Internet traffic in Sweden fell by 33% as the country’s new anti-piracy law came into effect.
Sweden’s new policy – the Local IPRED law – allows copyright holders to force internet service providers (ISP) to reveal details of users sharing files.
According to figures released by the government statistics agency – Statistics Sweden – 8% of the entire population use peer-to-peer sharing.
Popular BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay, is also based in Sweden.
The new law, which is based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), allows copyright holders to obtain a court order forcing ISPs to provide the IP addresses identifying which computers have been sharing copyrighted material.
Figures from Netnod, a Swedish firm that measures internet traffic in and out of the country, suggest traffic fell from an average of 120Gbps to 80Gbps on the day the new law came into effect.
Har!
That’s like saying the real test of auto anti-theft devices is if car sales increase. ROFL!
ROLF! GUFFAW!
Actually it isn’t like saying that at all.
Car: scarce good. (If I take yours, you don’t have it any more.)
Music: Infinite good. (If I take yours, your still have it and I realize what shitty taste you have in music.)
# 36 pedro said, “Keep projection your behaviour into others. It looks cute on you.”
Can you imagine that he doesn’t know pirating music is illegal in Canada? Must live in a hole.
So this should boost my internet speed by 50%?
Since the internet companies are selling cable service as well, the studios should be able to cut deals with them that you only get movies if you shut down this piracy. The cable companies benefit because they have more audience for their channels, plus less internet congestion.
What if ISPs just didn’t let you connect to piratebay, etc?
Sweden has a rather big “piracy” culture, the attitude is like stealing movies and games is normal. It’s really disconcerting.
But this will hardly stop “piracy” … it’ll just return to the domain of Russia or an enhanced BitTorrent will be developed that obfuscates and anonymizes everything.
And bizarrely enough, “piracy” is important force shaping the quality of commercial products who would otherwise cling to the old ways and instead have decided to do what the customer wants (iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Joost, etc. etc.).
I’m on the side that says tough crap. If you are suddenly offline because of this law, then you are a criminal.
The Internet didn’t make content free, it made it difficult for copyright holders to manage their legitimate assets. But the babies who grew up taking whatever they could grab are the ones whining the hardest. Want some cheese with that?
We can debate the value of that content, fine, But free isn’t a legal or moral option no matter how you rationalize it.
If you guys did your reasearch you would have known that this has happened every time some pro-RIAA/MPAA law was passed, but it usually gets back to normal in about two weeks. No biggie.
44. Fusi. Please, you’re torturing me.
“The music industry created a loophole in Canadian copyright laws when it asked for a levy on blank audio media. These $0.21 to $0.24 levies on blank media raised millions of dollars for music publishers, but also legalized copying in the digital age, to the consternation of the music industry.[2] Canadian courts have ruled that consumers have the right to copy any recording from the original copy even those they do not personally own. This consumer right has been extended by the courts to include peer-to-peer downloads.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_copyright_law
Seems the Canadian music industry royally hoisted themselves by their own greedy petard.
RBG
Here’s the thing. I bet 90%-95% of the people that do illegal downloads do it for the following reasons:
1. Cant afford to buy it legally, if they had the money they would get it legally. (mostly kids and teens)
2. Are downloading stuff they would never buy anyways, they are just doing it because they can.
3. Are trying to find rare or bootleg stuff they cannot get legitimately.
In other words, Pirating is costing RIAA/MPAA significantly less than they think it is. Anti-piracy efforts are generally only effective on group 1. Making more stuff available everywhere reduces group 3.
Group #2 cannot be stopped. They are collectors doing what they know, collecting. As long as music is played, they will be there to record it. Shut down bittorent, they will capture from internet radio. Stop internet radio, they will record from digital sattelite radio. You get the idea.
I’m not saying RIAA and MPAA should stop looking out for their client’s interest, nor am I saying they should do nothing.
What I am saying is that when you look at the problem from a cost effective pragmatic approach, the money they are currently putting into stopping piracy cannot possibly result in enough increased sales to justify the cost.
#46 part 2 sounds like an excuse for stealing.
Many of them wouldn’t buy it anyway, but that doesn’t mean they are entitled to take it for free.
>the money they are currently putting into stopping piracy cannot possibly result in enough increased sales to justify the cost.
Perhaps it is enough to keep from losing even more money as their existing paying customers don’t go to piracy for their movies as well.
BFD, c’mon, what’s the big deal? We’ve been here before. They were so sure that once the shut down Napster that it’d all be over, yeah right. How long will it take some clever swede (and yes there are many) to develope a peer to peer strategy that would be difficult or impossible for the ISP’s to monitor. They’ll never get the genie back in the bottle, at least not until M$ controls every computer on the planet – hopefully that won’t happen. Now if the media producers would get their acts together and sell on line, but no, they just won’t trust it without bulletproof DRM and that’s not gonna happen. And so the war wages on – arghhh! Hoist the Jolly Roger, me mateys…
#45, RBG,
Right, Quite Right, You’re bloody well right … (gee, almost sounds like a song I heard somewhere 🙂 )
The surcharge was at the request of the recording industry too.
It was understood at the time that not only would kids be copying from the radio, but also their friends collections.
I still own several cassettes of hard to find music copied from LPs and all quite legal too. The stipulation is that you may not sell the copies.
#48,
I would be much more worried about Apple, Google, Amazon, and IBM if I were you because those companies want to force you onto a thin client and not let you have access to any software.
Right now Google and Apple are teaming up to make a thin-client consumer product that goes way far beyond ANYTHING that microsoft has ever proposed.
Where as Microsoft has gone exactly the opposite direction and is doing more and more on your computer. Microsofts plan for the cloud for example wants to let you purchase cloud resources for use in your local applications. Like if you are rendering a 3d movie.
Googles Cloud initiative has zero vision for the local client.
And how come no one talks about how the iPod touch and iPhone delete your movies after you watch them? That is the most troubling DRM action to date, IMO. It never gets mentioned by the fosstard’o’sphere…
49. Mr. Fusion.
“Canadian courts have ruled that consumers have the right to copy any recording from the original copy even those they do not personally own.”
“…from the original copy…”
That’s rather interesting…
RBG
#32 You mean corporatism i action, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
#8 The reason we have the police is so that they can conduct independent investigations. Having companies represent theirs own interests is very dangerous and will deliver heavily biased results. That’s what people are upset about. You are a typically naive Swede.
fwiw, about 2 years after the RIAA submitted
their arguments to congress, initially stating a loss of 45% revenue, they later came out and said their study was flawed and piracy only amounted to 10% to 15% loss.
-s
55,
aint IT nice that that DONT hit the front pages like the FIRST quote??