The single most important question that hasn't been answered

Sweden's first Ipred lawsuit ends up in the European Court of Justice. That's hardly a surprise. What is a surprise to me though is that what I consider to be one of the most important questions in this case hasn't even been touched by the courts:

How did the anti-piracy agency, Antipiratbyrån, manage to legally break into a secure server in order to gather evidence? And furthermore, do the courts find illegal activities to be perfectly ok when performed by representatives of the entertainment lobby?

A secure FTP server is...well, secure

Svea hovrätt just announced that having a secure FTP server that requires a username and password to access, means it's files are not publicly available. No shit, Sherlock. Although, I have to say I'm a bit surprised that this incompetent institution actually managed to find a judge that had no affiliation with the entertainment industry, and that actually made some sense. This means the ISP Ephone does not have to give up its customer's integrity.

Now what I want to know is when Antipiratbyrån will be prosecuted for breaking into this server in the first place, to gather the pathetic piece of "evidence" that was presented to the court (and found to be more than enough by the retards at Solna tingsrätt)? Last time I checked hacking into secure servers was still a crime. A much more serious one than copyright infringement, I might add.

Ipredator going live

Good news. Swedish newspapers DN and SvD, as well as frontman Peter Sunde himself, report that the anonymity VPN-service Ipredator is in it's final beta stage and could be going live any day now.

Of course, in an ideal world Internet users wouldn't need such a service, but in a world where our civil liberties are constantly under fire by repressive governments and private interest groups, it's a necessity.

Update: According to police lawyer Fredrik Ingblad Ipredator will only make it a bit more difficult, but not at all impossible, to track down users of file sharing services. Of course he refuses to give any examples of how this would be done...

The VPN-solution I use at work, or rather when I'm not at the office but want to access the company network, encrypts the traffic from my client and to the VPN-server, and the only visible IP-adress is the one of the VPN-server. I'm assuming Ipredator is working more or less the same (except, obviously, my company keeps logs of what I'm doing when I'm using their VPN service), so I would like to know which rules Mr. Ingblad and his comrades intend to break in order to get past this. Install spyware on every Swedish citizen's computer (would be all the more reasons to switch to Linux)? Either way I'm sure they could get plenty of good advice from sleazeball extraordinaire Henrik Pontén and Antipiratbyrån on this.

Another miscarriage of justice

The Swedish ISP Ephone has in an utterly bizarre verdict by Solna tingsrätt ("Framgång för bokförlagen i det första Ipred-ärendet", skriver tingsrätten i ett pressmeddelande) been forced to provide personal information about the owner of an internet subscription to five publishing firms. Why? Because someone using this internet subscription had set up an FTP-server, a private server requiring authentication to access its content. Supposedly this FTP-server contained copyrighted material, which Antipiratbyrån gained access to, presumably either through hacking or just by plain and simple threats. Remember that the next time you upload that MP3-file, image or XVID-movie to your personal online storage facility - the mafia entertainment industry might hack into your account and then accuse you of making the material accessible to the public.

Anyway, this personal information will of course help the publishing firms hunt down and take legal action against the owner of the internet subscription (not the actual perpetrator, mind you!), and most likely be responsible for yet another miscarriage of justice. We all know the court will find him or her guilty without a shred of credible evidence, a screen shot and an assumption that the internet subscription owner and the perpetrator are the same, is enough these days. Recent verdicts in the previously civilized part of the world has shown that one is in fact no longer presumed innocent until proven guilty when it comes to acts of copyright infringement. Instead, we've taken a giant leap backwards in time and embraced the principle of "guilty until proven innocent". Makes it all a lot easier for the court, doesn't it? "So, you can't prove that you're innocent? Can't prove that somebody else was using your WLAN that night? Too bad, that'll be 15 millions in fines. Next!"

Also, I can't help but wonder how the judge in Solna tingsrätt is affiliated with the mafia entertainment industry in this particular case. Or perhaps he too was promised a well paid pro forma job in the industry if he helped them along by making a decision that went against all common sense?

If anyone should be on trial here it should be Antipiratbyrån and Henrik "Pirate" Pontén, as they have illegally gained entrance to a private FTP server. Somehow these computer crimes, regularly performed by Antipiratbyrån to secure "evidence", are never an issue.

Clearly, those with enough money and lobbying power own the justice system.