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.

More ugly mugs

Yes, I am a union member. God knows why, so far it has only involved a monthly expense, the frustration of seeing my money being used in election campaigns for the Socialist Democratic party, and a poor excuse of a magazine called "Kollega", usually full of frustrated socialists crying out for higher salary, more vacation, shorter workdays and so on.

And speaking of "Kollega", I just got the latest edition in my mail today, and imagine my surprise when I saw the ugly mug of ultra-corporatist, Henrik "I sold my soul to the Devil" Pontén, with the heading "A hated man". Great, I though. Perhaps "Kollega" will finally include a piece of critical journalism, nailing this unethical, human piece of garbage to the wall and demanding a few answers. In short, give the average reader the answer to why he's such a hated man. But no, not one single critical question.

What a complete waste of perfectly good forest.

While at the subject, have a look at Mr. Pontén playing cop - which is of course completly illegal, as is most of Antipiratbyråns "work" (I sincerely hope this is a fabricated clip, but something tells me it isn't...this guy actually believes he's a cop):

A joke, I presume?

"You've got to be kidding me". That was my first thought when reading Henrik Pontén's letter in today's Svenska Dagbladet. Assuming Mr. Pontén is in fact the athor (which I must admit I'm having problems believing) he seriously wants the public to believe that IPRED, IPRED2, FRA, Hadopi, Acta and Datalagringsdirektivet, to mention a few, are just products of our imagination, they're not real, they're not threatening the freedom of speech or personal integrity. And none of them are the result of lobbying efforts from the entertainment industry. Oh, and the industry paying off judges and policemen to win highly questionable lawsuits, that's just part of the whole conspiracy theory against these peaceful "friends of the Internet" (yes, he actually uses this term!).

What kind of drugs is Henrik Pontén on? Or perhaps he's just trying to be funny, or something?

Pontén ends his ridiculous rant with a call for The Pirate Party to explicitly denounce the threats made to him over the last couple of years. As if this political party has somehow been involved in these threats.

If anything Don Pontén and his little Camorra-army should apologize profoundly to all the people whose lives they have ruined or seriously damaged with outrageous threats, lawsuits and compensation claims. Innocent or not, it doesn't matter, pay up or face the consequences.