The Swedish police: A complete embarassment

Well, it's official, not only are single policemen bought by the entertainment mafia, the entire Swedish police system seems to become a division of EMI/Universal/Sony/Warner, doing their dirty work extorting and bullying simple file-sharers in an organized way instead of prioritizing crimes that actually involve victims. Crimes that actually matter.

As a first step, nine police officers will be taken out of meaningful duty (and by meaningful I certainly don't mean the kind of appalling abuse of power displayed by these two pitiful clowns) and enrolled in the entertainment mafia division of the police, where they will knock down doors, seize computer equipment and threaten youngsters who are simply sharing their music or movies with friends or others.

In other words, it's some sort of reverse Ipred. In addition to outsourcing police work to private companies with financial interest in the work, the private companies are now also getting police staff working for them. And the police's excuse for this is probably the most pathetic thing I've heard:

Brott mot immaterialrätten är enligt Polismyndigheten ofta gränsöverskridande och beräknas omsätta stora belopp. Det nationella samarbetet är ett sätt att komma åt problemet.

Right. Non-commercial file-sharing generates a lot of profit.

This is a complete and utter disgrace for the Swedish police.

Original photo: Kike@

Guilty until proven innocent

The mafiosos over at the record companies (yes, the usual "axis of evil", Universal Music, EMI Music, Sony Music and Warner Music) continue their crusade to make the world an insecure place to live. According to Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Industri and Svenska Dagbladet they insist that two of the Pirate Bay founders are still involved in the management of the site, and should be fined accordingly. Not only that, but they seriously expect that mere allegations should be enough, and that the accusers should have to prove their innocence! The witchburners of the 18th century would be proud.

Enligt skivbolagen har de två har brutit mot vitesförbudet "genom att delta i driften av fildelningstjänsten", och skivbolagen anser att bara det faktum att Pirate Bay fortfarande fungerar är tillräckligt för att de två ska anses ha överträtt förbudet - såvida de inte kan visa att de inte längre är delaktiga.

"So, you're not a witch, huh? Prove it, or you're obviously guilty and will be burned at the stake."

I actually had to read that last sentence a couple of times before I realized it was serious. The good old "guilty until proven innocent" tactics that most developed countries abandoned decades ago. You're kidding me. However I'm quite sure the court will continue to obey the entertainment industry no matter how seriously it violates basic human rights.

CMX - what is it good for?

The music industry "axis of evil", Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI, are launching a new download format for albums, called CMX. What's wrong with MP3, you might ask. Well, for starters MP3-files don't include lyrics and music videos. But who really cares about that? Do a google search and find the lyrics you're interested in. And music videos? What is this, the 80's?

Most importantly, though, MP3-files don't include DRM, a computer virus that I'm convinced this new CMX-format will be infected by:

"Only playable on a Microsoft Windows computer with Internet Explorer 8 installed. Can only be installed on one computer at a time. We reserve the right to shut down our DRM-servers at any time, rendering your purchase useless".

Ooooh, I can't wait to waste my money on this. Not.

Spotify owned by criminals

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? Unfortunately it's true. Not only is the music industry making money on royalties every time a song is played back by you on Spotify (*), prominent members of this criminal industry actually own 18 percent of the Spotify shares, which they got virtually for free in exchange for access to their record archives - no free stocks, no deal:

According to newspaper Computer Sweden, which has got hold of documents that Spotify send to the companies registration office in Luxembourg, the record companies bought the shares for 100,000 kronor (€9.700, $13.900).

The record labels are: Sony BMG (5,8 percent), Universal Music (4,8 percent), Warner Music (3,8 percent) and EMI (1,9 percent). Also Merlin holds a small stake.

Time to uninstall Spotify and stop feeding the monster. Try Grooveshark instead, and lose those annoying ads at the same time.


(*) At the very least I think they should provide some sort of record label filter, so the users could choose to exclude artists from certain labels, thus minimizing their income.

Oh the stupidity...

The American entertainment mafia industry is on a roll. Now they're summoning the guys behind The Pirate Bay to court again, this time apparently because the site is still fully operational, with links (being a key word here...) to torrents containing copyrighted material.

In line with their tradition they want the Swedish court to administer ridiculously high fines to the alleged crew behind the site (the fact that these guys claim they have no influence over the site anymore doesn't matter), if, and I quote, "their TV-series and movies are available for download (from The Pirate Bay)":

Bland annat Disney, Universal och Columbia Pictures vill att kraftiga böter ska
delas ut om deras tv-serier och filmer går att ladda ned.

Talk about shooting the messenger. These decadent, incredible retards have still not grasped the concept of the BitTorrent technology. No movies are available for downloading from thepiratebay.org, they're simply acting as a search engine, much like Google (oh no, did I just commit a crime?). And they're not the only ones severely technologically impaired:

Männen bakom The Pirate Bay har tidigare blivit stämda av fyra svenska
skivbolag, Universal, EMI, Sony och Warner.
Även de vill att Stockholms
tingsrätt ska bötesfälla de tre männen och Black Internet AB om företagens verk
går att ladda ned från sajten.

Oh, the stupidity...

I particularily enjoy the fact that they would like to fine The Pirate Bay's ISP! Going after the providers of infrastructure is brilliant, as it opens up a whole new world. Telia could be sued because their phone lines has been used to plan a crime. Vägvärket could get sued because their infrastructures, the roads, cause fatalities. The possibilities are endless, and grotesque.

I'll give them one thing though, the lawyer representing them, notorious gold-digger Monique Wadsted, is probably spot on when she says she's confident the court will rule in favour of herself and her clients:

Advokat Monique Wadsted tror att chanserna är mycket goda att tingsrätten kommer
gå på hennes och filmbolagens spår.

When the mafia entertainment industry says jump, the court jumps, no matter what the law says. They've demonstrated this on a number of occasions, completely undermining the justice system and the public's faith in it.

Contribute to stopping this madness. Stop bying DVD's and CD's. Stop going to the movies. Stop feeding this monster.