Swedish Internet Traffic Recovers After Initial IPRED Scare
Written by enigmax on November 13, 2009When Sweden’s IPRED legislation came into force on April 1st this year, the country saw a massive 30% drop in Internet traffic. Many attributed this to Internet user fears associated with increased powers of anti-piracy groups. Now, 8 months later, traffic is completely back to normal and on track to exceed pre-IPRED levels.
The introduction of Sweden’s controversial Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) gave rights holders the authority to request personal details of alleged Internet copyright infringers in order that they can be pursued through the legal system.
The legislation came into force on April 1st this year, and the very next day the Netnod Internet Exchange reported a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This dramatic reduction in data transfers was attributed to file-sharers reigning in their activities on fears of being identified by anti-piracy companies.
In response to the news, Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that most experts believed that the initial “scare effect” would wear off in time. They were absolutely right.
Current data from Netnod reveals that traffic levels in Sweden have not only returned to normal, pre-IPRED levels, but actually seem on track to surpass them. This increase is partly natural, but the relatively steep climb in recent months seems to suggest that P2P traffic is on the rise again.
Who’s scared of IPRED now then?
While anti-piracy and copyright groups are working hard to clock up successes in getting governments to implement increasingly tougher laws to deal with online file-sharers, they too aren’t sitting back and accepting defeat in the face of these new challenges. Many are turning to services which enable them to hide their identities.
Recently the Cyber Norms sociological research project reported that 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 were taking measures to neutralize online surveillance, with as many as 500,000 of their countrymen following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.
In this cat and mouse game, the cats have to spend millions of dollars and years of effort to achieve their aims of getting new legislation to protect their interests. However, in a crushing response, the mice spend just a few minutes in thought deciding how to spend a few dollars in order to instantly neutralize the threat.
As people around the world look forward to the festive season, it must seem like Christmas every day for VPN suppliers.
Previously: Warner Bros. Thinks P2P Gets Unfairly Vilified
Next: HttpTorrents: Download Torrents Without BitTorrent
57 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Did anyone not see this coming??? rofl rock on TPB
VPN’s are the way to for public torrents these days
I thank the private trackers ^^
IFPI: See? we told you, tougher laws are needed!
These damn pesky Swedes will keep doing this no matter what, we recommend chopping them up for each offense, nothing else will work.
What? what do you mean you want us to change? our business models have worked for 20 years, its not our fault its them.
Yes, absolutely, if someone has an idea to make this whole pesky internets series of tubes thing go away we would love to hear from you.
/sarcasm &wit
the graph shows it worked for maybe 4 months with little gain in traffic…
new IPRED law every 4 months ? wait no that will cost too much cause pirates are taking your money… right?
The cats are going after the mice with fly swatters, but the mice are armed with bazookas.
Surprising it ain’t. VPNs are so easy to obtain either for free or a ridiculously low fee per month that there is no excuse not to use one while downloading and browsing the web. They wanted to play, we’re f**king playing.
Let’s hope the politicians realize this is a war of attrition against their own populace, and ends this stupid arms race.
It’s like a Tom & Jerry episode.
The mouse always wins, cat is always the fool.
2nd cartoon reference today, what the hell?
@1 “rock on TPB”?..
…
…
err
…
wha…
did you left your brain in the closet again?? oh well.
I just complain about one thing: Where is the **** ******** link to one of the Free VPN services?
Anyway. I’ve to say that was expected. After all, everyone would lose the fear somewhere.. I didn’t even get to known that, so I just kept my life going on.
?h, it’s cool to see how deformed our society is. It’s cool to watch how men with power try (and succeed) to manipulate the government. VPN it is along with proxy-chains. Love the metaphor about the cat and mouse. :D
vpn is about 5 EUR/month, guess those money could have gone to the artists instead if there were channels for that…
I suppose someone could easily tap into a compromisef computer botnets and run torrents and store files through them. No fuss, no muss, no electronic trail, point the finger at someone else, and an endless supply of compromised computers that can never all be shut down. xD
I heard macs make for great botnets. Lax security, false sense of security and no antivirus. xD
If you look at April the year before you can see the same drop of traffic in Sweden. Also, that statistics is not 100% correct since they don’t have access to all the traffic data in Sweden.
Screw this…
I’m moving to Sweden!
While this may be encouraging and seemingly returning back to normal, it may be just what they were waiting for in the first place.
They didn’t start hell of lawsuits and anything right after the Fools Day Law, knowing that most of very very mean criminal offenders have run scared.
Now traffic is back, and while it is true that some file sharers are using VPNs and other ways to defeat Fools Day Law, some are not.
