Peter "Brokep" Sunde, railroaded into Swedish prison by Big Content

Peter "Brokep" Sunde was convicted in Sweden's notorious Pirate Bay trial, and now faces prison time and a multimillion-euro fine. As his imprisonment looms, he describes, in detail, the bizarre circumstances of his conviction, which started with an illegal raid ordered by the US trade representative, continued with an investigation led by a prosecutor who'd already accepted a job with Warner Brothers as a copyright enforcer and was just working through his notice period as he pursued Peter; and then a trial that included a judge and multiple jurors who were literally getting paychecks from the large copyright industry associations. Peter was convicted on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence of having configured a load-balancer in a data-centre used by The Pirate Bay (this load-balancer was not plugged in at the time of the raid, and there's no evidence it was ever plugged in).

On the basis of this corrupt, ugly, kangaroo court, the Swedish justice system is ready to put him in jail for an "economic debt to some of the world’s richest corporations," offshore bullies who have perverted the course of justice in Sweden.

Sunde is the co-founder of Flattr, a company whose sole mission is seeing to it that the money fans spend on art goes directly to artists, without any funny record label or movie studio accounting in the middle. He also co-founded IPREDator, an amazing VPN that I use every day to stop my logins and passwords from being harvested by crooks and bad guys. He's one of the good guys, and he's being martyred by Big Content, with the complicity of a corrupt Swedish establishment. It is a shame of global proportion. Poor Peter.

A few months prior, a Swedish prosecutor had arrived at the conclusion that this service could not be sentenced for any crime in Sweden. He sent a memo explaining this to his superiors. After a meeting between representatives from the Justice Department and Sven-Erik Alhem, the over-prosecutor at the time, the prosecutor in question reconsiders. A quick raid was required, with full force. So full a force, in fact, that when the raid is actually conducted, the police have no idea what to grab. They seize hundreds of computers, in several cities, but also loudspeakers, cables, and the like. They don’t know the size of the things they’re supposed to be looking for, and decide – during the raid in session – to rent trucks from local gas stations to ship off all the seized goods. In short, it is stressful, unplanned, and ill considered. So ill considered that the police even missed several locations where the target of the raid had ongoing activities.

Thomas Bodström promised to come clear with what had happened. And yet, over 700 mails between him and the United States regarding this matter were (and remain) classified as secrets of the State. We still haven’t seen them. In the aftermath of the political scandal that was uncovered, Swedish national records were set in charges filed with the Constitutional Committee (Konstitutionsutskottet), Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO) and Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern). The newly-founded Swedish Pirate Party became one of Sweden’s largest in a matter of days. A few weeks later, an election was held. None of the young wanted to vote for the ruling Social Democrats any longer, knowing that the Social Democrats had sold out their interests to rich lobby organizations in the United States. The Social Democrats lost power, partly because of this scandal...

..,Tomas Norström is very interested in copyright cases. So interested, in fact, that he also happened to be a member in the Swedish Association for Copyright, and was a board member of the Swedish Association For Industrial Legal Protection, SFIR[3]. Two organizations that take a very clear stance on copyright issues. The associations are daughter associations of ALAI and AIPPI, two international organizations whose statutes state their goal to strengthen the interests of copyright holders. The chairpeople for these international organizations frequently make statements condemning all kinds of copyright violations, and work for harsher punishment for violations.

Tomas Norström didn’t consider himself to be biased. Besides, he neglected to disclose his engagements since he regarded them as without consequence to the case. There was plenty of opportunity for him to consider his bias before the trial, as I personally had checked the layman judges[4] and found that two of them were biased. When my lawyer officially communicated this, Norström published a press release where he said he had found one biased layman judge (without mentioning the complaint from us). He had found a composer who had been active in the record labels that were suing us. There was another layman judge who got the paycheck from these industries, who Norström did not consider biased.

Aftermath of The Pirate Bay Trial: Peter Sunde’s Plea – In His Own Words - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

• [abstract_reg]

  So what is the next step? Suing? They have all the money they can raise from us. I will gladly put a few euro’s towards paying for a lawsuit.
  I hope that the Swedish system isn’t so corrupted that it isn’t possible to get this looked at.

• [Dave Lloyd]

  If they can corrupt the Swedish justice system what hope is there for the rest of us?

  • [Zoran Scout Ivancic]

    Oh, it’s not that difficult to corrupt power in Sweden. For the matter of fact, prime minister Carl Bildt got himself very lucrative oil business deals in war torn countries, is accused for war crimes in Ethiopia and Sudan,  was chatting with Milosevic during the Srebrenica genocide, gave international money to warlord Arkan for election campaign in Bosnia. And thats only the prime minister. Swedish telecom company helped central Asian dictators to spy on their citizens. Together with former Yugoslavia, Sweden supplied Sadam Hussein with modern weapons during the sanctions of the first Gulf war. All that while being a secret member of NATO. And they were in a good  part partner of Hitler in WWII. Phew, I am getting mad!

