How the West was Lost

The Swedish right-wing government (which I made the grand mistake of voting for, next time I might as well vote for Godzilla) has decided that giving some people the right to play police is a great idea. This is called IPRED. We are not talking about guards or bouncers or anything. No, the music and film industries. Through handing a court "proof" (a screenshot saying "person X is downloading file Y") of copyright infringement (often referred to as "theft" because it sounds much worse) the enterprising industry representative can obtain the IP address of a supposed copyright infringer (often referred to as a "pirate" because it sounds like they plunder, rape and kill people) from an ISP. No police involved, no real investigation, no demand for actual proof. The industry representative can then send extortion letters to the supposed copyright infringer, just like they already do in many countries all over the world. The person might be guilty or innocent (victim of a hacker, another family member did it, the industry representative made a mistake/doctored the "evidence"), but that need not matter. If the industry representative sets the extortion amount just right, it will be comparatively financially preferable for the supposed copyright infringer to pay up, given the risk of high lawyer costs and great expenditure of time otherwise.

This is insane.

More subtly, this can be used by someone who wishes to find out the identity of someone else on the Internet. Simply pose as an industry representative (or find a real one to do the work for you) and doctor some evidence. Voila! You get their personal information, social security number and what not.

This is insane.

Combined with the FRA law which is perverse, sickening and fascist, I am wondering exactly what the fucking hell these politicians are aiming for. Are they evil or stupid? Which is worse?

The "reasoning" behind IPRED is that the poor authors need to be given adequate compensation for their work. Bullshit. It is another way to completely erode privacy and put power in the hand of not only private corporations, but the most meaningless of all private corporations, bringing such deadweight losses to society that they could sink small islands.

Though, the justification for the FRA law was even worse. It was passed because TERRORISM might otherwise be all over us like a burning poison blanket over a puppy dog with a limp, and thus we must be the vanguard of draconian oppression. Never mind that Sweden has been the victim of terrorism... never. You could argue about the event when the ship Amalthea was bombed in 1908 by anarchists, killing a grand total of one person, though, but that hardly seems like a good reason for a thoroughly horrible panopticon law a century later.


I have never been a foaming-at-the-mouth patriot, but I have always liked my country. Now I am mostly just ashamed.