Swedish Police to Shut Down the Pirate Bay?

Expected to classify the BitTorrent tracker site as a child pornography site next week in an update to its blocklist that most Swedish ISPs voluntarily respect.

In a heads up from Brokep over at the Pirate Bay, it seems that Swedish Police will add the Pirate Bay to a list of child porn sites that Swedish ISPs voluntarily block customers from visiting.

Swedish Police have apparently stated that “…it’s not decided that we’ll put The Pirate Bay in the list – if the content is still there next week we’ll put them there,’ but considering they never even took the time to contact the Pirate Bay in the first place to verify the allegations its seems that the outcome of the case has been preordained.

In a blog posting Brokep writes:

If the police would find anything wrong – shouldn’t they first contact us, then bring us in for questioning regarding the content, ask for our help or bring us to court for our wrongdoings?
By not acting this way it’s very clear what this is all about. It’s all about quieting a voice that is really uncomfortable for them since they don’t have any legal standpoint in doing it. It’s sabotage, it’s abuse of power given to them.

It will forever make our site associated with something as disgusting as child porn. They are labelling us – without being even tried for it in a legal system, remember – as having something to do with child porn!

So who’s abusing children? It’s the police, for using the same filtering system as to protect them, to gain from it themselves. For them, it’s good that children get abused, so they can shut down sites they don’t like. Yes, it sounds sick, but this is the way it has become.

I hope that the Swedish ISPs will take action against this and stop using the childporn filter! And that’s a bad thing because it could have some good effects, but they decided to go a bit too far with their filtering.

It’s no secret that baseless child porn rumors have been swirling around the Pirate Bay for sometime, with many, including myself, noticing the hands of a larger effort at work to tarnish their reputation and to make an association for which there is no real basis in fact.

In a response to the development Rick Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party leader blasts the blatant abuse of the voluntary child-pornography site blocking compliance system, writing that “This is a devastatingly ignorant abuse of the trust relationship between the Internet world and the Police that was created in order to stop child pornography.”

“It also also undermines the legitimacy of the child porn filter. This filter is not intended for subjective use by government officials to close down undesirable sites which do not break any laws.
Once given the means to shut down unwanted sites, the Police uses the filter to shut down the Pirate Bay after the failed attempt last year. And just like last year, through abuse of procedure,” he adds.

Brokep also points out the insanity of the charges being leveled, noting that “TPB is the most visible place there is. People that distribute stuff like this put it on darknets and I would think they know that the risk of getting caught putting stuff on a public system like The Pirate Bay is really huge. It’s sexual suicide!”

What Brokep has to say makes complete sense in my opinion and it stuns me that the Swedish Police could have been convinced otherwise. These monsters who trade child porn do so not in the public realm where they could so easily be caught. Of all the places to exchange this sort of trash I’m almost positive the WORLD”S LARGEST BITTORRENT TRACKER SITE, with tens of millions of prying eyes on it at any given moment would be the last place they would choose. Now I’m no detective but, I can tell when something’s fishy.

Let’s just hope the Swedish Police give the Pirate Bay a chance to prove their case and we don’t see the image below next week.

Jared Moya
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus

Tell you what. I have seen an increasing number of CP on the piratebay that are ...let say suspicious. Everybody complained in the comments and nobody downloaded them. The files were nuked in no time anyway. Yet the files were being uploaded by different people same files same vague description same story. Nuked in no time. This is suspicious could these files have been uploaded by some goverment person in order to have the rights to shut pyratebay down eventually ? We all remember what happened last time they tryied to resize the server don't we ? This time they might have found a way ........ Sorry for my poor English

altiopar

I agree with shutting them down unless they take out the child pornography in fact I think they should be taken down unless they took out all the pornography. Anyways who needs piratebay? There is demonoid which is both pornography free and better. It's a real shame that the pirate bay owners put fight against child porn in the same bag as fight against copyright in order to make it look okay! Shame shame shame...