    • [Paul Renault]

      How Teliasonera Sells to Dictatorships, by STV’s Uppdrag Granskning (“Mandate review”).

      Take an hour out of your life and watch it.
      http://vimeo.com/41248885

    • [Nathan Hornby]

      Sweden was on my list of places to flee. Politicians (and information id previously not known) keep ruining my plans!

      First Canada, now Sweden.

      • [Benjamin Slade]

        Maybe Norway or Iceland?

        • [Nathan Hornby]

          They’re both on the list, but tbh the weather puts me off. I want the politics of the Netherlands with the climate of Thailand, know anywhere?:)

        • [Martijn]

          The only real downside to Iceland and Norway is that they hunt whales. But if enough people flee there, perhaps we can vote the whaling to stop.

          And NathanHornby, do you really want the politics of the Netherlands? All soured by an anti-immigration populist pissing all over everything and everybody, dominating the political discussion, while ruling right-wing parties prey on fear and undermine everything the country had build up over the past 60 years?

          Dutch politics is quite okay 11 years ago, but has gone rapidly downhill since then. (Still better than US or UK, though.)

        • [Alex Rozenfarb]

          its not about the big politics – best places are 3 world countries were you can buy your freedom for cheap … like Colombia  

        • [teapot]

          In Australia we are the unfortunate political lap dogs of the US, but at least our legal system (so far) seems to be robust enough to still give a big FUCK YOU to American demands. That, plus our country welcomes any Brit with open arms. 

          If only our refugee policy could be a little more humanitarian and less “dem imgants gonna taek mah job!” (being said by some scumbag redneck who has been on welfare for the last 10 years). Pity our politicians are putting Assange through the wringer though.

          NVLDR;
          Everywhere sucks in its own special way.

      • [Paul Renault]

         ”to flee” or “to feel to”?

        • [Nathan Hornby]

          Good spot, I did infact mean ‘flee to’. It would be rather odd to have a list of places to flee from, my life isn’t quite that exciting I’m afraid.

      • [John Thomas]

        As long as you are not planning on setting up a torrent tracker or leaking classified documents and emails then I think you’ll have a pretty normal life in Sweden (or England too)  ;-).

        • [Nathan Hornby]

          Don’t get me wrong, my life here in the UK is pretty good by any standard, and it’s the politics more than the justice system, the justice system is broken everywhere.

        • [Dennis Smith]

          In the UK? Really? What pipe you smoking? The UK Gov are in bed with the US and in turn with the major companies – especially the companies we don’t like.

      • [Hubert Figuière]

         Canada is in big shit now, but it will come back.

        • [tnmc]

          Perversely, Quebec may end up being the saviour of the  Canada I grew up in and love – as opposed to this Albertan debauch in power today.

    • [stephenl123]

      The reason Bildt was “chatting with Milosevic during the Srebrenica genocide” was because he was the EU special envoy to the former Yugoslavia.  If he hadn’t been on the phone trying to stop the massacre it would have been a dereliction of duty.

    • [stephenl123]

      The part about war crimes in Sudan was confirmed by a Canadian investigation.  He is not accused of committing the crimes directly.  The crimes were committed by Lundin Oil of which he was a board member.  Bildt defended their actions after they where caught.

      • [Zoran Scout Ivancic]

        that was the big tragedy, that despicable immoral people as Carl Bildt and Yasuhi Akashi were at charge at that time. for more advanced readers, here is the link for Bildt/Srebrenica matters  https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/swedish-foreign-minister-carl-bildt-denies-over-half-the-srebrenica-massacre/

        • [stephenl123]

          After reading your link, and other research, I’ve got to agree about Bildt and Srebrenica .  Carl Bildt was a bad, bad man.

    • [sideunes]

      Sweden was a willing participant in the building up of Hitlers war machine in the 1930′s Hitler got much of the raw materials from Sweden and Norway

  • [nyrge]

    Scandinavian legislative branches are generally very good, though they may be beginning to lag in keeping up with judicial science, where they used to be somewhat avant-garde.

    However, they were founded and maintained by a tight-knit elite class of university-educated professional bureaucrats with ties to the old royally appointed administrators, and so assumes a very high degree of transparency, social control and professionalism (in other words- near-incorruptability) in its officials. Once that goes out the window, as in this case, we have a serious problem.

• [Nathan Hornby]

  Disgusting.

