After Sweden's New Law, a Major Drop In Internet Traffic 337
iamnot writes "The new IPRED law came into effect in a big way in Sweden on April 1st. A news report has come out showing that internet traffic dropped by 30% from March 31st to April 1st. A lawyer from the Swedish anti-piracy agency was quoted as saying that the drop in traffic 'sends a very strong signal that the legislation works.' Is the new law, which allows for copyright holders to request the identification of people sharing files, truly curing people of their evil ways? Or perhaps it is just taking some time for Swedish downloaders to figure out the new IPREDator VPN system from The Pirate Bay."
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Informative)
http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums_max/all_month_sum.png [autonomica.se]
This is the monthly summarized statistics for netnod. Does indeed look like a big drop at April 1st and pretty stable usage before.
Re:Not fun anymore (Score:2, Informative)
I play by the rules set by the industry.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*.
30% drop *in Sweden* (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA: Internet use in Sweden dipped by 30 percent on Wednesday...
More about the IPDRED law (Score:4, Informative)
Read all about ipred [ipred.org].
Yeah, it works. (Score:5, Informative)
The bill doesn't just cover traffic to/from swedish households, it covers all traffic entering and leaving the country.
Re:Yeah, it works. (Score:3, Informative)
IPRED is not the same thing as FRA. IPRED doesn't affect the Norwegians :)
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Informative)
Look at
http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums_max/all_year_sum.png [autonomica.se]
All the talk about filesharing must have spread the word. They could just as well try to sell air.
Re:So your point is? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun (Score:5, Informative)
Banning VPNs or even torrents is as far as I can tell, against the swedish constitution.
You can read it yourself here: http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_Page____6316.aspx
Chapter 1, article 3 prevents banning ownership and usage, on grounds of content, of tools needed for reception and parsing a message intended for the general public.
Chapter 3, article 10 would relate to ISP (common carrier) content filtering.
Funny thing the swedish parliament has passed so many stupid laws in recent years, when the constitution contains so many Good articles!
So why is 1 download 1 lost sale? (Score:1, Informative)
That's the argument over Jammie's $220,000 fine for 24 tracks: an uncountable number downloaded and that is an uncountable loss to the recording industry.
In that case, 1 download is 1 lost sale.
If this IS the case, then 1 unmade download is 1 gained sale.
Your comment is wrong.
Re:So your point is? (Score:1, Informative)
I feel the same way but take the opposite approach.
I love music. I used to purchase at least a couple of albums a month. I have hundreds of them. Now there's no way in hell I'm giving them a dime. The only time I buy music now is from completely independent artists. The rest get pirated.
When someone bullies you, you're saying to just run away from the bully. They're buying laws and corrupting our society. You're saying to just accept that and to do as they say as they destroy art and culture.
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Informative)
You're looking at the bandwidth graph of all of Sweden, as measured by http://www.netnod.se/ [netnod.se], not a single university.
Also, if you look at the two-year graph, http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums/all_twoyear_sum.png [autonomica.se], you can see that the drop now down to 90Gbps only means that we're back at the levels of October last year.
Yeah, really effective, what a huge blow to filesharing in Sweden, how will it ever recover? Oh, let's wait half a year and it will definitely be back at the levels of late March again.
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:2, Informative)
As we saw when the government passed a law making it illegal to download MP3's there was a significant drop in Internet traffic as well. That didn't like very long either =) People are bit afraid of being caught at first but they soon realize that the chance is next to nothing.
the so called "anti-piracy agency"... (Score:2, Informative)
Just to clarify - Sweden does NOT have an government agency for dealing with intellectual property crime!
The "anti-piracy agency" referred to by the article is just the direct translation of the name "Antipiratbyrån", a private organization with the stated aim to "protect the rights of the artists and publishers".
The Antipiratbyrån is more like the infamous US company MediaDefender, doing the hands-on dirty work of the MPAA/RIAA special interest organizations.
It's the thought police (Score:2, Informative)
This is the thought police gaining entry to our homes.
This should not be confused with discussions over IP. That is a totally different issue and I have strong views on that as well :-)
What is happening here is that private organizations gain the same or more rights that the police have to track net activity of private citizens. The possibilities for abuse are endless...
The sane counter measure would be for everyone to set up at least two anonymizing accounts: one for all their net activities that may leave traces of their real identity and one for everything that should be traceless.
Enough encrypted traffic on the net will make it impossible for the powers that be to single out the traffic they have an interest in. Widespread use of anonymizers will also stop the argument that these services exist for file sharing alone.
The tired old argument that "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." is a truly bad one. There is a good poem about this:
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
translated:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
By Martin Niemöller
(from Wikipedia)
Finally, it is time to let our politicians know that they are treading down the wrong path, it's indeed a slippery slope.
Re:Traffic down 30%, sales up by...? (Score:3, Informative)
*woooosh*
The point was that this correlation does not exist, yet it is touted as fact by the copyright-huggers.
Only a temporary effect (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just use Tor (Score:3, Informative)
Tor was not designed [torproject.org] for the type and levels of traffic BitTorrent generates. Using it for torrents squeezes out people who actually need to remain anonymous [torproject.org]. Widespread use of Tor for torrents would be a disaster for freedom.
Please don't recommend Tor.
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:4, Informative)
It surely does, especially as the daylight hours get longer as the summer approaches. People watch a lot of TV series and movies during the dark winter hours, and much less during the light and warm summers. Note that in northen Sweden, sun doesn't set at all during summer, while in winter the sun never rise. In the more populated areas, like Stockholm, it's not quite as bad but the difference in the amount of daylight is still very big:
http://www.visitsweden.com/sweden/Sweden-Facts/Worth-knowing-about-Sweden/Time--daylight-hours/ [visitsweden.com]
Re:If conficker IS a deterrent.. (Score:3, Informative)
The MAFIAAs of the world already do that - setup fake torrents that contain nothing but empty data. I recall downloading an episode of Rome, and I wondered why I was able to get a 350 megabyte file in just a few minutes. Turned-out it was a playable video that was completely black and only 5 minutes long.
30% drop in internet business (Score:3, Informative)
Scare people off-line, and business loses. ISPs, stores, phone companies, etc.