Never one to let its interests anywhere in the world go unprotected, the United States govt and the MPAA have teamed up with the Swedish govt to create an elite corps of Swedish anti-piracy police.

In an effort to help stamp out pesky Swedish pirates, FBI agent Andrew Myers and the MPAA have given a group of six Swedish police officers extensive training on how to effectively combat piracy and catch people who engage in illegal downloading from the internet.

For those of you who are unaware of whom Agent Myers is, as was I, he is noted for having spoken on a E3 Panel back on May 11th oflast year. The topic was “Game Piracy: Protecting Your Product.”

Gamasutra writes:

Andrew Myers, FBI, agreed that with things like BitTorrent files released to the net, it’s often ripped before it’s leaked, by employees with a little money dangled in front of their faces. “You can’t stop piracy, but you can go after some of the sources, then report to the company about the nature of their leak, and how they can do better in the future.”

Just the kind of govt. agent the MPAA was lookign for I’m sure.

Together, Agent Myers and the MPAA’s instruction to this new Swedish anti-piracy unit ranged from rules and regulations governing copyright enforcement and piracy, to examples of anti-piracy initiatives in other countries that have already proven effective. The most shocking revelation is a report of a lecture given by the MPAA in which officers were shown the ins and outs of movie camcording, or “CAM-ing.”

When the police were asked about possible conflict of interest by having a private interest group such as the MPAA involved in the training of enforcement personnel, they apparently saw none.

“I have full confidence in the organizer of the course,” noted the head of studies at the Swedish National Police Academy, Marianne Hilton. “We have contacts with organizations outside the police. If we have made the judgment that if a group has competence that we can use, then we invite them in.”

Interestingly enough, when asked if there were other cases in which an industry group was invited to give training on how to enforce their agenda she was unable to provide one.

Sweden’s Pirate Party, which campaigns for copyrighted material to be free for everyone, noted that the MPAA should not be able to get involved in its country’s justice system, ”just to protect their old, lucrative monopoly.”

The Pirate Party was not invited to provide a counterbalance at the training seminar.

These new “super 6″ will soon deal will the majority of the Swedish police’s investigations about copyright rules and piracy and are expected to hit the internet “streets” at any time.

What strikes me as odd however is why this training is needed all of a sudden and why is the US govt and a US based lobbying organization involved in the training of a foreign governments police force at all?

Is piracy so difficult to determine in Sweden that it requires so embody else to tell them it what it is and where it can be found?

The last time I checked it was right in front of their noses at a place called The Pirate Bay, so does this mean they don’t care about this site and are focusing elsewhere like on the small-time Direct Connect guys who swap an album every now and then?

Once again we see the US doing everything in its power to back up the demands of Big Business, it happened before with the WTO talks in Russia, and it looks as though it’s happening once again.

I bet the Swedish people are going to love to find out that the US govt and a US-based corporate interest lobbying group now have a hand in training their police personnel. So much for the notion of national sovereignty.

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SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”

The Court of Appeal decided that it does not have sufficient proof that the film was uploaded from the man’s computer. The lack of technical evidence has led the court to acquit the defendant of the charge of breach of copyright.

Västmanland District Court had initially fined the defendant 16,000 kronor. The original court ruling noted the serious consequences that file-sharing has on the film industry. The court eventually elected to fine the man rather than imprison him since the case surrounded a single film and the defendant did not obtain any financial gain by making it available on the internet.

“It is difficult to predict the consequences of this ruling,” district prosecutor Chatrine Rudström told news agency TT.