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.
> 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.
Well, it is technically not a bill as the suggested changes to the law have not been proposed before the parliament yet, but it suggests concrete new versions of the law. So what remains is basically for someone to copy-paste the appropriate versions into a new document and then having a vote on it.
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.
Ok, that's interesting then. That suggests that the typical Swedish person feels that sharing copyrighted content is a heinous crime, on par with homicide.
Do you think that's accurate?
Why would the average person feel so strongly negative about this topic?
Swede chiming in here.
No. The typical Swede feels that it's one of the less serious crimes there is. Under speeding, far under DUI, under possession of drugs for personal use, maybe on par with parking violation.
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.
Indeed. Antipiratbyrån (The Anti-Piracy Bureau) was a lobby organization representing copyright holders in films and computer games until 2011. They surveilled people, breaching privacy laws but got exempted in court because it was done for a good cause. Infiltrated a Swedish ISP, tracked down filesharers online and took them to court and influenced the political debate a lot.
I don't have any illusion of lobbying and diplomatic pressure having lessened since.
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.
> That suggests that the typical Swedish person feels that sharing copyrighted content is a heinous crime, on par with homicide.
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.
This sounds exactly like the kind of indirect bureaucratic process the copyright cartels would resort to buying, after their direct attempts flamed out. The result hardly sounds like the conclusion from rational inquiry.
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.
“Do you understand what I'm saying?"
shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"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.”
Stealing $1.00 from a million people who won't miss it is more devious as you're less likely to get caught and if you get caught people are less likely to bother pursuing it.
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.
Bank robbery is a bad example of a financial crime..
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..
You won't get 5-8 years for stealing money. But many bank robberies kill or severely hurt people. And even where they don't, victims can be traumatised for a long time. Having a gun pointed at you isn't great for your mental health.
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.
I guess the argument is that piracy is a financial crime.
Which at a certainly scale is absolutely true.
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.
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.
...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?
I'm just saying that psychological care is a summer camp compared to some other prisons.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When were these “two decades”? Illegal downloads in Western Europe and North America only flourished on a large scale for a decade or so, between the rise of Napster and the point when it began to feel more convenient to many people to pay on iTunes, use a streaming service, or just hear whatever you want to listen to free on YouTube. The traditional music industry was challenged by filesharing, but it has also been decimated by changing formats that diminish the importance of the whole album, and a glut of content where it’s hard to do promotion when you’re just a drop in the ocean.
People who torrent music – I am still one myself – can be passionate about it, but we are a shrinking minority.
Last month I bought another external harddisk as a second security copy for my photos (can sound like a cliche, but this was their sole purpose). They say me that I have to pay around 8 euro extra, because I could be a pirate. So I had been fined by a private company, not related with the maker of the hardware and with the complicity of the government. Not much different than if bankers would push and force the government to make everybody serve three months in jail; because "everybody could be a bank robber".
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.
The music industry decimated itself, by being stuck in their backwards ways. They stagnated instead of innovating, and ignored the vast array of new technologies that became available to them.
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.
look, i get that you've gotten yourself into a career where you're adjacent to the legal system so you have no ability to critically evaluate anything beyond "it is/isn't legal therefore it is/isn't good" but if you try talking to a young person you might realize the number of independent artists has been exploding every year for a decade and we now have more people creating quality music than ever before in the history of the world (more people per capita than ever before as well, I'd wager). the ability to share and expose others to these new artists faster and easier than ever before is what makes this possible. sorry that no one cares that the big record labels and top 40s that made all their money on CDs are losing ground to distribution methods that aren't utterly unable to adapt to the industry's current landscape
"we now have more people creating quality music than ever before in the history of the world"
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.
>"we now have more people creating quality music than ever before in the history of the world"
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.
There are a lot more people than at any time in history. Getting food and housing is also significantly easier today than it was in (most of?) the past. It figures that there are a lot more people creating music today than at any time in the past.
If my neighborhood has a rapist, someone who lives off of burglaries, or someone who habitually drives drunk, then that has major consequences for the community and requires serious attention.
If my neighborhood has someone sharing pirated media, it simply does not have major consequences for the community.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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]
An incompetent government and corrupt politicians can ruin anything.
Including their own immigration policies by being dysfunctional and in the end boosting the anti-immigration forces on the other end of the political spectrum.
Last time I checked, Sweden was ran pretty well and corruption was low.
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.
Sure its officially low, even though we just measured a new all time high in corruption. most of it will be hidden and institutionalized.
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.
Thanks for proving my point and making me more sure that I am correct. You can't be critical of developments that are statistically backed without being downvoted and ridiculed by the politically correct people.
If you really want to know, I am currently dating an immigrant but I do not have many friends that are immigrants.
There is nothing I can do or say, or not do and not say, that will make you less sure that you are correct. That's the whole extent of the problem.
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.
> There is nothing I can do or say, or not do and not say, that will make you less sure that you are correct. That's the whole extent of the problem.
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.
Ha, reminds me of another comment on HN. Someone pointed out statistics of recent crime rates somewhere in Sweden and another said something along the lines of "But that's still on the level of a typical American city."
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.