Sweden cracks down on downloaders

It's been joked about in the past about getting all the P2P gurus to go live in Sweden, thus avoiding all the fallout from the Grokster case and the Jackbooted Lawyers of Hollywood - the file sharing equivalent of successfully jumping that barbed wire fence and making it into Switzerland. Well, Sweden as a location might not be as great as it once was, as the Government attempts to crack down:

Sweden has outlawed the unauthorised downloading of copyrighted movies and music in an attempt to curb piracy.

About 10% of Swedes freely swap music, games and films on their computers, one of the highest rates in the world.

With no law banning file-sharing, Sweden had become a hotbed of piracy where films, music and software were readily swapped.

But experts believe the law will change little and that Swedes will remain rampant downloaders.

More from the Beeb here

As the story quite rightly points out, the law means nothing at the moment. Time will tell if the Swedish government gets heavy handed with the new legislation and actually starts prosecuting people.

I'm sure you'll have your own views on this, so why not tell us about them in the news forum. It'll be good to get it off your chest...