Today Slashdot reports that the Swedish anti-piracy bureau [APB] is suspected to have planted evidence at an ISP before cracking down on them, labelling them as hoarding warez and other copyrighted stuffs. From P2PNet.net:

As it turns out, APB (or, rather, their hired informer) supplied the servers and uploaded copyrighted materials. So that's why they were so sure to find stuff, they put it there!

Because of this bust, a group hacked the site of the Swedish anti-piracy bureau appx. a week ago, and published information on who the informant was, several e-mails, among them one containing details on a TV-series that APB, together with Microsoft and what seems like a horde of game-producing companies. A mirror of the defamed site is available here.

To add to this farce, Swedish Radio did a little piece on APB a few months ago. This resulted in an interview with the #1 APB lawyer, their face to the world, so to speak, Henrik Pontén. The thing is, APB copied this copyrighted interview and posted it on their site in its entirety. A reporter from Swedish Radio was alerted of this, and, on air, discussed if this was legal or not, with a lawyer from Swedish Radio. "Of course not", she said. "This is not in accordance with our copyright laws, and in fact, should they even have posted link to this audio file from their site, they would be committing a crime, as that is illegal in accordance with [a known Swedish verdict called "the MP3 verdict"]".

So what happened? They called Henrik Pontén and let him explain himself.

In my opinion, he sounded cocky and full of himself. The rest of this is from my memory: When the Swedish Radio reporter asked Pontén what a copyrighted work of theirs was doing on the APB site, he responded it was only a link to the broadcast. The reporter quickly replied: "No, it's not a link, it's a full file, available on your site." Pontén laughed. The Swedish Radio lawyer at this point added: "Henrik, as you should know, even a link to a copyrighted work is a crime, in accordance with [said Swedish verdict]".

Applause from me, but Pontén went on, trying to mask his extreme errors: "Err, as I said, we made an error." The reporter: "Henrik, don't you find it embarrassing that you don't know the laws in this area?" Pontén: "Well, he, yet again, we'll remove the material. We're not really into linking, we're trying to get the people who earn a lot of money off selling pirated stuffs."

The reporter: "But Henrik, don't you think it's important that you should have good knowledge of how the copyright laws work?" YES. Pontén: "Yea, but right now I'm enforcing a very hard hunt for pirates, and I didn't check the link on this, so I made an error, quite simply." The reporter: "Thanks, bye!"

So as you see, Swedish pirates seem to be living a lot more legal way of life than the anti-pirates. These are sadly hard blows against the anti-piracy movement in Sweden, and I think most youths who download stuffs care even less about morals and ethics on pirating due to the monumental hypocrisy of the Swedish anti-piracy bureau.