2009-07-23 10:03:31
Newsnight's Matt Prodger visits Sweden's Peace and Love music festival in
Borlange to investigate what it is about the Swedes that has put them at the
heart of a raging debate about internet freedom.
For 24-hour party people a visit to the land of the midnight sun is a must. For
one thing, the Swedes are serious when it comes to having fun - and at this
time of year the sun never sets.
The Pirate Party doesn't want to be perceived as a bunch of computer hackers
that just want to download the latest Angelina Jolie movie for free
Katrine Kielos, Aftonbladet columnist
And so it is that I find myself at the Peace and Love festival in Borl nge long
after bedtime, negotiating a sea of tents which stretches far into the
blood-red glow of a night-long dusk .
I am here to try to find out what it is about Swedes that has put them at the
heart of a raging debate about internet freedom.
It is estimated - but nobody really knows - that at least one in 10 Swedes swap
music illegally via BitTorrent file-sharing websites like Sweden's notorious
Pirate Bay, and it is thought that in 2008, some 15m films were illegally
downloaded here.
'Sharing is caring'
Sitting in the shelter of a waist-high pile of beer crates I find my target
demographic - a group of music-loving festival-goers.
Out of the five of them, three voted for the Pirate Party in this year's
European elections, helping to put a representative, Christian Engstr m, into
the European Parliament.
Twenty-year-old Erik Lennermo explains why he voted for the Pirate Party.
"Civil rights. Everybody has a right of privacy for their own e-mails, SMS
messages and phone calls. File-sharing is just a small bit of the whole cake."
His friend Daniel Gustavsson's support for the Pirate Party is more
straightforward: "I just care about the file-sharing," he says. "Sharing is
caring."
Such views have propelled the country into what Swedish MP Camilla Lindberg
describes as the biggest political debate for 20 years.
At its heart is a controversial law passed in parliament last year.
Known as the FRA Law, in honour of the Swedish electronic intelligence agency,
equivalent to Britain's GCHQ, it permits the monitoring of international phone
calls, e-mail and internet traffic.
Some of the world's most powerful computers will scan all cross-border
e-traffic in real time for a quarter of a million trigger words and phrases
that the security services believe warrant further investigation.
And it can be done without judicial oversight.
Anti-terror necessity
In the UK the Home Office recently put out to consultation proposals which
would give GCHQ similar powers.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told Newsnight the law is directed not
at file-sharers, but terrorists:
"I think we struck a clear balance between integrity and security," he said.
"Take for instance a bomb blowing up in Stockholm or London - a lot of the
electorate would ask me 'What did you do [to prevent it]?'
"For a long time we haven't seen such things in Sweden, and then it's very easy
to say we don't need (the FRA Law). But I have to take a long-term
responsibility."
Popular support
But that argument does not wash with Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge, who
advocates reforming copyright laws to allow free file-sharing, downloading, and
the right to copy everything from the latest Hollywood blockbuster to patented
pharmaceuticals.
"The thing is you can't just monitor some internet traffic," he told me. "In
order to find out what you want to see you need to see all of it. It's not
about swapping music as such. It's about the Big Brother society that is being
set up using the excuse of catching file-sharers.
"We know where this road ends, even though each step of the way can be
justified, because so many societies have been down it before."
To make the point, activists deluged Swedish parliamentarians with copies of
George Orwell's totalitarian satire 1984 ahead of last year's vote.
Yet among MPs in the ruling coalition, only Camilla Lindberg of the Liberal
People's Party voted against the wiretapping law.
"Two weeks before the vote last year we had big demonstrations, 10,000 people
here," she says, pointing at the parliament building in Stockholm.
"Each MP got thousands of emails suddenly I realised I'm not the only one
against this. It's people from the left and right, young and old feel the same
thing."
But why Sweden? Part of it is, of course, the country's technological prowess.
While Finland has Nokia, Sweden gave us Ericsson. Swedes enjoy some of the
highest - and fastest - rates of connectivity in the world, a development that
has been spurred by necessity because of the country's sparsely populated
geography.
Cultural differences
And then there is Sweden's liberal culture, part of which is the principle of
Allemansratten.
"Allemansratten means everyone's right. It's an important part of Swedish
culture and identity," Katrine Kielos, a columnist on Sweden's best-selling
daily tabloid Aftonbladet, explained to me.
We are going to put the record industry out of business... we are very much
looking forward to that
Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge
"It means that the law of trespass is very weak in Sweden, so you have the
right to access somebody's property in a way that is not possible in other
countries."
Ms Kielos' tutorial in Allemansratten came as we stood together on the roof of
Sweden's historic parliament building.
This would be trespass pretty much anywhere else in the world. Here, the only
restriction on my Stockholm rooftop tour is a safety harness.
"The Pirate Party doesn't want to be perceived as a bunch of computer hackers
that just want to download the latest Angelina Jolie movie for free," she said.
"So they're trying to frame this issue in the way of Allemansratten because
this is something that resonates a lot in Swedish culture."
Political kingmaker
According to political analyst Stig-Bjorn Ljunggren if, as expected, the Pirate
Party wins seats in the Swedish parliament in elections next year, it could
well find itself the kingmaker between the country's two established political
blocs.
"You have two blocks in parliament: one green and red, and one blue. And if a
third party comes into parliament they could choose which one of these two
parties will form a government.
"They (the Pirate Party) will sell the post of prime minister to the party that
gives most to them," he said.
And the prime minister has not ruled out doing a deal with the party.
Some musicians and artists, like Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus, have spoken out against
the Pirate Party, but few will go on the record because the debate is so
explosive.
An exception is Alexandar Bard, a musician behind 100 Swedish top 40 hits, and
latterly an academic specialising in the internet.
He says file-sharing is killing the Swedish music industry: "Six years ago
Sweden was the third biggest producer of music in the world and last year we
were only the ninth.
"So today in Sweden it's impossible to get a recording contract because there
are no record companies around to sign with. It means you can't get paid for
making music and you can't get a budget to make music.
"File-sharing is not a big issue politically, it's not like climate change or
the environment. And the Pirate Party has turned it into a big issue to win
votes."
But Pirate Party founder Mr Falkvinge is unrepentant.
"We are going to put the record industry out of business", he says. "And we are
very much looking forward to that."
And like the Vikings of yore, the pirates' philosophy has spread far and wide.
Independent pirate parties have sprung up in dozens of countries across the
world. It is now a global battle.