but they had information available on who it was for any police inquiry.

I relayed this information to the case handler, and yet immediately after I get a form response of "We've shut this case down since it's obvious there's no way to solve it".

We only needed the report to get our money back through insurance, but it really pisses me off that the police doesn't have resources to solve a case that I have solved for them, yet can spend _65_ officers on a political sham.

I've had the same thing happen with a flight that was booked with my credit card on the same day that I cancelled it (probably some guy at Mastercard making some extra money).

Booking a flight seems like it's something that's very easy to track down who benefits, doesn't it?

Police are pretty worthless in my experience as well. Once, some poor bastard had the misfortune to purchase a device stolen from my employer that I could easily track. I had GPS coordinates, identifying personal information, pictures from their phone, pretty much anything you could ask for, but nothing was done even after it became clear that this person was a meth dealer.

As a comparison to the 65 police officers that raider the Piratebay datacenter,gang murder investigations in Malmö, Sweden nowadays involve 3 police officers.

Source: https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2016-12-10/tre-poliser-istallet-f...

The "disproportional resource allocation" of the police and authorities begs for further investigation.

Yes especially when pretty much all other crimes except murder and stuff like that are disregarded nowadays. Swedens judicial system is completely broken.

...And police officers and whistleblowers like Peter Springare that dares to speak out about it are ostracized and made persona non grata.

Though I agree with much of that, I didn't want to conflate what happened 10 years ago with the current situation. The current situation needs it's own whole topic/thread.

Edit: though now we are talking about current situation anyway, I feel there is a chance to turn things around for the better. But it would probably involve many very big adjustments, one being massively higher salary for police officers. (Like 30% more.)

Norway is the same for the record. There was a local case recently where the police knocked down an innocent man on the street, handcuffed him, and charged him with assaulting a police officer. There were something like 30 eye witnesses, still he lost in court, police clearly giving false testimony. Luckily he did win the appeal.

The difference is that in Sweden the police doesn't do anything. Even if you give them a lot of evidence they drop the cases all the time.

I have personal experience of this.

"Henlagt grunnet bevisets stilling" (effectively claiming that the case will not be investigated due to lack of evidence) have become a running joke in Norway.

"Luckily he did win the appeal." ... so system is not broken?

Edit: I misunderstood. I thought the officers were punished. Sorry.

They knocked him down on the street, arrested him, charged him, dragged him through two years of trials. After winning the appeal, the chief of police mocked him openly and called him a liar. There was ZERO repercussions for any of the involved officers.

That's not broken?

edit: and you could look up the historical cases like Tonny Askevold. Charges of first-degree murder was dropped. The police can and will do whatever the fuck they want.

Then why do you keep voting a government like this?

All governments are fucked.

I have seen up and coming politicians in Norway basically become big media's mouthpieces over this topic, because otherwise their political carer is toast.

Damn it, when the law was up for review. The panel had strict rules about what parts of the law they could recommend changes for. Effectively they were only able to consider of the copyright duration should be extended or not.

It's important to not forget what the web used to be, in order to have some context for what it's becoming (see Net Neutrality).

It confirms that american businesses can apply pressure on a geopolitical and diplomatic level, which is scary.

Laws should apply to their own countries. If a foreign business can influence how the law is applied, it should be perceived as the US doing things that should be out of its reach. That's something empires do, and if they keep doing it, it will taint a bad image on the US.

Because exposition of abuse of power requires proven concrete examples.

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