  The thought of anyone like this going to prison baffles me. What’s the point? Reform? Punishment? Why ruin someone’s life over something so relatively trivial. Even if he stole a Ferrari from a showroom I’d struggle to rationalise the purpose of sending him to prison – it doesn’t fix anything, at best it keeps dangerous people off the streets, but far more often it just turns those that make mistakes in to criminals and social outcasts.

  Eugh, bad day for humanity.

  • [Michael Rosefield]

    The sort of people who think having endless meetings constitutes doing useful work are the same as those who think aggressive, arbitrary litigation is effective at protecting broken business models.

  • [Dan Mcenroe]

    The point is to make an example of someone. They don’t care if he “reforms” or not.

    • [Nathan Hornby]

      Of course thats the actual aim, but what’s the real justification? Is that it? Is that even a legal position? I hope not.

      • [Kimmo]

        Propriety’s long dead; any requirement for the appearance of it isn’t far behind… the vaguest resemblance will do these days.

        With increasing blatancy, all that really matters is how much cash you and your pals have to bash (with).

• [Raven Amos]

  Cory, what can we do to right this wrong? I do get tired of hearing these stories and feeling absolutely powerless to do anything about it. Are there email addresses that us happy mutants can write to? Can the Swedish Parliament do anything? Or is this poor soul doomed?

  • [Matthew Stone]

     Seconded.  Someone tell us what to do, please!  If we, the people of the world, can destroy gargantuan laws like SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, then surely there must be some way we can rescue one man from prison.

    • [teapot]

      which started with an illegal raid ordered by the US trade representative, continued with an investigation led by a prosecutor who’d already accepted a job with Warner Brothers as a copyright enforcer

      ^This might be a good place to start. Don’t boycott.. Download & Share. Loudly. Proudly. Unashamedly. Go on IP litigation apologists… tell me how I’m a bastard for not supporting the creator and etc. and watch me Not. Give. One. Shit. Your guilt trip is useless on me because ‘supporting the artist’ also means ‘supporting retarded litigation’.

      No big media company is getting any of my money until this fucking joke ends. Moneyed interests are driving this perversion of human rights through corrupt government representatives… This simply means we have no chance of winning this fight using the same corrupted system – which is why taking the very profits the media companies use to litigate this crap is the best course of action.

  • [Juliet Mike]

    The obvious way to hurt the people responsible is not to buy from them. Boycott Warner, boycott Hollywood. Don’t even pirate their stuff and get to know independent artists.

• [TheMudshark]

  On a related note, why doesn´t Julian Assange finally step up to his court appearance in Sweden? The guy´s so paranoid. Sweden on the United States´ leading string, pshaw, as if!

  • [ocker3]

    Cases like this are probably exactly why he’s hesitant to be taken there, and we happy mutants should send these stories to our local media so they can place the Assange story into proper context.

    • [TheMudshark]

       Cases like this are probably exactly why he’s hesitant to be taken there

      Gee, you think?

• [Guest]

  deleted

  • [TheMudshark]

    It´s all well and good as long as rabble fights rabble, but as soon as you´re up against someone with real money/power, you´re fucked.

• [BombBlastLightingWaltz]

  The Swedes were most likely threatened with massive bank account withdraws if they did not act like lackies for the Big Corporate Assholes. Money matters make people do stupid things and over look social justice. 

• [Kimmo]

  Sunde is the co-founder of Flattr, a company whose sole mission is seeing to it that the money fans spend on art goes directly to artists

  Well, there you go. The guy’s an upstart; he got what was coming to him.

  Why, the temerity.

• [R_Young]

  Wow, that whole thing is… utterly insane.  Money apparently buys everything in this world.

• [Warren Grant]

  I had always thought that Sweden was a paragon of democracy, a peaceful society where the citizens lived in relative harmony. Its somewhat crushing to discover that in fact, its a country that appears to be riddled with corruption and controlled by the folks at Big Media(tm) who can completely pervert the law to their own ends. Its no wonder Assange doesn’t want to be extradited to the place. 

• [johng]

  Free Sunde!

  • [chris coreline]

     id be worried that using this slogan would raise unrealistic ice-cream expectations :(

• [The Sorcerer]

  Wow but I was under the impression countries like Sweden is where true democracy lives- oh well I guess its just an illusion. 

• [Scurra]

  There is a fabulous interview with Clive Stafford Smith about how western legal systems have become broken here:

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jul/08/clive-stafford-smith-jury-system-insanity 
  (As is often observed, a prophet is without honour in his own country.  One day we will recognise him as being a genuine visionary – but it won’t be for a long time.)

• [rocketpjs]

  We need Mikael Blomkvist and his diminutive omnipotent sidekick to save the day.