Anti-Piracy Law Causes Drop in Swedish Internet Traffic
Written by Ernesto on April 02, 2009A new law designed to make it easier for copyright holders to go after illicit file-sharers came into force in Sweden yesterday. Interestingly, it looks like the IPRED legislation, which will also increase penalties and ultimately criminalize large scale infringement, has already resulted in a major drop in Internet traffic – for now.
The controversial Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) has gathered opposition from various sides, most notably half of the Swedsih public. In a response to the new law The Pirate Bay introduced their anonymity service IPREDATOR last week, which is scheduled to open up to the public soon.
Now, a day after IPRED came into force, data from the Netnod Internet Exchange shows a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This impressive figure seems to suggest that the amount of traffic generated by filesharing has dropped even more.
The IPRED effect?
“Most experts (including more neutral ones) judge it as an initial scare effect that will wear off after a week or two,” Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak, adding “This is what disturbs me the most — that the industry thrives on scaring the common citizen.”
Scaring the public is what they do indeed, with Lars Gustafsson, operating manager of IFPI Sweden estimating that there will be at least 100 cases in court this year.
Henrik Pontén from Antipiratbyrån – the Swedish anti-piracy office – sees the traffic drop as an indication that the new law is working. “The majority of all Internet traffic is file-sharing. Because of that, there’s no other explanation for the decrease in traffic than the IPRED law,” he stated.
The traffic drop is indeed significant, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped sharing. In the past 24 hours 384,657 Swedes were connected to the Pirate Bay tracker alone. That is close to 5% of the Swedish population, and no less than before.
On top of that, many people are looking for ways to hide their identities online. Thousands of new customers have visited new anonymizing service mullvad.net. “It’s beyond all expectations,” said Fredrik Strömberg, one of the two owners. We’ve received e-mails from all kinds of people. Mothers in families, young people, older people, all kinds. And everyone is swearing at the copyright lobby. It’s not good PR for them.”
In a few weeks more details on the filesharing habits of Swedes will surface, so then we’ll know whether or not IPRED changed anything, apart from the annoyance levels of the public.
Previously: Movie Boss Says Piracy is Going Out of Fashion
Next: MPAA President to be Thrown Out
46 Responses
Scare tactics will only work so far until people get so good at obfustication that there really is no more control.
Still transferring 10s of gigs per day… just on private sites ;)
Cheers from Stockholm, Sweden!
Bah!
Go The Pirate Bay! They’ll launch their own obfuscation method with VPN…
http://www.tepiratebay.com
What about the New Xmen movie leak that has over 50000 Leechers last night alone on The Pirate Bay Tracker?? That single torrent alone may have set a new record???
I think that what is really scary is the fact that this law has been approved in one of the most socially advanced countries in the world.
Just stupid to think that something like that is going to work.
I expect that these people that not share, too dont buy and go to view movies.
the scary part is more people voted against implementing this law then people who voted for it soy ou tell me since when does majority vote count for nothng.
I don’t care. Most of these stuff online are irrelevant to many people. They don’t even need these crap, they just think they do.
start the pie throwing
big brother is pushing the public to a point of reformig it self. Its time to show big brother who is in charge. The political fight is on a critical point to explode and when this happenes big brother will be sorry lossing its power for basic human rights that it should protect. Its time to reform the major parties in power by electing a new leadership! Its much more simple than people think. Traditional politics has on chance in beating the power of the internet!
Swedes also seem to be flocking to new anonymous filesharing services like OneSwarm:
http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/
Just check the forum 8)
Does this mean that people shouldn’t download using swedish trackers such as the piratebay even if they are not in sweden? and that this has an increased risk in getting caught?
Just use TOR and noone will never be able to get you IP adrress.
TOR is open source by the way.
There is other tool such as anonymous p2p ANT, WINY ( Still working!) and WASTE to mention few that make you anonymous.
If you leave in Sweden just use one of those.
BOYCOTT THE MOVIE AND THE RECORDING INDUSTRY TO DEATH!
-No DVD rental,
-No movie theater visits,
-NO CD
-NO for pay dowload of anykind!
“Scaring the public is what they do indeed, with Lars Gustafsson, operating manager of IFPI Sweden estimating that there will be at least 100 cases in court this year.”
If there is solidarity amongst pirates, then what do people have to fear? As long as, in those cases, the people actually have a face, then if the public sees them as ordinary people, then this would be even worse for the IFPI. Perhaps the Piratbyran over there could carry on a campaign of civil disobedience of disobeying the copyright law publicly (i. e. in the view of the public) by distributing copyrighted material in the streets.
Pirates of the world, unite!
So there’s a 30% drop in Swedish Internet traffic, but the number of Swedes using The Pirate Bay is the same as before IPRED came into effect.
This implies that IPRED hasn’t stopped people from filesharing at all, and the 30% drop is because the common folk – the ones that don’t even fileshare – are logging out over fear, disgust, or both.
And Henrik Pontén wants to sit back and call IPRED a success? ROFL.
Let’s see some statistics to back it up, then. Because right now the statistics indicate it’s a failure.
ISP’s should be happy. Better margins on their bandwidth.
They claim that internet usage is down by 30%, but What I want to know is simply this: Has the sales for movies/cd’s increased?
No? Well What’dya know, maybe this new law didn’t do anything useful at all, no?
Next year it’s time for Sweden to elect their new ‘riksdag’ (goverment) and to be honest, I look forward to seeing what the consequences this will have for the current council.
