Dramatic images capture blaze at historic bourse

Berlingske has published footage of the fire

Here are the latest images from Copenhagen.

Continue reading...

Video shows people carrying large paintings away from the building to save them from the flames

A fire has hit Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange, one of the Danish capital’s most iconic buildings, engulfing its spire that collapsed on to the roof. There were no reports of injuries.

Live video from local media showed people carrying large paintings away from the building to save them from the flames.

Continue reading...

Payman Maadi brings a fierce intelligence to his portrayal of a refugee seeking a secure new home for his family in Sweden

Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher from 2015 and Sean Durkin’s recent The Iron Claw show the sport of wrestling as deeply dysfunctional; wrestling fans might wonder if their favourite pastime is ever going to be depicted in the movies as vital and dramatic, like football, or even tragically noble and masculine, like boxing. Well … not in this film.

Motståndaran, or Opponent, is a tense, complex drama from Iranian-born and Denmark-based director Milad Alami, drawing on some of his own experiences as a refugee in northern Sweden. Payman Maadi (from Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation ) plays Imam, a grizzled Iranian wrestling champ seeking asylum in Sweden with his pregnant wife Maryam (Marall Nasiri) and their two young daughters. He and his family left behind a good, prosperous life in Tehran, where Maryam was a distinguished musician, and now they endure the humiliation of living in prison-like hostels.

Continue reading...

Private torrent trackers with Danish roots have long been the go-to place for file-sharers in Denmark. Not anymore.

Starting in the fall of 2020 , Danish law enforcement toppled several thriving torrent communities.

With help from local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance , DanishBits, NordicBits, ShareUniversity, Asgaard and others were systematically dismantled.

Sting Operation

When the first trackers fell, preparations for the operation had been ongoing for years. It all started when a former lawyer working for Rights Alliance went undercover at the private tracker DanishBits in 2016. As a quiet user, the infiltrator mapped the site’s internal relationships and identified key individuals in the wider Danish tracker ecosystem.

The details of this sting operation read like a film script but for many involved, it turned into a real-life drama. Not only were several trackers subsequently shut down, a number of community members were prosecuted too. More than two dozen people, from prolific uploaders to ringleaders, all had their day in court.

After the tracker dominoes fell, more than two dozen suspects were investigated and taken to court. This resulted in a wide range of sentences, with most of the tracker admins receiving conditional prison sentences of a few months. Some were ordered to carry out community service.

Conditional Prison Sentence

This week, the National Unit for Special Crimes ( NSK ) announced the final sentence related to the ‘Asgaard’ tracker. The Court in Horsens sentenced a 48-year-old man from East Jutland, who pleaded guilty to copyright infringement, to a suspended prison sentence of 60 days.

The defendant was the last of seven Asgaard tracker administrators to go before the court. The man helped to get the torrent site off the ground in 2019 and served as an admin of NordicBits before that; both offenses were accounted for in the conviction.

Asgaard became immensely popular in Denmark toward the end of 2020, after DanishBits and NordicBits shut down. The site had an estimated 1.5 million monthly visits at its height, making it the biggest pirate site in the country for a while.

Harsher Punishment Wanted

The guilty verdict is good news for Rights Alliance, but a bittersweet victory. While the crackdown effectively decimated the torrent tracker problem, the sentences handed down have been relatively ‘mild’. The tracker operator and many other “ringleaders” don’t have to serve time in prison, as the sentences are conditional.

Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund notes that copyright and IP-related crimes are historically not viewed as severe crimes in Denmark, adding that a tougher sentence would be more effective.

“Sentences for IP crime are in general too low in Denmark, to have a sufficient deterrent effect. We believe the sentences in many cases should have been much harder,” Fredenslund informs TF.

“The reality is that IP crime has not been seen as a severe crime in Denmark historically, so we are starting from a low point and building from there to obtain adequate sentencing that will keep others from committing similar crimes.”

NSK prosecutor Hans Bohn Sørensen is content with the verdict, however, which marks the end of the Asgaard prosecution.

“I am satisfied with the verdict, which now ends the proceedings against the founders and administrators behind one of the largest illegal file sharing services we have had in Denmark,” Sørensen says.

Threat Neutralized?

The recent sentence and those that were handed down earlier are not the harshest on a global scale and unlikely to spook hardened criminals. However, deterrence is not solely determined by the harshness of a punishment .

Another factor that plays a key role is the likelihood of getting caught. With a multi-year crackdown on several trackers, Danish police and NSK have shown that this risk is, perhaps, higher than ever.

Commenting on this aspect, Fredenslund praises the authorities’ invaluable efforts, which helped to ensure that Danish file-sharing services no longer pose a significant threat to Danish rights holders.

Of course, new trackers will always emerge but Rights Alliance sees these as marginal problems in the grander scheme.

“The current trackers only harbor the very hardcore illegal users in Denmark. They don’t pose a threat that’s comparable to Asgaard, ShareUniversity, DanishBits, etc.,” Fredenslund notes.

With the final conviction of the last Asgaard admin, all cases related to the tracker are closed. Cases against other trackers are still pending, however. In the meantime, Rights Alliance maintains its focus on emerging threats, including those related to Artificial Intelligence.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Copenhagen fashion week is hailed for raising the bar on animal rights. But will the organisers of other fashion weeks follow?

Copenhagen fashion week has just announced that it will ban exotic skins and feathers from its catwalks next year, becoming the biggest industry event yet to do so.

“ Skål to Copenhagen fashion week for raising the bar for other events,” says the vice-president of corporate projects at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Yvonne Taylor. “Now all eyes are on other fashion week organisers, who must follow suit.”

Continue reading...

Women say being fitted with IUDs without their consent left them with pain, shame and lasting reproductive difficulties

• Danish minister urged to meet Greenland coil scandal women

Hedvig Frederiksen had been at her new school in Paamiut, Greenland, for only a couple of days when she was summoned from her dorm to the local hospital by a Danish caretaker.

She was 14 and had no idea what was going on. “But back then [1974], when a Danish person said something, their word was law, you had to listen to them,” said Frederiksen, speaking from her home in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Territory’s government calls for visit to listen to those thought to be living with consequences of forced fitting of IUDs

• ‘I was only a child’: women tell of trauma of forced contraception

The Danish health minister should “get on a plane and visit” some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenland’s gender equality minister has said.

In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.

Continue reading...

Unnamed 53-year-old made at least £230,000 from artificially generated plays of hundreds of tracks

A Danish man has been sentenced to prison in a “historic” case after being found guilty of fraudulently profiting from royalties on hundreds of tracks on music streaming sites.

In the country’s first case of its kind, the 53-year-old man from East Jutland, whom the Danish press has decided not to name, was convicted on Thursday of making at least 2m Danish kroner (£229,676) from artificially generated streams of “several hundred” music tracks.

Continue reading...

Lawmakers say they’re on the warpath because TikTok’s owner is a national security threat. Some users think the app has become a hub for progressive activism

Tick tock, tick tock … that’s the sound of time running out for Gen Z’s favourite app. On Wednesday the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or get banned in the US. It’s not clear whether the bill would pass in the Senate. However, the White House has said it supports the legislation. All in all, things don’t look great for TikTok.

Continue reading...