The new anti-piracy law is now effective in Sweden

Sweden, home of The Pirate Bay is introducing a new law that will make it easier to go after individuals who share copyrighted files on filesharing networks. The Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) law will enable copyright holders to get their hands on the personal details of suspected illicit file-sharers. The entertainment industry will now have more effective tools to track down illegaly downloaded material.

If several European neighbours already have such a directive, Sweden has had terrible problems with piracy and no effective law. From now on, copyright holders can get a court order requesting ISPs to provide IP adresses associated with computers which have downloaded copyrighted material without paying for it. From the 1st of April, the authorities will start get proofs that files were illegaly downloaded since everything downloaded before that date is not usable.