Soon after IPRED became law in 2009, five book publishers aided by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån handed a request to a local court for information on the owner of an FTP-server that allegedly stored more than 2000 audio books, a couple of dozen of which breached their copyrights.

There was a problem though. The FTP-server was private and password protected so the audio books it contained could never been made available to the general public. Nevertheless, in June 2009 the court ordered ISP ePhone to hand over the details of the person behind the server.

ePhone protested that the publishers who filed the lawsuit had not been able to prove that anyone other than Antipiratbyrån had ever accessed the server which contained 27 allegedly infringing audio books. The court of appeal agreed with ePhone that there was no proof the books had been made available to the public or anyone else for that matter.

That case is now with Sweden’s Supreme Court which has asked the two sides to consider whether it might be necessary to request that the European Court issue a preliminary ruling, but in the meantime something else needed to be cleared up.

If the FTP-server was private, how did Antipiratbyrån ever gain access to it in order to gather the evidence to put its case together? For many onlookers the answer to that question was simple – Antipiratbyrån must have illegally hacked into the server.

However much those in the file-sharing community would love for this to be proven true and Antipiratbyrån’s name dragged through the mud, it seems those hopes are over. Prosecutor Björn Ericson has announced that there will be no investigation into the notorious anti-piracy group despite many allegations made about them to the police.

“We have received reports of intruders. They were unclear so we supplemented them with interviews with those who notified us. But there are ways to get the data and they need not be criminal in nature. There is not enough concrete information about a specific crime,” said Ericson.

So how did Antipiratbyrån get access to the server? In all probability we’ll never know. In arriving at his decision to drop the case, the prosecutor did not ask the anti-piracy group how they gained access. Of course, they had no incentive to tell.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Following an investigation conducted by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, on Wednesday and Thursday police swooped on four individuals. Searches were carried out in Stockholm and at two locations in Västerås where servers were found.

Although one individual was later released, the suspects – all men in their forties – are suspected of having connections to the Scene servers known as “Darkside”.

According to Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån, the three were responsible for servers which are claimed to house 130tb of both Swedish and foreign movies.

“Dark Side has a huge capacity,” Pontén told DN. “This is the biggest case we know of to date, certainly the biggest in Sweden, but possibly also in Europe.”

Antipiratbyrån, who had been monitoring Darkside and gathering IP addresses and other information for some time, handed the investigation over to police in February.

“[Wednesday's] police operation was yet another important step to stop organized piracy. This type of action has a direct and dramatic effect on the number of infringements,” said Pontén in a statement. “By extension, it means that the cultural workers get an opportunity to get paid for their work and we consumers have access to a continuing culture production.”

According to prosecutor Frederick Ingblad, who was recently involved in the numerous raids against Direct Connect users and is part of a new piracy task-force, there have already been some confessions from those arrested.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

To ensure that this is indeed the case, last December two lawyers and an IT security expert conducted an audit at Antipiratbyrån’s offices. Although IFPI would also face a visit, the group said that it held no data, instead choosing to outsource their harvesting work to companies outside the country.

The results of those audits have now been made public. According to the Data Inspection Board, both Antipiratbyrån and IFPI conform to all necessary regulations when collecting information on Internet users they suspect are sharing copyright works.

According to Jonas Agnvall from the Data Inspection Board, although many IP addresses are gathered, most are discarded and there are now just 100 to 200 IP addresses currently held on record.

Previously data had been used to send out warning letters to suspected infringers, but it now seems that practice will completely cease.

“The reason is that the ISPs refused to send letters to subscribers,” notes a statement from Antipiratbyrån.

There had been criticism of the Data Inspection Board after they gave both Antipiratbyrån and IFPI advance notice that they would conduct audits. Some felt that this would give them time to adjust suspect operating practices. Jonas Agnvall said that unannounced visits do happen, but only in extremely rare circumstances.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

With millions of individuals using BitTorrent and a relative handful using Direct Connect (DC), many wondered why this smaller group were considered worth of police attention. The answer was simple – gathering evidence of mass infringement to be used against those using BitTorrent is a hugely complicated task compared to Direct Connect.

“They can try to download the movie and see a list of people who have the movie. But they can not get a list of everything you download,” explained uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus recently. “It is difficult to attack a specific person.”

In common with DC but on a much bigger scale, BitTorrent is not just one network – every single swarm is a new and separate network and the task of monitoring them all is massive.

“There is a huge apparatus needed to keep track on all torrents. I think it’s too hard to manage to do it and then get [the evidence] to hold in the District Court,” adds Strigeus.

Not to say that Sweden and its fledgling anti-piracy taskforce haven’t been busy, though. They just haven’t been getting that many results.

