Another 15 minutes » Current Events

The Swedish Crownprincess Victoria’s wedding

Draupner — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:46:19 +0000

I have noticed from the huge peak of visitors to my blog yesterday to my entry on Swedish Crownprincess Victoria’s engagement to Daniel Westling that there is a massive interest around the world about their wedding, so I’ll post some of my own photos from the event and links to the broadcasts of the ceremony, concerts, dinner and party.

The celebration of the royal wedding has been going on for weeks, with concerts and events around the royal castle in central Stockholm. On the 19th of June, 2010, the wedding of Swedish Crownprincess Victoria and commoner Daniel Westling was celebrated by around 500,000 people in central Stockholm. The support from the people of Sweden of the couple, and especially Daniel Westling, has just grown over the years. Daniel, now Prince Daniel, was also awarded with the title of Duke, which is a very rare thing for a man of the people.

The 19th of June is, or atleast it is now, the traditional date for royal weddings in Sweden so it’s also the wedding day of the King and Queen who also celebrated their anniversary on this event.

Here are some pictures and links to television broadcasts that you can watch online. There should be links available for international users on the website too.

SVT Play: The wedding ceremony
SVT Play: The procession
SVT Play: The concert the day before the wedding
SVT Play: Wedding reception speech by Prince Daniel

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bbHcgVvjto

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_ubHweRovw

Give in to me

Draupner — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:22:09 +0000

I’ve found myself looking alot at Michael Jackson material on the web since his recent early passing. I am not such as big fan of his really, but I can appreciate his genius. I thought I’d share with you one of my favorite songs from him, “give in to me”. Other favorites being “Billie Jean” ofcourse and “Dirty Diana”. R.I.P.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVYGcAJ53Q0

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The trial against The Pirate Bay – the verdict

Draupner — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:24:30 +0000

A few minutes ago the verdict of the trial against The Pirate Bay was announced by the court. The outcome in this instance is that all four involved are convicted to one year in prison and around 3 million euros in fines, which is a record in Sweden. This is somewhat surprising to me, and I will have to read the courts descision in more detail later to see how they have come to this conclusion. My guess is that the fact that they have made money of the site from advertisements did not work in their favor. But then again, the descision of this court is not the end of this story by a long shot. It will be overruled atleast will probably be atleast two more trials, and its only the ruling of the supreme court that will stand, a process that will take about 5 years.

The trial against The Pirate Bay – day 10

Draupner — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:56:14 +0000

Today the defense had their closing arguments in the trial against The Pirate Bay and they pointed out that Swedish law requires alot more for anyone being convicted of assisting in a crime than what is the case with TPB, this is supported both in other Swedish trials and in EU directives. To be convicted of assisting in a crime in Sweden there must be an active participation, one cannot be convicted of assisting in this type of crime by simply doing nothing about the illegal files being transferred through the TPB website. The trial is about to end soon and it will be very interesting to see what the outcome will be in this instance, either way it’s highly likely that the verdict will be appealed. I still have hopes though, but it could go either way I think.

The trial against The Pirate Bay – day 9

Draupner — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:59:29 +0000

Today the closing arguments began in the trial against The Pirate Bay. The prosecutor went through all the evidence and said that there is not doubt that the accused are all involved in TPB which is indeed profiting from its business, and is arguing for a verdict of one year in prison. The claim that TPB has made atleast 1 million euros in profit over 5 years seems highly unlikely though, but he is settling for about 100,000 euros based on the actual invoices the accused has agreed to. He made some good arguments and conclusion and referring to other cases like this in the past and also from current legislation about assisting in a crime. Tomorrow I believe is the closing arguments for the defense, and then there might be some time, maybe days or weeks, until we get a verdict (that is unless the court wants to advise the European Union Court). This is very interesting for many people… I think much is depending now on the final closing arguments of the defense.

The trial against The Pirate Bay – day 8

Draupner — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:52:14 +0000

Today more witnesses for the defense was heard and finally someone who could explain how the technology works, Kristoffer Schollin. In particular that even though a torrent-file is uploaded to the The Pirate Bay website it doesn’t mean that TPB tracker is being used, and also that the amount of completed downloads reported on the website could be downloads completed using any tracker, not only TPB, as a torrent can have many trackers listed when it was first created and the same torrent can be used on many different trackers at the same time.

Also professor Roger Wallis, with an impressive CV, presented his view and research that the link between falling sales figures of the CD industry cannot be blaimed on file sharing technology and illegal copying. He also started by pointing out that Henrik Pontén of the anti-piracy agency had been calling to the university and his collegues asking if was indeed a real professor and questioning his work, something that was very upsetting and Wallis said he considered pressing charges against Pontén.

