We reported that the Sweden Supreme Court held up the conviction of the Pirate Bay founders. It seems that decision has had more of an effect on file-sharing sites across the net in Sweden than previously thought.
TorrentFreak is reporting that Swepiracy, a site that facilitated torrent downloads, has been shut down by authorities in Sweden and the Netherlands. The Swedish anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån was behind the closure as they claimed the site was a major player in illegally distributing Swedish films.
The take down comes on the heels of Antipiratbyrån saying that Swepiracy ignored multiple warnings to cease their activities. In light of being threatened, they pulled a Pirate Bay and attempted to protect themselves from the hand of the law by moving their domain name.
It appears that Antipiratbyrån is using Swepiracy as an example. They will take the operators of Swepiracy to court and hope to get a similar amount of money from them as they did from The Pirate Bay founders. They are sending out a message to all the other torrent trackers in Sweden – shut down or you’re next.
TorrentFreak is also reporting other arrests with a man accused of uploading content to The Pirate Bay being apprehended in Gothenberg, Sweden.
The scare has been enough to shut down sites, like BTJunkie did a few weeks ago. Bibliotik, an online library of sorts, shut down recently and left this message on their front page:
Bibliotik has shutdown all operations. We are no longer able to assume the risks involved. The staff would like to apologize for the sudden (but necessary) decision and thank everyone that participated and made Bibliotik such a great place for so long. We love you guys!
None of this is going to stop until we have better laws in place to protect content creators and the consumer. While content creators have a right to protect their content, treating those that infringe on that copyright like war criminal isn’t going to solve anything. It’s a temporary solution to a much larger problem and the anti-piracy groups are just making it worse. I suggest they take a look at Reddit’s Freedom of Internet Act for inspiration as to how digital copyright infringement should be regulated.