Swedish Government Calls For Sell-Out Of Citizens Rights

[GhostShip]

Another item of interest.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080316-pirate-party-rejects-swedish-plan-to-snitch-on-filesharers.html

The Swedish ministers of Justice and Culture made a statement in a Swedish newspaper editorial late last week calling for the government to establish a legal framework that would enable courts to order ISPs to reveal the IP addresses of file-sharers. The Swedish Pirate Party issued a response on its own web site, condemning the government for making a "declaration of war against an entire young generation of voters... on behalf of the American film and record companies."

Noting that the content industry has generally used the threat of costly litigation to win out-of-court settlements from accused file-sharers in the United States after obtaining identifying information from ISPs, the Pirate Party accuses the film and recording companies of acting like the mafia and cautions lawmakers against opening the door for those kinds of practices in Sweden.

"This proposal means that film and record companies' representatives will get subscriber information on suspected file-sharers through a simple request to the courts," the Pirate Party said in its response to the ministers' proposal. "They can threaten suspects with a ruinous level of damages in order to force them to 'voluntarily' pay a settlement... The government has a choice: either it can accept that file sharing is a technological and historical fact, or it can continue to dismantle democracy and the rule of law to protect an out-of-date industry."

This is rather troubling talk coming from a government that is supposed to pride itself on protecting its peoples privacy rights.

As is usual from those proposing these anti democratic activities, there seem to be no legal safeguards mentioned to protect those falsely accused by the Cartel from suffering the  infamous extortion "shakedowns" that the mafia-style media groups operate in the US where they control the mainstream media that spins the debate in their favour.

Selling your citizens rights "down the river" to please a monopoly commercial entity is a shameful act that will never be forgotten,

[ñòóKýçrÕôK]

I think these kinds of stories go a long way to explaining where the artists (how much? $400million?) money went that they are ready to take back. I think it is a crying shame that a government, a whole governing body, can be bought out. What will these sellout governments do when their voters take back the power given to them so many years ago by men who faught and died so that people like me could have their say?What will the record companies do when individuals stop purchasing their albums altogether because they are tired of being bullied into it? Can they sue the world?