Who is responsible for what?

In Sweden there is a discussion at the moment triggered by the fact pictures used as evidence in a trial can be found using the search service on The Pirate Bay. Too many discussions start with the assumption that The Pirate Bay has done the wrong thing, when in reality the pictures are available due to the rules in Sweden that make it possible for anyone to get a copy of the minutes of the trial after the trial has ended. Prices of around €15 has been mentioned (one have to pay the actual price it cost to produce the copy of the minutes).

So the fact the pictures can be found by anyone is not something The Pirate Bay is responsible for. The Swedish Legislation is.

Two good blog posts are written about this: Mindpark (Same same but different) and Gunnar Hökmark.

The Swedish Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, has said in SvD that she is opening the door for an investigation in how such publications can be blocked in the future. I hope such investigation is looking at the whole chain of events that lead to the availability of the pictures. Already today the court could have decided that the pictures would not have been included in the minutes from the court case. But they did not.

SvD unfortunately claim that it is due to The Pirate Bay the pictures are available. That is not the reason, it is because of the court choose to not remove the pictures from the public minutes of the court case the pictures are available. The Pirate Bay, just like Google and similar services, do not even store the pictures. They are search services. And in many cases people mix up their role with where pictures are stored, who did the action of digitizing the pictures, and the role of the ones that made the pictures public in the first place.

A series of events I think we made pretty clear is such a chain of many events in the investigation on Child Pornography I participated in. You can find more information about it in an earlier post of mine.