As they say: ‘You reap what you sow’.
to be honest, if over half of the population is against a law being implemented, and it gets implemented anyway…
Then that country does not have the right to call itself a democracy.
part of me says it’d be different if the law in question was ‘from now on killing is illegal’.. another part of me says screw it, if over half the population of a country wants to legalize killing, go for it.
yeah really smart to go against what the public wants to bend to multimillion dollar industry..
and then they wonder why people dont support there government and commit crimes..
can you say retards?
@15: If you have to boycott then boycott the right way.
What you’re suggesting is useless. You’re basically saying “I won’t buy at that place” and then hire other people to steal from there for you. The store you’re trying to boycott then has to order even more merchandise because it’s constantly stolen and it ranks high on the illegal popularity scales. If you really want to destroy the media industry as it is DONT CONSUME THEIR MEDIA. You need to ruin their popularity and therefore boycott anything they produce in any way shape from or rendition. Not so easy is it?
It’s no use downloading movies from the web if they’re then still ranked at IMDB and discussed online and such. That’s what generates cashgflow for these companies. If you want to actually harm them … ignore them. Make people aware of free and open alternatives.
Warner Brothers will only die when nobody watches any of their stuff anymore, not stolen, not rented not anything.
Talking about boycott and then getting the very product you want to boycott through illegal channels is completely retarded.
Roze, you’re an idiot.
@Anonymous
“Talking about boycott and then getting the very product you want to boycott through illegal channels is completely retarded.”
The object of a boycott is to avoid supporting the target of said boycott. Downloading movies via filesharing does nothing to support the movie industry what so ever, so it doesn’t violate the conditions of a boycott at all.
Retards shouldn’t call other people retarded. Then again, it’s funny, so maybe they should :D
“anonymity service IPREDATOR last week, which is scheduled to open up to the public soon”
Wasn’t its launch supposed to coincide with IPRED? The TPB crew fails again! Also, uploading to TPB is not working currently because the code picture isn’t showing. Only a handful of torrents have been uploaded this evening!
Furthermore, the disposable email service Slopsbox doesn’t actually work. I tried to register somewhere using it, but the email never showed up. And it’s just not me, but others have told me of its nonfunctioning in the past.
I cannot get over the fact that people pledge allegion to these folks, but reality is that their inventions TPB included have always suffered from big problems and I am not at all impressed at their apparent technical ineptness and lack of support.
@26
Yeah, that makes the statistics go away. Uh huh.
Nice try.
eztv.it fool’s day joke was resposible for significant drop….
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION YOU DI**HEAD.
The chart is probably upside down … in a related story, interweb usage has been significantly higher in the jungle where I can haz torrents… <3
This data from the NIE likely doesn’t figure in the use of VPNs, seedboxes and other more private methods of obtaining copyrighted content.
Which means that more likely than scaring people, IPRED has merely driven the pirates further underground to places where they can better hide their tracks.
Face it, media cartels, governments and MAFIAAtards: piracy will never be stopped no matter what is said or done about it. Even if ACTA comes to pass, darknets will spring up and piracy will continue as usual.
post 23 is right, it isn’t the sales to people nor the biographical shows that makes money for the media industry it is all about licenses to TV-channels.
I think the drop isn’t because of IPRED. Nobody wants to go on the Internet on April 1st anyway, and Conficker’s got everyone scared stiff.
“Face it, media cartels, governments and MAFIAAtards: piracy will never be stopped no matter what is said or done about it. Even if ACTA comes to pass, darknets will spring up and piracy will continue as usual.”
to the same degree as now? doubtful.
LOL, cause they all moved the severs to China or some other country that doesnt care what goes on. They be keepin it free yo.
RT
http://www.anonymity.us.tc
@big brother is not realizing the power of the people, copyright infringement is not a basic human right.
twitter.com/spaceagesoup
the solution to these problems have been known for a looooong looooong time lol.
the solution? a previous poster has said it already: ignore.
unfortunately, peoples _continous_ desire for useless crap like movies, tv shows and music put you on a leash. and these media companies knows very well how to yank that chain.
free youself from that leash (desire).
#5 “I think that what is really scary is the fact that this law has been approved in one of the most socially advanced countries in the world.”
Indeed, well spoken!
/a swede
The traffic dropped just as much last year at that date.
http://www.second-opinion.se/so/view/310 (Swedish)
http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums_max/All.html
@14: TOR is slow as fuck. VPNs are much better and the Pirate Bay’s IPREDATOR seems to be the way to go since they support piracy and they dont log anything. =D
“to be honest, if over half of the population is against a law being implemented, and it gets implemented anyway…”
Law is made of consensus. If there is no consensus there is no law.
Fetch your guns!
or just use newsgroups or rapidshare.
@alex, it is up to human beings to decide what basic human rights we are owed, not multi-billion dollar corporations.
The people that pass these laws and the industries that support them are only digging there own graves.
Speaking of which, we haven’t heard from aXXo in how long?
That the net-traffic did dropp 30% in Sweden are totaly bullshit and only a way for the Antipiracy agancy to “scare” all who might D/L on the net! One of the reason that it was a 30% dropout has several reasons. #1. The Swedish football-leag did start this day. #2. Several Internet-dupplier like Bredbandsbolaget, Telia, Tele2 and many others had problems with the internetconnection and nod-servers this day and finaly you can say that a minority of maximum 5-10% decrease depends on the new IPRED-Law and the European joint-action “Operation Carbonite” against warez-sites and suspiciouse net-hackers and warez-guys and girls!
http://helahalsingland.se/halsingland/1.929363
what is this mullvad.net service?
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