People asking to see public documents have often been refused to search for them and view them from computers, and only been allowed to look at printouts on paper. One reason quoted for this is that it is not possible to safeguard that people can modify data which they can view through computers. Another reason has been to restrict the export of names and addresses from government data bases for use in marketing. This right is however not available for computer programs or digitally stored information. Like in most other countries, it is very difficult to find and prosecute people who have made illegal personal copies of copyrighted information.
Prosecution occurs mainly when illegal copies are sold commercially or distributed on a large scale.
One important court precedence, upheld by the highest Swedish appeals court, found that the owner of a BBS was not responsible if his BBS stored and made available copyrighted software - only the person who had entered the information into the BBS could be prosecuted. The intention of this law is to protect personal privacy. It controls data bases of personal information. Such data bases can only be used by permission from a special government agency, and storage of information about people's political and religious opinions, ethnical groups, medical problems and sexual preferences are only allowed in exceptional circumstances. The law has been changed several times, and the requirement for permission in advance, before establishing a new data base, has been removed because it became too time consuming when computers were used more and more.