I think today was a very good day in court and it seemed like many got a much more clear view on how everything actually works with BitTorrent and TPB, and hopefully it is now much easier to come to the conclusion that TPB has very little to do with the actual illegal file-sharing process.

The trial against The Pirate Bay – day 7

Draupner — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:50:15 +0000

The questioning of witnesses continued on wednesday, day seven of the trial against The Pirate Bay. We heard John Kennedy of IFPI answer questions, translated by some Omar who did a piss-poor job (!), about the negative financial impact on the music industry by sites such as TPB, and that the compensation claims are justified and even conservative. He claims that there are research papers available that suggests that people who do not get the music for free would then buy it and that piracy is to blaim for the falling sales figures in the music industry, a statement which I totally do not agree with. I don’t know anyone who would buy the CDs they have downloaded from the web if they hadn’t found it for free. Also I think it’s common that you download a CD or song and then buy the album because you like it and want to support the smaller artists, a behaviour which benefits less known artists on the expense of the world famous artists who already swim in money.

The defense tried to point out that there are so much more illegal links available on Google and that maybe these research papers could have been commissioned by IFPI themselves.

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Also a witness was heard about the recent negative impact on the movie industry and loss in ticket sales etc, but I don’t think it is right to assume that file sharing is to blame for this, yet alone The Pirate Bay, there are no evidence of this. It is more likely that this is just a normal evolution of technology. The movie industry’s claim for compensation per movie is also alot higher than it costs to actually download the movie legally, and they have no evidence of how many of the downloads actually used TPB’s tracker. This whole trial seems to be based on assumptions made by the prosecution and its witnesses, and assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.

Swedish crown princess Victoria engaged to be married

Draupner — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:42:13 +0000

Today it was announced that the Swedish crown princess Victoria and her boyfriend of seven years, Daniel Westling, are now officially engaged to be married. King Carl XVI Gustaf has given his blessing and requested the Swedish government to do the same. The royal family announced the news on national television earlier today and later the happy couple held a press-conference where they described how Westling kneeled and proposed to the crown princess at the castle of Drottningholm on a beautiful sunny winter day and Victoria said “yes, yes, yes”. This is also a very happy day for many people in Sweden and a welcome break from the unfortunate financial news. The wedding is planned to take place in the spring of year 2010, but no exact date is decided yet.

Daniel Westling is a gym owner and entrepreneur and used to be personal trainer and close friend the crown princess. Westling is not of noble birth, but rather a man of the people, which is good or bad depending on who you ask. He has been struggling alot with being accepted by the royal family as well as the people of Sweden, but he says he will try his best to earn the trust of everyone.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7fMsvsZe_c

This is the announcement from the Swedish royal family (in Swedish).

The trial against The Pirate Bay – day 6

Draupner — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:39:52 +0000

Today the defense got the opportunity to question some people that are the ones that collected the evidence (Antipiratbyrån, “anti-piracy agency”) of The Pirate Bay by downloading files from TPB site. To me it seemed like neither the witnesses nor the defense attorney had very high technical knowledge about the BitTorrent-techonology, and there were alot confusion about whether they were talking about the client software, the TPB website, the torrent-file or the actual data content sometimes.

The prosecution talked alot about what evidence were collected by the anti-piracy agency and how easy it is to download from The Pirate Bay website.

But I think the defense successfully pointed out that from the evidence presented in this trial one cannot see if the torrent-tracker being used is actually TPB or some other site (by other users/peers), and also that there were no attempts to contact the original torrent uploader nor the seeders of the file in question. They also pointed out that the torrent-client is not provided by TPB and that there is no way of telling how many copies have been made of the file before it reaches The Pirate Bay. Some good points were made by the defense, even though the attorney seemed abit lost with the technical terms (to my surprise), but even more so the witness :).

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The trial against The Pirate Bay – day 5

Draupner — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:55:56 +0000

The fifth day of the trial against The Pirate Bay continued with questioning of Peter Sunde about his involvement with the website and companies handling the advertisements on TPB and Carl Lundström about his financial help of TPB. There were alot of irritation and the defense protested against the trial becoming very American when the prosecution introduced evidence that were not known by the defense, some YouTube-clips and also mail conversations and blog entries which did not take place in the time frame within this trial. Peter Sunde wanted an answer from advocate Peter Danowsky if this was supposed to be a political trial and that he didn’t feel it was appropriate for questions about his political views, but was refused an answer.

I think it’s annoying that they talk so much about their personal businesses, finances, whether or not they make money of the site. Which in my oppinion has nothing to do whether or not the website is illegal or not, which should be the main issue here. The website is not less legal just depending on the organisation structure of TPB, what personal business they are involved with or what political views they have. I hope there will be more discussions in court soon about the actual legislation regarding the technical solutions used.

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