Photo: Delta407 on Flickr. Edited by me. CC BY-SA.

On April 1st copyright owners will have the mandate to go to court and demand the name of a subscriber behind an IP-adress. If judging from earlier implementations, they will then send a mail (through normal post) demanding a specific sum threatening to start a civil lawsuit if their demands are not met.

The Swedish implementation, because of our previous civil lawsuit and IP legislation, also allows them to freeze all funds for their victims and do home searches with the aid of the Swedish Enforcement Authority (that usually comes by to evict people or confiscate stuff for unpaid bills).

Now when it has even been statistically proven that one out of two Swedes do not want this legislation, we’re still on the go ahead with the law. The Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, insists that the law is proportional and says that “Sometimes you have to take uncomfortable decisions as a politician”… OK? Sure… but you do not have to make decisions that the citizens do not want you to make! That’s the whole point of a democracy!

Her statements are now being hacked to pieces by the blogging community and the despise of politicians is on the rise again. People respect politicians and lawmakers less and less and this is not a good thing, and it needs to stop. If people have no respect for the lawmakers, they’ll lose respect for all laws in the long run. Unfortunately this process is all in the politicians hands and they are the only ones that can stop it, and that won’t happen.

Sweden runs the web, and we will not stop doing so just because unbalanced copyright legislators try to stop the technological evolution. We are however running a great risk at loosing the publics faith in the democratic system along the way, and no one wants to see that happen.

The total stats of the survey was:

32% Want to implement the IPRED1 directive in the way now done.
48% Does not want the IPRED1 implementation now made into law.
19% Have doubts or did not know how.

And at the same time as the established politicians are acting as tools for lobbyists, the amount of members of the Swedish Pirate Party keeps rising and we’re now closing in on 12500 members.

It is now 65 days until the EU-elections, vote Pirate!