Danish anti-piracy group gives up

Christian sez, "Just now it has been announced in the press by the official Danish Anti-Piracy agency, Antipiratgruppen, that they are throwing in the towel and will seize their operations completely; to find and prosecute music copyright offenders. Here is a translation of the first published article in today's Danish press."

"We have to, because it is has been announced by the state court, that it takes very strong and concrete evidence to have these people prosecuted. We have simply not been able to establish the necessary evidence..."

An overview of Danish trials shows an extremely small possibility of getting sentenced - unless the the accused confesses. Four principal state court trials last year lead to three acquittals and only a single sentence for illegal file sharing. And this sentence only came into place because

"Out of the four cases we can establish, that the courts do not sentence owners of Internet connections simply because of technical identification of IP-adresses and technical recognition of files," they say.

Danish anti-piracy agency throw in the towel (Thanks, Christian!)

• [Anonymous]

  Four out of the first eight comments jump on a homophonic misstatement made by someone who, one can easily assume, doesn’t speak English as a first language. Commenter arikol (#6) wasn’t even clever enough to see that it was a quotation. Seriously? A posting on an issue this important and HALF OF THE COMMENTS are criticisms of a Dane’s word choice in English?!

  Why is there a comments section for this blog? The posts are fascinating, and it’s far more original ideas than simply news digest. The posters themselves have such a range of interest and style that the content is always fresh. The comments, though, are so predictable as to not have any utility at all, except perhaps to keep the mods busy.

  Reading the posts on this blog is a joy. Reading through the comments for any useful input is an exercise in dumbfounding frustration with my fellow humans.

  • [arikol]

    I forgot to mention to #9 that cease and seize are not homophones. A homophone is when two words have the same pronounciation but different spelling and meaning.
    I think that any english speakers would agree that cease and seize do not have the same pronounciation although we non native speakers do screw the pronounciation up quite regularly.

• [floraldeoderant]

  I’m with #4 on this. The article seems a bit like a pissy 14 year old wrote it– “APPARENTLY, we have to PROVE our accusations before we punish them. Psht. Stupid courts with their… laws…”

• [Anonymous]

  Shouldn’t that be cease instead of seize?

• [MrWednesday]

  I for one welcome the fact that they are going to “seize” operations.

• [Anonymous]

  This should read ‘cease’, not ‘seize’. It’s quite an important distinction for the tone of the article.

• [Anonymous]

  maybe if they’d focussed attention on for-profit pirates they’d have had more evidence than a simple, flimsy ip address.

• [arikol]

  If you read the original Danish article you’ll see that they (Antipiratgruppen) seem dismayed that they have to have evidence and actually prove guilt.
  They actually seem to find that unfair! WTF?
  No matter what I do against the law, the foundation of the judicial system in all western countries is “innocent until PROVEN guilty”. So if I perform a carjacking at gunpoint, guilt has still to be proven. Murderers get (ideally) a fair trial where the evidence is examined.
  And these industry monkeys think that this should not apply to copyright infringement.

  By that they are either insinuating that copyright infringement is more serious than murder, or so lightweight that proof is unnecessary.
  If the first holds true we obviously need death by lethal injection for copyright infringement. If the second case is true (proof not necessary for such a lightweight offense) then those cases should never go to trial in the first place.

  They could of course take the third way and acknowledge that copyright infringement is just a regular little thing, in most ways less serious than shoplifting, as there is no loss of property although there can be a loss of value.

  • [Anonymous]

    “The foundation of the judicial system in all western countries is “innocent until PROVEN guilty”– NO. This is only true of Common Law countries, which in Europe is followed in the UK and Ireland. Most western European countries have systems of law adapted from the Napoleonic Code, and Scandinavian law is yet another legal system. Maybe they have it in Denmark, but it definitely is NOT the “foundation of justice systems in the western world!”!!!

    • [spazzm]

      That’s not actually true. WP section discussing this common misconception here.

