Posted on Saturday, March 15 2008 @ 4:05 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
SeattlePI
wrote Swedish courts are going to crackdown on online piracy.
"We need to ... stand up for musicians, authors, filmmakers and all other copyright owners so that they have the right to their own material," Justice Minister Beatrice Ask and Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth wrote in a joint opinion piece published in the Svenska Dagbladet daily.
The ministers said they will move ahead with the proposal this spring.
"Courts ... shall be able to demand an Internet provider to give the copyright owner information about who had a certain IP address when it was used for infringement on the Internet," they said.
Sweden has long been criticized as a safe haven for online piracy because the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay is based there.
The site is used by an estimated 10 million to 15 million users worldwide to share videos, music and other copyright-protected material.
