Battleangel

Swedish media reports that the anonymous ‘hacker’, tied to the DoD (Drink or Die), caught during operation Buccaneer, was found not guilty of copyright violation (Swedish text).
This constitutes a major event since the people of the american branch of DoD were swiftly found guilty and sentenced to several years in federal prison as well as fines in the hundreds of thousands, all on similar charges.
The defendant’s alleged crime was to have circumvented the copy protection of commercial software which was later packaged and leaked to the public. The court felt that it is not a crime to copy and / or modify software and in turn distribute it to a closed circle of people. Copy protections have no legal support. And limited, private copying of media is still very much guaranteed by the law. It could not be proven that the accused had been liable for the leaking of the software into public hands.
It should also be noted that the FBI used entrapment tactics which are generally not looked kindly upon by the Swedish judicial system.

It’s good to see some people still care about honor and refuse to act or think preemptively and speculatively as is often the case in the US today. Lets see what repercussions this will have.