Stockholm, Sweden – An as-yet-unreleased cable within the
possession of whistleblower site WikiLeaks purports to show the U.S. actively
compelled Swedish authorities to take action to protect copyrights, and pursue
file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreak reported, citing Swedish
Television.
Pressure from the U.S. led to a raid by Swedish authorities on The
Pirate Bay’s servers in 2006, but in 2008 the U.S. Embassy also reportedly gave
Sweden a "to-do" list of six items related to battling online piracy — five of which had been addressed a year later.
Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask denied Sweden responded to any U.S.
pressure, and countered that the writer of the unreleased cable made the
remarks in a bid for a pay raise.
"We all knew for a long while that the
US was behind the raid and pressured Sweden, but that they’re still doing it
was news to us," Peter Sunde, one of the four convicted operators of The
Pirate Bay, told TorrentFreak.
"And that the Minster of Justice just says that
the cable writer is lying ‘to get a higher salary’ shows that she doesn’t even
care if her government is corrupt."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/24vt4od
(TorrentFreak)
