Sweden’s special investigator Eva Bergqvist has suggested new laws that would punish audiences accessing illegal IPTV streams. The focus of most anti-piracy police efforts is aimed at individuals and organizations providing illegal content and the move would make Sweden an outlier in also targeting viewers.

Bergqvist has been Director of Culture in Region Stockholm, and is a political scientist with long experience in Sweden’s cultural sector and government policy. She has handed over her investigation to Sweden Minister of Culture Parisa Liljestrand.

In a press conference Bergqvist said, according to Sweden Herald: “We want to make it clear that you should not engage in what is illegal. We want to get away from the gray area and believe that just by highlighting the phenomenon, more people will understand that this feeds the criminal economy and, for example, sports clubs or film and TV producers lose.”

Among the proposals fining people accessing pirate streams, removal of illegal services from internet search results, and live blocking of offending IP addresses and streams to enable faster shut down of live pirate content. Any changes to the law would be expected in Summer 2026.

Earlier this year Swedish media think tank Mediavision released its Nordic Piracy Analysis report which claimed that 1.5 million households across Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden subscribe to illegal content platforms, a jump of 16% since the Spring of 2024.