The Vänsterpartiet, translated to the Left Party of Sweden, held its annual congress last weekend and passed a motion that will legalize the online sharing of copyright material.
During the debate on whether to pass the measure, the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay was cited as why current copyright legislation is outdated.
“The farce that is the ongoing legal procedures against The Pirate Bay also shows how legal security is in risk of being compromised by those trying to enforce the current ban on file sharing.”
Members continued on, “To many of us in the Left Party, file sharing is something positive in the same obvious way that public libraries are.”
Additionally, the measure asks for the end of “big brother” tactics such as surveillance, entrapment and lawsuits for alleged pirates.
The party only holds 22 seats in the Swedish parliament currently but hopefully this measure will see the light with the other political parties in Sweden.
Result for: surveillance
The infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has announced that in response to a new Swedish legislation passed this week, it will be offering encryption services to all of its users.
On Thursday, Sweden passed a new “surveillance law” which allows authorities to monitor all incoming and outgoing transmissions if they feel it is in the best interests on national security. The Pirate Bay had lobbied against the bill, but unfortunately their efforts for futile. In response to the bill however, all Pirate Bay users will be given an encryption option this week.
“Many people have asked me what we’re planning to do,” admin Peter Sunde writes “- and the answer is “A lot!”. We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law. This week we’re going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We’re also going to help out making a website about easy encryption - both for your hard drives and your net traffic. As some people know, we’re running a system for VPN-tunnels already and we’re going to lower the price for that as well and open it up for international users as well.”
The levels of protection offered will most likely vary depending on the end users location with concerned users in Sweden getting the best. Users outside of Sweden should have little reason to worry as the new bill will not impact them but I’m sure many will appreciate the free extra level of security.
