He deserves sympathy for the way this has been handled.

He has been held for something like 7 months without charges under a law that is supposed to allow holding someone while evidence is gathered. The person is not supposed to be held for more than 7 days, 14 at the most. So they've had to keep filing and getting a judge to approve extensions to keep holding him without charging him.

Now, one wonders if they needed 7+ months to gather evidence, if they ever had any evidence to begin with, to justify arresting him.

Who knows, but this is not off to a good start.

The likely answer:

Charges come, they are dropped or dismissed (they were possibly fabricated to begin with), since he is in the country now he is dealt with for Pirate Bay related stuff, credited with time served and is either released or imprisoned for a few more months, and then everyone forgets about it.

The judge giving extensions is key here. It is customary to operate like this in Scandinavian countries. The idea is that the police has to make a case to the judge that it is worthwhile to still hold him and that they are making progress in the case. Otherwise he would have been released long ago.

It is quite different from other countries, I know, but law is not handled the same way all over the world.

The prosecutor formally has to make the case to extend the remand prison, but it's a formality.

Of course it benefits the prosecutor to keep someone locked up while you work on the prosecution evidence.

But it severly restricts the imprisoned person from working on their defense. Thus, it is bad for the legal principle of "equality at arms".

I would imagine it is easy for the prosecutor to claim the dependent is a flight risk, since they had such difficulty getting him into the country.

> He has been held for something like 7 months without charges under a law that is supposed to allow holding someone while evidence is gathered.

Is this true? It sounds like no difference from totalitarian system such as Chinese government to legally detain a person for while gathering evidence.

Can't really go around throwing that particular rock while we still live in the Gitmo glass house.

All the more reason to throw it actually. Then let them throw it back and one way or another we can all stop living in glass houses.

The indictment can be found here: http://www.aklagare.se/PageFiles/10239/AM_52124_12.pdf (Swedish. Save as, appears to be broken when viewed in browser)

A quick read-through seems to suggest that they have quite solid support for it. However, I haven't seen the investigation protocol (FUP) so I cannot say if the actual evidence is any good.

> quite solid support for it.

Constituting?

A bunch of documents not actually in the linked PDF.

The prosecutor claims that they have chats logs that show Gottfrid discussing the hacking, logs that connects IP address to those owned/bought by Gottfrid, data on a mobile phone owned by him, and computer + old hard drive.

Sadly, none of that is actually showed in the PDF. Only referenced.

I believe the investigation protocol (FUP) will be public once the court case begins but I am not sure.

I guess we will see.

And chat logs couldn't possibly be forged, right? :p

I think I'd remain skeptical until the specific details emerge. Let's not forget weeve is doing federal time for running a script to download email addresses from a public website.

I'm not saying it couldn't be legit, but I think we can all agree that TPB is well into the realm of "find me something that'll stick on these guys"

> Let's not forget weeve is doing federal time for running a script to download email addresses from a public website.

And claiming he was going to sell them. Why leave out the whole truth?

Well because that's the first time I'd ever heard that and I've followed it off and on since he first issued the press release.

I don't doubt he might have though, as he's a fucking idiot. But if you're actually going to do that you're not exactly issuing press releases about the loss.

Kind of an odd thing to suggest as a heinous crime anyway, since 50x that much data is being passed around about all those people on that list between the fortune 500 under thge guise of privacy policies and partners.

Because that isn't true at all.

Since when is it illegal to sell lists of e-mail addresses? Immoral and unethical in many situations, yes, but illegal it is rarely.

It's bullshit propaganda, and the charges are just as valid as Assange's rape charges, courtesy of the same corrupt government. The US entertainment industry wants to make an example of him.

>> He was also charged with hacking into the computer servers of Logica, a Swedish company that handles tax documents.

"Oh noes! Don't hack our taxes!!"

Logica is a big, bloated IT services company that makes (shitty) custom software for big customers, typically government agencies. They're in Finland too, but originally from England.

>> It's bullshit propaganda,

Source? Do you have ANY evidence of this whatsoever?

>> "Oh noes! Don't hack our taxes!!" Logica is a big, bloated IT services company that makes (shitty) custom software

Are you suggesting, because Logica is big, bloated, makes "shitty" software, or makes tax software, they should be open game to hackers? You are ridiculous.

> Source? Do you have ANY evidence of this whatsoever?

Sure, let me just dig up that link where the Swedish government says the whole case is a sham!

> Are you suggesting, because Logica is big, bloated, makes "shitty" software, or makes tax software, they should be open game to hackers? You are ridiculous.

I implied that tax records were mentioned because someone seeing everyone's tax records is bound to make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. In other words, mentioning tax records in that context was done to shape the public opinion on the case.

Corrupt government? Are we talking about Sweden or Somalia? Sweden is one of the least corrupt countries in the world so please stop with your ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Every government is corrupt, because the very arrangement of government itself leads to corruption.

In Sweden's case, it's just not your average third-world style corruption like "hand me a bag of money and let's see about that building permit" - it's more about various "constituents" trading in favours/influence/power/positions/money.

Of course, the same kind of corruption applies to the US too. For example, campaign contributions are bribes already.

Flawed argument based on generalization.

The sentence itself reveals the fallacy: "leads to corruption", suggesting at some point it is not corrupt -- contradicted by "every government is corrupt". Q.E.D.

Somehow there's always someone complaining about a "generalization", isn't there?

Here's what I said:

>> Every government is corrupt, because the very arrangement of government itself leads to corruption.

In this statement, "every government is corrupt" is a description of the state of affairs that the arrangement of government leads to. This does not contradict the idea of a government possibly not being corrupt at its inception - the point was that a government is a flawed institution right from the start.

Bear in mind, a government is a group of people that:

- Wields power over millions of people, and decides everything for them, even though their one-size-fits-all -solutions are practically guaranteed to not fit all.

- Forcefully extracts money from millions of people, and then uses it as they see fit.

- Is not responsible for their actions to anyone. In other words, no matter what they do, they won't suffer any negative consequences. Sure, someone may not get re-elected, but that doesn't really matter, and they'll still enjoy a fat pension (of other people's money) and so on.

While Sweden (my country btw.) is one of the least corrupt places, there is indeed coruption. In the TPB case, it became very clear that Hollywood basically ordered an illegal razzia. Lots of Swedish laws were broken, secret negotiations happened, and Sweden was thretened wigh trade sanctions.

Logica is indeed shitty (they mostly employ second rate people in my experience; at least in Sweden), but in my mind that only makes it more likely that Gottfrid/anakata was able to hack into their systems.

Well, one has to wonder why they'd want to hack into Logica's systems. I can't see a reason. What would they want from Logica, and why would they risk getting caught hacking companies? Haven't they got enough trouble with TPB already?

It just doesn't make sense. What does make sense, however, is the US entertainment industry (and governments) wanting to make an example out of them: Here's what happens to naughty little copyright-infringers/freedom-fighters.

He's charged, not guilty. I don't think anyone here could answer if it's true.

Not to mention that thousands of people have been found guilty, only to be proven innocent (sometimes after decades in jail).

Or that tons of people have been found guilty (and never could proved their innocence), with fabricated data by some corrupt government agency.