(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Although initially the Swedish Government promised not to hunt down young people for filesharing, on 14 March 2008, it made a proposal that will allow courts to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give up IP addresses used for illegal filesharing to the owners of the fileshared material.
The government's present proposal means the rejection of the previous alternative proposed by Appeals Court judge Cecilia Renfors who was suggesting ISPs should shut down users who repeatedly downloaded copyrighted material without permission.
ISPs welcomed the government decision considering that Renfors' proposal would have put the providers "in a position of having to police our own customers" as said Marcus Nylén, Bredbandsbolaget's CEO. Martin Tivéus, head of ISP Glocalnet also stated: "It is important that the new copyright laws will take into account users' rightful interest in their own personal integrity. (...) Neither we as a provider nor the Anti-Piracy Agency can or should make a decision as to when copyright is more important than personal integrity. For this reason it feels good that the government will hand this task to the courts."
Pirate Party and Pirate Bay had a totally different reaction. "This is a declaration of war on an entire generation of young voters," said Rickard Falkvinge, Pirate Party leader, who also said that the government should take filesharing as a" techno-historical fact". Peter Sunde from Pirate Bay described the move as "completely the wrong way to go and an affront to personal integrity".
According to Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask and Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, the government was not united in the decision but even the parties that were reluctant to the proposal accepted to compromise on the matter. One of those was the Central Party which had previously stated it would not support any policy leading to the release of IP addresses to the court. "It's not possible to get things 100 percent your own way in negotiations. It was with a degree of regret that we agreed to go along with this," said the party's spokeswoman Annie Johansson.
The ministers pointed out however that in order for the ISP to reveal an IP address, the rights owners must be able to prove that the respective Internet service subscription has been used for illegal filesharing.
Sweden to clamp down on file sharing (14.03.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/10474/20080314/
A declaration of war on Sweden's youth (14.03.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/10492/20080314/
EDRi-gram: Sweden wants tougher laws against file sharers (18.07.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.14/sweden-file-sharing