Joomba

Pirate Bay is the best torrent tracker. BUT sadly I have to say that there IS child pornography on the Pirate Bay and even when reported they don't do anything about it. If you go to the scripts ebooks and other things section you'll see that they're are child porn items just readily out in the open - there doesn't seem to be any filters or anything. I'll show you a direct example: http://thepiratebay.org/browse/600 ..that entire section has lots of very ambigious titles that lead to direct child pornography I don't want to go through it because frankly I get very ill at just the thought of it..but it's there if you need proof. PirateBay's stance is they don't censor because of freedom of speech or something so I can understand them standing by their choice. But I think its very dumb to harbour these files and their seeders because the majority of torrent users do not see paedophiles and piracy as being one in the same cause ..and rightly so.

mountain_rage

Joomba in the link I see one thing that may have nude children and its David Hamilton. From what I can tell from wikipedia the guy is very controversial but totally legal. What it comes down to is what should be considered pornography this is a debate that has gone one since man has had the ability of recreating an image. Some would say any nudity no matter what should be considered pornography others would say its sexually suggestive actions or sex in the photographs. Personally I don't find nudity vulgar and that for the most part its only once you have sexual suggestion that it should be pornography. At heart I guess I am a nudist only I have been raised by society to think that nudity is bad so I don't follow through with my belief. Anyway if theres pictures where children were maliciously photographed and the pirate bay knows of it then they are justifiably getting shut down. I have a hard time believing however that this is the case.

mountain_rage I think the bigger issue isn't about nudity being vulgar but rather about the exploitation of children or for that matter unconsensual nudity/sex or assault. Minors are deemed incapable of making a coherent judgement on what they want to do (it's deemd that children are easily influenced and I'd agree that they are). The issue here is that children are undoubtedly being preyed upon by perverts and those perverts are seeding those pictures and media via unmoderated sections of Pirate Bay and on one level there are earnest people trying to get that content removed and on the other hand you have some anti-piracy organizations trying to exploit and use that as a platform to have Pirate Bay ripped apart and destroyed. Pirate Bay's best interests should be to remove those questionable content - some are easy to find but others are coyly written and mis-labelled. I was trying to download an e-book and then I read the description and that's how I realized the section was over-run by this sort of stuff. THat page changes so I can't gauge what's on it every second - but if you scourge about for a few minutes you'll find something.

soulxtc

To be fair quite honestly I think a distinction should be made as to what constitutes PORN and ART. I'll say more when my head clears of beer :)

meyou123

Well if it involves children AT ALL in ANY nude scene whatsoever....I would say it is child PORN! And if they DO have that junk on there and they doi not take it off....then they should be shut down....but they have stated on another site that they were not aware of any child pornography and have NOT been contacted by the police. Which seems rather strange....because if they hosted anything to do with child porn they should have been in handcuffs by now! As bad as the poilce want that site closed...you would think that this would be reason enough to shut them down. If I were an admin at TPB....I would find out just what if any child porn is on there and punish the uploaders by banning them forever and take steps to make sure no child porn is on there and would not be in the future!

Meyou what I do think you are jumping to a quick conclusion. There is a picture that has been circulated in most major news papers. It is of a prepubescent girl running after her clothes have been burnt off by napalm. This picture is disturbingly raw censoring it would probably remove the emotion that it conveys. Would you say that this picture is pornography? There are very few that could get their jolies from it as it is very disturbing and sad and as such makes you feel compassion for her. Would you want this image banned from everything or censored removing its artistic merit? Pornography isn't as black and white as you make it out to be.

Zoness

If there is really CP on there im sure the TPB will work to remove it. Sounds like a plan to squelch their project. In the USA here it would be not for CP more like terrorism lol.

corey93

fuck da popos any way piratebay never ele helped me

kdemetter

They do remove cp once it gets reported and verified . Since it's a huge site you can't expect them to verify the content constantly . It's quite strange because i never noticed cp there but since a few weeks it really became a problem . It's like someone is attacking the site with immoral content . From what i can see though : the reported onces get removed . Fom what i can tell they are working on a solution .

@ mountian range...I am talking about SEXUAL ACTS or any content that has childern posing in the nude or topless for sex . But the example you gave is not valid at all because it was put in major publications...I seriously doubt that a court would shut them down for content that was circulated on major newspapers! And I do not think that is what the police are talking about either. So you are really reaching with the example you just gave! And I am not "jumping" at any "conclusion" ...I SAID if it involves children at all in any nude scene(I SHOULD have said sexual acts or sexual content... because people are so picky) then I would say it is child porn.

read this before making acussations towards TPB http://www.thelocal.se/7818/

CCSDUDE

@meyou "any content that has childern posing in the nude or topless for sex" that statement makes no sense who is to decide what proper nudes are? you seem to feel any nude froms under the age of 18 or 21 shouldn't be see in any form for any reason pretty freakin' silly man

Meyou that would have made much more sense to say a child posing nude performing sexual acts or a sexualy sugestive pose. Anything involving children in such acts should be censored I agree.