According to a report, in the last 18 months they have reported between 70 and 80 file-sharers to the police. Of those, just 35 to 40 cases were considered worth pursuing. Around 10 of those individuals have been arrested thus far, only 3 have admitted to offenses and agreed to pay fines and there are just 15 cases still under investigated. Needless to say, this is not considered good progress for the time and money invested. Additionally, none of them were BitTorrent users.

While investigators insist that they are looking into new ways of tracking and logging evidence against BitTorrent infringers, anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran (APB) are hoping that the law will help their battle.

APB lawyer Henrik Pontén says the difficulties posed by BitTorrent “…shows the need for other types of intervention from the legislators, if they are serious about copyright law to work on the Internet.”

Pontén is hoping that changes to legislation will allow collecting societies and outfits like the IFPI to start sending copyright infringement warnings directly to those they suspect are sharing files illegally.

“The simplest option is that the victims of copyright crimes are able to send warning letters,” says Pontén.

Currently this is a problem in Sweden, since it is very difficult to obtain the real identity of someone behind an IP address without the assistance of the police. Because of this, Pontén hopes that his group can cooperate with ISPs so that they can forward infringement warnings to file-sharers on their behalf.

“We will not get [the file-sharer's] identity, we just want the warning message to arrive at the correct address. An independent body should be able to send information to the person breaking the law, possibly a government body or a third party organization,” he concludes.

Although this would be a first step, with no sanctions should the warnings be ignored it’s difficult to see how this system would have ‘teeth’. But it’s probably one step at a time for APB – teeth will be bared at a later stage.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Taking the responsibility for ensuring this happens in Sweden is the Data Inspection Board, a public authority which can audit companies and organizations holding personal information.

The Board’s connections to file-sharing go back notably to 2005, when it ruled that the activities of the Swedish anti-piracy bureau (Antipiratbyrån) went against the Personal Data Act. It decided that since IP addresses can be tied to a specific person, only the government were allowed to store that type of information in criminal cases.

Since then Antipiratbyrån has appealed the decision twice and lost, but fortunately for them, an exception was made in the IPRED legislation which now allows organizations to collect data when it precedes a legal claim, i.e suing file-sharers.

However, while anti-piracy groups are allowed to collect data, they have to comply with a set of standards enforced by the Data Inspection Board. To this end, two lawyers and an IT security expert will today head to Antipiratbyrån’s offices in Stockholm to conduct an audit.

“We want to see how the records of suspected file sharers are being handled,” said Jonas Agnvall, a lawyer at the Data Inspection Board.

Part of the reason for the inspections is to check if the anti-piracy group has changed the way it handles information following the introduction of IPRED in April this year. The legislation was widely feared by Swedish file-sharers but thus far has only led to a single case, which was thrown out by the Appeal Court.

IFPI chief executive Lars Gustafsson offered assurances in September that law suits against suspected file-sharers were very close, but noted that his group were biding their time to see how the first IPRED case panned out. As you’ve just read, that case collapsed.

Although it has taken no action against file-sharers thus far, on Monday IFPI will get a similar Data Inspection Board audit, but according to comments made to SvD, the group says it holds no data, since it outsources the task to other organizations, most probably companies like Denmark’s DtecNet.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Taking the responsibility for ensuring this happens in Sweden is the Data Inspection Board, a public authority which can audit companies and organizations holding personal information.

The Board’s connections to file-sharing go back notably to 2005, when it ruled that the activities of the Swedish anti-piracy bureau (Antipiratbyrån) went against the Personal Data Act. It decided that since IP addresses can be tied to a specific person, only the government were allowed to store that type of information in criminal cases.

Since then Antipiratbyrån has appealed the decision twice and lost, but fortunately for them, an exception was made in the IPRED legislation which now allows organizations to collect data when it precedes a legal claim, i.e suing file-sharers.

However, while anti-piracy groups are allowed to collect data, they have to comply with a set of standards enforced by the Data Inspection Board. To this end, two lawyers and an IT security expert will today head to Antipiratbyrån’s offices in Stockholm to conduct an audit.

“We want to see how the records of suspected file sharers are being handled,” said Jonas Agnvall, a lawyer at the Data Inspection Board.

Part of the reason for the inspections is to check if the anti-piracy group has changed the way it handles information following the introduction of IPRED in April this year. The legislation was widely feared by Swedish file-sharers but thus far has only led to a single case, which was thrown out by the Appeal Court.

IFPI chief executive Lars Gustafsson offered assurances in September that law suits against suspected file-sharers were very close, but noted that his group were biding their time to see how the first IPRED case panned out. As you’ve just read, that case collapsed.

Although it has taken no action against file-sharers thus far, on Monday IFPI will get a similar Data Inspection Board audit, but according to comments made to SvD, the group says it holds no data, since it outsources the task to other organizations, most probably companies like Denmark’s DtecNet.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.