      In any case, the Danish judicial system applies what they call ‘Uskyldsformodning’ – presumption of innocence. In other words, the accuser has to prove the guilt of the accused.

      Presumption of innocence is also part of the UN declaration of human rights (which Denmark is a signatory to) and the EU charter (Denmark is part of the EU).

      In other words, the idea that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not apply outside of common law countries is rubbish.

      • [redrichie]

        ‘Uskyldsformodning’

        That may be my new favourite word!

• [technogeek]

  c/sieze/cease/, unless you mean it in the sense of an engine siezing when it loses lubrication…

• [arikol]

  forgot to mention that, isn’t Cory a writer or something ;)

  • [Cefeida]

    Cory is a writer, but that was a quote from someone called Christian, so not his fault.

• [arikol]

  Anon #9, neither am I a native English speaker, that comment was made rather jokingly and with only a cursory glance back up to the original post.
  Try reading something like my earlier comment which actually was a comment.
  Anyway, when quoting a misspelling a (sic) is nice as it shows that the quoter read the sentence he is quoting.

  But, hey… why don’t YOU contribute something useful to the comments instead of anonymously spewing out your disdain for the readers and commenters. If your insights are so deep, please share them, that’s what comments and communities are all about.

  Or just don’t read the comments.

• [arikol]

  @ Anon #11

  Anon #12 is right.
  It really is the foundation as I said earlier.

  I live in Sweden. Same goes there. Even outside the EU like in Iceland the same goes. Basically the western countries are all member states to treaties which intertwine and pretty much end up the same place. The “innocent until proven guilty” thing is one of the major reasons we object to China’s handling of crime, and summary executions and such. We all get to be innocent until proven guilty.
  Also separation between lawmaker, enforcer and judicial powers (I know there are some special words for that, sorry) is mandatory, any shortcoming in that can be litigated against at the UN human rights court.

  You seem to have lost control of the declaration mark at the end of your post, might want to have that looked at.

• [Opspin]

  Bare with us, we’re not native English speakers but the affect is pretty much the same, read what he meant not what he wrote.

  But I digress, in another article the clueless IFPI suggests capping the alleged infringers internet connection again without proof of guilt.

  They are basically talking about “working together” with the internet providers to display warnings on people’s computers and then capping or slowing down the internet connection. Of course completely disregarding the fact that other people could be (ab)using the wireless connection or even hacking their neighbor’s internet connection to annoy them.

• [Anonymous]

  In the International Phonetic Alphabet cease would be approximately /sis/ and seize would be /si:z/.

  The s/z distinction is more important than the vowel length, but both are noticeable.

• [Cefeida]

  Hey, I thought pointing out that it was a quote was useful, since Cory was already catching crap for a mistake that wasn’t his…(but he should have used (sic), I agree).

  As to the article itself, I’m on the fence about the topic. On the one hand I believe the fight against music sharing is ridiculous, because music that is not shared and played is a wasted form. On the other hand, I would like to slap the stuffing out of every internet user out there who thinks that he deserves a free copy of someone else’s work simply because he thinks the price is too steep.

  If you appreciate someone’s work, support them, that’s what I say. So although I dislike the way music sharing is being fought, I cannot say I support music piracy. Right now the situation is stupid on both sides- too many greedy, panicking distributors on one side, and too many cheapskate thieves on the other. Mob vs. mob.

  • [Anonymous]

    There is no worries that people who *love* a band’s music will support them as well as they are able — they will go see them live, they will buy their music-game tracks, they will donate to their tip jar. Casual fans obviously less so.

    But the people who have really been cheating musicians all along are labels, with their made-up calculations and other financial chicanery. Seriously, the banks and insurance companies had nothing over Jack Valenti et al.

    Art and acting are rarely financially viable full-time gigs. Maybe music too.

    People need to hear the music before they can love it. The industry would have been better off today if they’d been more generous with streaming content earlier, and generous to the programmers they hired to obfuscate the data. As it is, an average schoolchild can get hundreds of hours of near-CD quality files to keep each and every day, should (s)he be so inclined.

