I don't really think it is the case, but just maybe this idea stems from a percieved "need" of raising a generation or two of hard-core hackers, people who will be able to circumvent pretty much any type of security that can be thrown at them. For when they learn to circumvent a porn filter, why should they not take steps to ensure their communication is unreadalbe by anyone except the intended recipient?

The court can decide to have the "doors closed". This means only the court itself and the people involved in the case see the evidence. Any witnesses called will hear/see nothing other than their own evidence. Further, the court decision can be stamped "Secret" in parts or in its entirety. If things are really sensitive, you will never find out there has even been a trial....

I believe that one of the most often used reasons to close the doors and/or label the court decision secret is to protect the victim of the crime. This means that if JA is found guilty, the rest of the world might never get to examine the evidence, since it has been withheld to protect the interests of the victims.

Yes, I live in Sweden, but no, I am not a lawyer.

Let's see if I get this right: the guys make a little over 4M dollars, get fined 10K dollars and can "keep" the rest because they have already spent it? If this is true, I'm in the wrong business!

Don't worry, eventually the metric system will take over the USA, inch by inch.

I may be a bit off here, but I will guess that this move, if it becomes a reality for most, it will have the effect of teaching students how to use encrypted file-sharing protocols. The reason is simple: as a student you don't have much moeny, but plenty of time and lots of friends with the right knowledge. Add it all up and it can really only be one thing...

Have the politicians learnt nothing from the mistakes committed by others? Or does the European parliament have, as a requirement for being elected, an IQ under 75?

Not long ago Sweden enacted some laws designed to make it easier to find and identify file sharers. While I see nothing wrong with this in principle (let's face it: most file sharers share stuff they shouldn't...), the discussion before the laws were enacted made it abundantly clear that the people weren't going to take this without counter-action. So now the situation is that a lot of the traffic that we would like to stop is encrypted, and the law enforcement cannot find out what it is.

If this Italian idiot manages to get enough support for his stupid ideas, all he will accomplish is teaching the citiens of Europe how to encrypt their traffic, to use proxies outside Europe and in general make life for the authorities miserable! If my internet traffic is to be analyed or stored by the authorities, I am going to do something to foil them. And if I find a reasonably priced proxy in (just as an example) Russia, nothing the European Parliament decides will affect my proxy!

We have something called IPRED, that means that copyright owners can, via a court decision, force ISPs to reveal who has had a certain IP number a certain time. This person can then be sued for copyright infringement, if the copyright owners suspect them of it. This law is something the EU has thrust upon us, unfortunately it looks like a former Swedish minister of Justice was a major advocate of the EU directive.

And not long ago, the Swedish police talked to the current government, and told them that this law is giving them problems. Since no ISP wants to loose customers, a lot of them have stopped storing the information about who gets assigned what IP number when. So even if you know beyond any doubt what IP address has been doing illegal, you cant find the person "owning" the IP address.

And also, people are learning to encrypt their traffic, and to use anonymising services (proxies and/or TOR). Together with the ISPs not storing much information for long, the end result is that the Swedish police have lost the ability to track people who distribute eg child porn on a massive scale.

The Swedish politicians were warned of this potential development before the law was passed, but seem to have chosen to not listen. And now they are left with a population that has learnt to conceal itself on internet, so that even if they remove the law, the police will still be left trying to deal with anonimised and encrypted traffic....

I think the Australians would do good to talk to Sweden before they take any steps they cannot untake later....

As I read TFA, it is the recording of video/audio (or both) that is illegal. Thus, there is possibly a legal hole to use, although I must admit it strikes me as being most unpractical.

Suppose I see some police officers doing something they shouldn't and point my video camera at them. Only my camera does not do any recording, it just broadcasts whatever it sees and hears. In a location where it is legal, somebody else records the signal my video camera transmits. As I see things, this would be legal. Does anybody know?



(And FYI: IANAL)

When it comes to traffic accidents I think many countries have laws requiring you to help, as far as your knowledge will let you. Therefore, not helping is against the law and you can get fined. It would be very interesting, though, to know what law was used to fine this "perpetrator".

IANAL, and more specifically, IANAL in Germany, so my thinking might be off by several galaxies, but here goes anyway...

As far as I know, you cannot be fined unless you do something illegal. In other words, there _must_ be at least one law you have broken with your actions or lack of actions. The obvious question then: _is_ there a law in Germany demanding that you secure your WiFi? Or is some law being extended to cover this situation?

In my country laws are usually interpreted very strictly: if they mention (just for example) print media, the law is not usually assumed to include digital media as well. This is normally a good thing: actions/things that are not explicitly illegal are automatically legal.

That's part of the problem: many of the people making these threats would never "degrade" themselves by watching Western "crap" like South Park, or any other TV-show. So they judge the Western world by what they hear from others! Think back a few years, to the furor surrounding Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verse": how many of the many thousand protesters do you think had actually read the book, and knew what they were demonstrating against? My guess is none....

I have not claimed it would be easy to send a few bucks to your favourite artist. And if you want to do it avoiding the record company altogether it's harder still. But I think the degree of difficulty varies with the country you live in: in my country I can find out a persons street address (the address I would send snail mail to) from the comfort of my desk chair. All I need to know is the artist real name, which often appears in the Wikipedia article.

I am assuming the artist in question does not have their information protected. And getting such protection is possible only if there is a clear threat to a persons life: simply being famous is not enough for the authorities to deny the public access to your basic information. Some of my country's most famous artists have their information (full name, street address, birth date, and partner) accessible by anyone with the will to know it and an internet connection.

In your position I would pirate everything, and send a couple of bucks straight to the artist I like. And for the artists, it might very well mean _more_ money, since they only get peanuts per sold CD anyway... For the record companies, though, it will mean _less_ money. I am not sure that is a bad thing though ;-)