First Swede Convicted For File-Sharing Now Cleared

Caine writes, "A 29-year old Swede, who was the first to be convicted under last year's new file-sharing laws, has been cleared on appeal. The court of appeal did not consider the screen dumps provided by the Antipiracy Bureau enough evidence to be able to convict the man. Since the crime does not carry a high enough punishment under Swedish law to allow for a search of the defendant's house, this means it will be virtually impossible to prove file-sharing crimes in the future."

Re:Heh

[Headcase88]

It's nice when a technicality works for the little guy, but a technicality is still a technicality and ideally, none should exist. The law should be fair and make sense. Not that that ever did or ever will happen.

Re:Heh

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Technicalities like that always amuse me, especially when they work out in favour of "the little guy". We have a few laws like that here in Canada, and I hope they don't change.

I don't consider this to be a technicality. I consider this to be the law working exactly as designed. Swedes consider privacy important, thus the police violating your privacy (seriously infringing your rights) in an attempt to find evidence of a much less serious matter is pretty idiotic. It would be like the police being allowed to shoot people they see speeding. It makes a lot of sense to me.

How it sharing ever became illegal

[pembo13]

is still a point of dismay to me. The least those involved could do was not call it sharing. I do not know much about economics, but I do not see how it benifits a society to not freely share and celebrate music and other forms of art.

Psychological benefit

[Mateo_LeFou]

"I do not see how it benifits a society to not freely share and celebrate music and other forms of art." I believe that people -- Americans in particular -- get very wigged-out when it is suggested that anything whatsoever might not be private property.

Re:Heh

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's true, but your argument puts it as exactly that - a technicality, where one law is rendered virtually unenforcable by another. In this case, privacy wins, and it would make sense for Sweden to simply remove the law from the books, since it's unenforcable clutter at this point in time.

I disagree. The law makes copyright infringement illegal, but not a serious crime. People may still be convicted of it, it is just that the evidence needs to come from something other than an invasion of privacy. People can still be convicted of this, just not en masse by some sort of automated system like the music distribution representatives would like. For yet another analogy, it may be illegal to smoke pot, but the cops can't invade your home to check without evidence. This does not mean the law can't be enforced, it just means they have to bust you in public places or when they break in with a different warrant.

Re:I'm off to Sweden

[Troed]

Parent is either extremely uninformed or a troll ... ;)

Welcome to Sweden - we usually speak better English than the average american. At least we can separate they're, their and there both in pronounciation, use and spelling!

*g*

Re:Heh

[Caine]

Ehum, the police never searched his house, and neither the summary or the article itself says that as far as I can see. What it does say is that the police is not allowed to search someone's house for proof of file-sharing crimes, which means, together with the fact that screen dumps and logs are insufficient, that it's very hard to get someone convicted for filesharing.

Re:Psychological benefit

[Znork]

"might not be private property."

Hence the IP lobbyists adoption of the misnomer intellectual 'property' rather than intellectual monopoly, despite the actual nature of the subject.

Re:Heh

[ShieldW0lf]

The point they're trying to make is this:

We should not be here cheering because a man wasn't convicted under this law due to lack of evidence.

The laws should be fair. If someone is breaking the law, we should WANT them to be caught. We should want the truth to be out.

When the people are cheering because the state can't use the mechanics of society to effectively enforce the law, that means there's something very fundimentally wrong.

But of course, when you're running a societal operating system that was built during the time of Kings and Emperors, then hacked to accomodate the co-existance of that system with some sort of "Representative Democracy", then hacked by special interest groups and international cartels ad nauseum until it resembles some sort of Fascist regieme dreamed up by Hitler and George Orwell, you expect there to be a little cruft now and then...

Re:Heh

[SQLz]

I wouldn't call it a technicality. Lets hope that noone ever considers a screen shot actual evidence in a court of law. The lawyers must be Counter-Strike players, "Look your honor, he was teh h4xor!"

Re:Heh

[shatfield]

...something other than an invasion of privacy.

This isn't something that Americans (of which I am -- for better or worse -- one of) know anything about -- we have no idea what "privacy" means. Especially in this day and age when police can "think they heard someone scream" and break down your door, or "think they smelled soemthing funny" and search your car.

"Privacy" is something that "used to be important" in America, you know "way back in the 50s".

I was raised by older parents who taught me the importance of privacy, and in the post 9/11 "everyone is a terrorist until they're not" world of today, privacy is just not something that Americans want to be bothered with anymore -- until it's their door that is being broken down, that is!

Not to mention how easy screenshot fabrication is.

[Seng]

And logs... I can easily doctor a log with search & replace to show different IPs. If RIAA/MPAA is just digging for out-of-court settlements, who is going to be the one to "validate" the logs/screenshots and testify they saw them in their original form? If we continue to allow corporations to file their own subpoenas without any independent verification, we're all screwed.

Re:What the fuck???

[Maxo-Texas]

It can be irritating.

I don't know if it helps but...

It's not there to protect the murderer.
It's there to protect the rest of us.

Governments gone bad are much worse than an occasional murder or drug dealer getting off.
The founding fathers felt excessive government power was *the* ultimate threat.

The scary thing is... we are just handing it all away to the government these days.

Re:What the fuck???

[rahrens]

It makes no sense at all to you because you haven't been on the receiving end of an illegal search.

The body of case law that requires the prosecutor's office to ignore evidence that has been illegally obtained is designed to stop illegal police searches, period. If the police constantly get cases tossed out because they are illegally searching people, at some point, police management is going to start training the cop on the beat in how to properly and legally conduct a search, and the illegal searches will at least, get less common.

However, if your idea of being able to use the evidence anyway got a legal foothold, any idea of a search being illegal would quickly go out the door, and the police would be able, in practice, to search anyone, anywhere they wished.

Not the way to protect privacy, in my opinion.

As to your idea of punishing the cop that conducts the illegal search, well, that's another story. Rightly or wrongly, our justice system tends to protect the cop on the beat. Sometimes, I think it goes too far, but on balance, they ARE the ones putting their lives on the line for us, and some leeway should acrue for that sacrifice.

As to the punishment, that DOES happen, internally, and out of public view. Do you think that a cop that constantly wastes police time and resources AND prosecutorial time and resources by constantly conducting illegal searches that get cases tossed out DOESN'T get brought up short by his boss? I'll bet they do. Police agencies all over the world are constantly short of budget, personnel, and other resources. Prosecutors' offices are much the same. They can't just let these things go, because they waste time and money. Cops that search illegally on a regular basis get pulled off the street and get re-educated and retrained. Those that keep it up will eventually get canned.

I can understand your reasons for your rant - we all have gripes with the justice system; it's not even close to perfect. But I'd rather the system encourage the cops to obey the constitutional guarantees of freedom the Bill of Rights gives us than allow them to ignore them. Yes, criminals will get released. But most criminals aren't very smart - if the cops don't get them this time, they will the next.

Re:What the fuck???

[Catbeller]

These kids who bow to the government went to with dogs sniffing their crotches for drugs. They really don't get civil liberties or how their rights should be protected at all costs. They went to work for feudal corporations who monitor their every orifice. They've no experience with freedom.

When people go on about how safe their schools are and how wonderful drug testing and E911 monitoring of their kids is, I want to scream at them, "You idiots. You are raising a generation of anti-American drones. You've scared them to death of Stranger Danger and kidnapping and dangerous city thugs and drug epidemics and Moslems, and they've become fascistic, giving in to power at every chance. You've made a generation of Good Germans. You've killed us."

RIP America, b. July 4, 1776 d. Sept 11, 2001.