• [fidel_funk]

  Re: for-profit pirates…
  Typing from Copenhagen id say the “for-profit piracy” mentioned above is more or less non existent here in Denmark, the moral is simply different…. We dont steal only use whatever means available… Like i used to copy vinyl onto tapes back then!

• [Anonymous]

  Amusing how much the quality of the comments regarding word choice and word usage has improved as the American economy has tanked. I mean, what the F…, didn’t any of the English majors get jobs last spring?

  Been lurking on web sites for 5 or 10 years. Now all of the concern trolls are literate. Heck, 3 or 4 years ago most of the trolls couldn’t find spellcheck, much less use it.

  2 or 3 years ago, the trolls found spell check but could not formulate a rational argument to save their lives.

  Now there are trolls on some of the most liberal blogs that are so overqualified that they are actually giving lectures on the difference between “affect” and “effect.”

  I can only guess at what NS snooping A, CI lying A, FB lying I, and Homeland Insecurity are going to do with all of the trolls when someone catches on that there are people on high paid welfare doing “concern trolling” for the alphabet people.

• [Anonymous]

  Wide doze eat mutter oar gnat sun won oozed pho connect ward? Hornets eye, got ovum yore shelves.

• [Opspin]

  Come on people, I can’t believe you didn’t catch the bare/bear I did! Grammar Nazi fail!

• [ChristianVillum]

  Hi everyone, I am the author of the original piece at freeform101.org. The usage of the word ‘seize’ instead of ‘cease’ was clearly wrong, thanks for pointing that out. English is my second language, so that’s a slip on my part.

  Anyways, thanks to everyone for spending time reading and commenting.

  Peace
  Christian

• [Opspin]

  As a Dane, I’d like to give everyone a taste of the state of Danish music and other media (as Shakespeare would say, something is rotten)

  There are supermarkets and others making weak attempts to sell music online, a few of them are finally moving away from the doomed DRM’ed wma format and are selling DRM free mp3 files but the quality is very much lacking and the tracks are about as expensive as a physical CD.

  Apple is selling music in their iTunes store. But movies and TV shows are forbidden fruit in Apple’s digital paradise. All of the Danish providers of digital rental movies have “system requirements” which usually amounts to “Windows and IE”. Movies are all encoded in WMV wrapped in DRM. Mac users are SOL, so are Linux users and windows users who are smart enough to steer away from IE.

  Most or all the free TV show sites are geoblocked for Danes, no Hulu for us, we have finally been given back the right to watch old episodes (up to season 11) of South Park on southparkstudios. But comedy gold like Colbert Report and Daily Show are blocked.

  Even the national danish television are only just beginning to catch up, they have programs available online, but in a quality much inferior to television quality. A notable exception is the humorous and cleverly named “Pirattv” (Pirate TV) with its good quality flash player that just works. By the way, I would appreciate if someone overseas could tell me if the streams are available in the US or if we are committing reverse geotardation. No subtitles unfortunately but a nice way to brush up on your danish.

  Anyway, what do we do? Well some people buy box sets with TV shows, CD’s DVD’s and Bluray movies. Others just turn to piratebay (which is also DNS blocked by the way) and ninjavideo which is the easiest solution. works flawlessly and instantly without fear that the movie you just rented won’t play on your system.

  Even DVD’s from the local blockbuster are often scratched so bad that before I’ve gotten it to work properly I’ve already downloaded a much better version or found it streaming online.

  • [arikol]

    reply to #16
    I’m over in Sweden an that pirattv link you handed out works over here.
    As for brushing up on my danish.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

• [Anonymous]

  Why does it matter whether or not someone used the correct word? Honestly, get over yourselves.

• [grikdog]

  It’s been mentioned, but, really… Have they ceased siezing, or siezed ceasing?

• [arikol]

  maybe they have ceased seizing in the siege?
  I dunno, was that helpful?