I’d be more reserved on the case…
i do not believe the 30% drop in Sweden’s internet traffic was at all related to people’s fears associated with increased powers of anti-piracy groups. if it was true then it would signify that 30% of Sweden’s internet traffic is filesharing of copyright content and that the majority of people doing that illicit sharing are sensitive to the laws of Sweden
fact is the majority of p2p traffic is completely free of copyright issues but furthermore the people who share copyright content are clearly NOT sensitive to laws otherwise they would not do it in the first instance. therefore only a small portion of the traffic drop can be attributed to “frightened filesharers”
i accept that the largest half of internet traffic is filesharing and suggest that what we see is corporations, government institutions, schools, hospitals, univerities, and pubic bodies, in Sweden all reacting at the same time to the IPRED legislation by blocking p2p traffic on their networks to protect themselves against costly legal procedures should a student, employee or other, use their networks for an illicit purpose
so what can have caused the sudden drop? i would not be surprised if the USA, Russia, and other Governments, rerouted their traffic to avoid Sweden because IPRED delivered many more implications for traffic inspection than merely filesharing
when viewed in this light the period of (quantifiably unknown) suppression of p2p traffic can at most be seen from the graph to be 4 months to August where the upward trend of the graph starts. look at google trends analysis of all “torrent sites” shown in this graph http://trends.google.com/trends?q=torrent+sites&geo=all&date=all
in conclusion, the upward trend may represent a combination of filesharers discovering alternative access to the global highway PLUS a growth of filesharing activity (given that filesharing is the larger half of all traffic)
why a sudden growth in filesharing? note the news item D in the google stats and see how previous filesharing trends were flat (if not actually in slight decline) until thepiratebay trial publicity rocketed bittorrent into the global consciousness causing a global surge in the trend. congratulations to the MAFIAA for publicising bittorrent, you really did a great job NOT
http://www.h33t.com has just downloaded this week’s copy of Survivor :-D
The biggest problem I can see for all countries now is if the MPAA etc force users to use VPN’s the governments will cry “Threat To National Security”. All this because the music and movie industries wouldn’t create a valid business model.
Waiting for the day bot-nets take over users VPN connections. Time bomb waiting to happen!
Snicker.
I wonder how many millions of dollars were sunk into IPRED? I’ll bet the MAFIAA lost more money implementing this failure than they “lost” to filesharing. A lot more.
@diarRIAA
Mac botnets don’t work. You can’t hook into the OS deep enough to seriously pull it off, somebody tried setting one up awhile ago and it just went nowhere.
Oh, oops I didn’t know any one was worried about me. Sorry, but it’s been hecktick since april, computer was offline for some time. But now I’m back to the internet and all is well
:P~
Happy sharing everyone
Next Step: Outlawing VPN providers.
“When Sweden’s IPRED legislation came into force on April 1st this year, the country saw a massive 30% drop in Internet traffic…”
Simple explanation: April 1st – it was an April Fool’s joke. IPRED was never serious LOL!
If people honestly believe that they can hide from the FBI by downloading a program off the internet, they are seriously mistaken. VPNs provide nothing other than a false sense of security. Sure, they can make it harder for you to track, but not impossible. The FBI hires the best of the best, and they will have no trouble finding someone. VPNs are no different than people on cop shows who you see engaged in a futile effort to outrun cops. Sure, they can delay their capture, but they are living on borrowed time.
It would be extremely interesting to see if media sales graph mirrored the bandwidth consumption graph.
@11: itshidden.com is free :))). However they got so many users that they limited free accounts to 1mbps.
Use Ipredator from Australia. Works fine.
Install judges with special interests.
Spy on people without warrant.
Bribe politicians.
Blackmail ISPs and filesharers.
Fraudulently claims we support terrorists and pedophiles.
Your money, power and lies are worth nothing to us on “t3h In73rw3bz”, to us, ingenuity trumps all you can throw against us.
It is you (MAFIAA) who has had the free ride. Now you’re going to have to WORK to make money… just like the rest of us.
@18
Your trends diagram is far too big. Zooming in to just 2009 gives a more interesting view of a drop in searches:
http://trends.google.com/trends?q=torrent+sites&ctab=0&geo=se&geor=all&date=2009&sort=0
Another interesting search term to look at is “piratebay”, which did sank in 2009—possibly thanks to IPRED.
http://trends.google.com/trends?q=piratebay&ctab=0&geo=se&geor=all&date=all&sort=0
lol, gotta love the way the private fans are still bleeting on about how they are safe! when in gods name will you realise that if anything, you are more at risk sat on a private tracker!!
Guys, help me out here. I want to use a VPN but how can I continue to host public-facing services on the same machine? I don’t want the services VPNified, just web browser/other mainly. Is there something like a SOCKS-to-VPN client I could use?
