Now that the Justice Department is stacked with ex-RIAA attorneys, laws like the one that recently went into effect in Sweden could be coming to the United States. IPRED, a law that forces Swedish internet service providers to give up the identities of those accused of sharing pirated files, only went into effect two days ago, but the country’s web traffic has already decreased by 33 percent.

Wired reports: “The entire identification process is expected to take about two weeks under the new system, giving copyright holders a much more direct way to bring legal action against heavy uploaders… Swedish Pirate Party vice president Christian Engstrom said he expects P2P traffic to rise again, once people figure out how to use secure settings and encryption to share files without revealing their IP addresses to copyright holders.”

Engstrom disagrees with the IPRED law, which is being enforced by agencies from Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom and the U.S. under the overzealously named initiative “Operation Carbonite.”

“Dealing with illegal file-sharing is a job for the police,” Engstrom said. “It is their job to enforce the law. Now we have given private corporations the legal right to go after our civilians. That’s not how Western democracies work.”

Tom Perelli, President Obama’s appointee to the associate attorney general position, has actually fought for a similar cause on behalf of the RIAA in the past. Let’s hope ISPs see the news of Sweden’s 33% dip in Internet traffic and fight against this law coming to the U.S.

We heard about this yesterday from The Daily Swarm, but passed on covering the story until we realized Topolanek’s quote is gaining a ton of traction in the mainstream media. Apparently, botched AC/DC lyrics resonate pretty well in the world of politics. Last Wednesday, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Mirek Topolanek decided to improvise a bit while speaking to the European Parliament and called President Obama’s stimulus plans a “road to hell.” The phrase caught on with critics of the American government’s new economic practices and also helped galvanize European opposition.

“AC/DC played here last week,” Topolanek told Czech newspaper Lidové Noviny, after losing a confidence vote and being forced to resign. “And their cult song ‘Highway to Hell’ might have led me in that very improvised speech to use the phrase ‘road to hell’.”

Czech translator Petra Bilek told the New York Times that the phrase sounds much more dramatic in English because Christianity is more prominent in the United States. “While for many Americans hell is truly a horrifying concept, Czechs don’t make such a big deal out of it,” Bilek said. Sounds like their trying to back out of the statement a bit.

Actually, if they wanted a more clever way to flip the statement around, look no further than the song’s original lyrics:

Hey Satan
Payin’ my dues
Playin’ in a rockin’ band
Hey momma
Look at me
I’m on my way to the Promised Land

See that? Topolanek was actually saying that Obama’s plan fulfills one of God’s campaign promises.

President Obama has a big agenda on his plate and he’s doing all he can to rally support from every community in the United States. Tonight he reached out to the Hispanic community, appearing on Univisions “Premio Lo Nuestro” Latin music award show.

“Buenas noches,” President Obama said in a pre-recorded video message at the Miami event. ” I want to thank the millions of you who voted for tonight’s winners, and I also want to thank all of you who voted in that other election back in November – even if it wasn’t for me. With the challenges we face right now, it is absolutely critical that you stay involved and make your voices heard. I want you to know that I will always be listening, and my administration is working hard so that we can expand opportunity for all Americans and reach that better day. Now I know you tuned in for ‘Premio Lo Nuestro,’ so let me get right to it. I don’t know who’ll get married tonight or who’ll get video of the year, but I know you’re in for some great performances that celebrate the rich diversity of Latin music, and that’s good news. So enjoy the show, y para los nominados que se preguntan si esta será su noche, les digo, ¡si se puede!”

English translation: “And for all those nominees wondering if tonight is their night, let me just say, ‘Yes you can!’”

When President Barack Obama appointed two ex-RIAA lawyers to the Department of Justice, many people were curious to see how the debate over illegal file sharing would be affected. The current associate attorney general and associate deputy attorney general, Tom Perrelli and Donald Verrilli respectively, have fought and won numerous high profile cases in the past for the RIAA, including suing Google on behalf of Viacom, ending Grokster and attempting to force Charter Communications to release names of alleged illegal file sharers. Today we learned that the new Obama Justice Department has made a very telling move with respect to the illegal download debate.

Recording Industry v. The People (via The Daily Swarm) reports: “the Obama Justice Department — staffed by RIAA lawyers in its 2nd and 3rd highest positions — has filed a motion for intervention and brief in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum which attempts to support the RIAA’s statutory damages theory.”

The specifics are complex, but the gist of this move is that they are citing a case from 1919 as legal precedent to allow the RIAA to pursue “2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file.” For example, right now the RIAA is trying to blame blogger Kevin Cogill for causing 400,000 illegal downloads of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy after leaking only 9 tracks, which they claim led to a loss of $2.2 million of profits for the record company. This recent motion filed by the DOJ attempts to validate such accusations and could open the door to huge punishments against people that leak albums.