This is going to be important - although some lawyers are saying it's not going to stick outside Sweden. The Pirate Bay people, who aren't so much advocates of Internet file swapping as proud boasters of their activities in it (the clue is in the name), are going to jail. There's a video report
here.
For these guys it's going to be tough; never in a million years did they think they'd actually be jailed, you could speculate without much fear of contradiction. For me the more interesting issue is going to arise when people didn't realise they were involved. Take a look at your own colleagues - are they doing any pirating in their spare time? Maybe not. Are they using their network space for anything you don't know about? Well, maybe.
A few years ago I was doing some corporate work for someone - a high-end software company, let's leave it at that. I was interviewing one of the VPs. "We're not supposed to put iTunes onto our computers," he told me. "But everybody does it, so I don't worry when I see it."
This is a while ago and could well have been stamped out by now. But it does raise the issue: does everyone know everything that goes on throughout their network? And if someone on their system were doing something wrong or maybe even criminal, does this make them an accessory..?