On topic… a ganders at the LINX ‘Decade’ graph looks to show a similar ramp-up of traffic in the 2nd half of each of the years shown. AMS-IX and DE-CIX yearly look to show the same, too.
I’m not too convinced that if IPRED didn’t (supposedly) have the effect it did on April 1st, that the traffic rate wouldn’t be ~30% higher than is displayed now based on the ‘typical’ rise seen in the LINX/AMSIX/DECIX graphs (as in raise april-present in the netnod graph by ~30% and it might just look ‘normal’ by comparisson). Could it be said that IPRED saved the providers ~7-months worth of infrastructure upgrades?
Good post @h33t
Prob a bit more representative of what’s going on.
Certainly, many people I know, didn’t understand or hear of TPB until the trial was heavily reported on UK media.
A couple of people I know went to download from there who had never dloaded before,
a) to be curious and
b)incase they couldn’t ever again.
So the trial generated a massive ineterest – not quite what was wanted. However TPB reliabilty, many report is less than it was….some success but with a cost of increased awareness
Whoops better check this out
To Broadcast Disney Verizon have sold their souls.
Better change uour ISP
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10396787-93.html?tag=rtcol;inTheNewsNow
More notices for simply “sharing”
Oh dear
“Don’t question my authority or put me in the dock (cause I’m not!)
The record/movie “industry” is useless and should go away, we don’t need them, _real_ artists don’t need them and we don’t want this excuse of an industry to push for more totalitarian dictatorship just for a few worse-than-nazi criminal billionaires to get even richer while people are dying because of them.
Those Swedes are worse than the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Nicaraguans and the North Koreans put together!
Fancy getting that type of cheek from Europe!
There’s only one solution:
1) Put Sweden on the official “Axis of Evil” list.
2) Start blackpainting it in all media, and look for an excuse to invade..
3) Tell then that “your either with us or with the terrorists..” If they don’t get it, nuke them and be done with it…
as long as i can get my big boob videos i dont care
To download get the BitTorrent client here and a .torrent file from any of the torrent search engines listed above (”Download Torrent” button/link)
Using BitTorrent is legal, downloading copyrighted material isn’t. Be careful of what you download or face the consequences.
@36 – lol.
Lol, how can anybody talk h33t seriously when he says the majority of p2p is free of copyright issues, especially when he finishes his post with a declaration he’s downloading a copyrighted TV show
38 Nov 14, 2009 at 17:35 by Tub Brumber
Lol, how can anybody talk h33t seriously when he says the majority of p2p is free of copyright issues, especially when he finishes his post with a declaration he’s downloading a copyrighted TV show
The law is not the same everywhere. Where I am at most of the time it is 100 % legal to download and upload without fear of legal recourse b/c the courts has said that it is legal as long as a profit isn’t made. Perhapse (I don’t know where he is located) he is in the same boat. I support copywright free stuff, but I also get my share of copywrong stuff also.
I don’t believe in censorship. Fkk that. For those that say its illigal, laws are different in different places, but perhapse if it was against the law in my current country, I would still do it due to too may benefits. I don’t like supporting organized crime and extortion by buying mafia so the best way is to get it/give it for free.
http://www.mafiaa.org
I’ve been thinking of using a VPN service…any suggestions from the community?
iPEDoh needs to go away.
I pee red, too…
Does that mean I have venereal disease? :/
It does, Reasoned – stop porking farm animals.
Fuck the the content creators..who needs them? I’m going to download all my shit for free…I could care less if the artist don’t get any money!! Now back to torrenting…Long live ThePirateBay!
But they’re so cute… <3
So TF you allow the childish comments above but delete my post that had no language or name calling or other nonsense. It was an attempt to engage another commenter in an ongoing dialog.
Alas you are just as big a control freak as what the big industry is.
Shame on you! I have no respect for you.
@45
“Fuck the the content creators..who needs them?”
You moron.
just get something like peerblock and block all the incomming requests comming from sweden in this case… and youll become practically invisible… not to hard…. only bad thing is you wont be able to access particular websites… or if your not downloading anything at that moment you could allow all http…. or you could put in exceptions if they arent to many…
everyone was hangin loose, doing thier homework on vpn’s ;)
itshidden.com
ipredator.se
btguard.com
could you do an article explaining VPN and showing the best VPN sources around, i.e. what i would be looking for in getting one for fastest download speeds etc.
OMgosh man, someone is gettin way to carried away here dude.
RT
ultimate-privacy.cz.tc
whats this?
visit the new one
Wheter TF or h33t are right, the fact is MAFIAA and the law fail.
Massive fail.
Do I smell spam cooking on here?
TorrentFreak lies as usual. Traffic hasn’t recovered. It’s still down 20-25%.
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