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."
Nothing will change. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not fun anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
I, and I bet many others with me, don't think it's fun anymore. While a good many proceeds to download songs, movies and TV series using other protocols than e.g. torrents, there are those that recognize that it's not a sustainable situation. I stopped downloading questionable material the 31st of March.
Legislation will get worse and worse to the point where we are all under constant surveillance. We don't need to give "them" any more leverage to these draconian laws. We are in our right to fileshare on a personal level - that is, with friends and family. Let's stop filesharing with "strangers" and we're untouchable.
There's a huge discussion on obfuscation techniques and VPN solutions for consumers -- they're ignoring the upcoming EU directive on mandatory requirement to keep logs. Ergo, when anonymisation services keep logs, you're no longer anonymous.
I for one have "given up" my habits completely. I play by the rules set by the industry. If they cannot offer me what I want (unencumbered digital music), then I simply do not buy from them.
I also enjoy Spotify a great bit - the only thing I really miss is a service that lets me download TV series.
Lastly, the only torrents you'll see on my system is OSS like Debian and Ubuntu ISO:s.
(Yes, I am Swedish.)
I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anonymous networks (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:1, Interesting)
Would be interesting to see the Swedish usage statistics for OneSwarm [washington.edu] before and after IPRED.
fascism (Score:2, Interesting)
VPNs are irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
IPREDator and any other VPN or tunnelling solution is moot.
Only a small proportion of the file sharing population have the nous to sort it out.
If they drive off the majority of the file sharers, their job is done. The tech underground will keep swapping files like they always have done, its getting the masses off browse and click bittorrent that's the main objective.
My dilemma is this ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I like certain TV-shows. "Heroes" is one of them.
It's currently in its second season here in Sweden. But I don't have a TV, nor do I have the time to watch it when it's on the telly. Oh, and it's in regular TV-quality. The iTunes store sell the TV-show though. But not in the Swedish store. They don't sell ANY movies or TV-shows in the Swedish store.
I can buy the first two seasons on DVDs (and maybe blu-ray, not sure), but since most of the people I talk with on a daily basis are from the US, I can't really talk about the TV-shows - it's like being more than a year behind with the news. Current events aren't really all that current.
I've seen the first season on DVDs. It's a cool show. I'd like to keep up with it. I'm more than willing to pay the I think 35$ an HD quality season costs on iTunes, but aparently my money aren't good enough for these people (I doubt it's Apple's decision).
Browsing through the US store I see lots of shows I'd like to watch and buy. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog being one of them, but again, that's only available in the US store. That makes no sense though, as I can buy it on Amazon, and it's not like that show will ever be syndicated - what TV-network would buy a 3 episode show with a total runtime of 45 minutes?
Hell, I'm willing to pay two dollars to watch an episode of something, just to see if it's any good.
Essentially my dilemma is as follows:
I can break the law by making a fraudulent claim that I'm in the US and buy the stuff I want. I'm sure this is illegal in other ways than the fraud bit.
I can break the law by downloading the shows I want to watch and sample new stuff
I can buy a TV, wait a few years for my local networks to hopefully pick up shows that I'll find interesting and then watch it.
I don't really want a TV - partly because I am then forced to pay a yearly tax on it, partly because I don't really watch it. I had a 42" plasma from janurary 2008 to august 2008, and I think I watched a combined total of 4 hours of TV on it, the rest was gaming and watching movies.
I don't really want to break the law. I don't mind paying to support the production costs of the stuff I like, I don't mind paying to support a distribution system I like. But aparently I'm not the kind of person, "they" want to cater to.
"They" could learn a LOT from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I can watch their shows within a day of them being aired with no restrictions. They used to have embedded ads in their commercial breaks (not a problem), but they stopped that a while back, probably because the ads were aimed at a US audience. The Daily Show is even syndicated in Denmark - the broadcaster manages to put subtitles on it and show it with a two day delay, so it's not like there isn't a foreign market for it either.
My point is this:
"They" have no aparent interest in selling their stuff to me. My money obviously isn't good enough for them. If that's the case, why the fuck do they care if I download their stuff? It's not like it's a lost sale - they obviously do not want to sell it to me!
Like the polls (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My dilemma is this ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun (Score:1, Interesting)
It's like the WOT laws. Destroying the freedoms that soldiers give their life's to protect. Have we all lost our minds ? The legislators pass laws contradicting freedom laws in their own constitutions. Fileshares take it up the you know what when they should be raising merry hell for being compared to terrorists.
The legislators need to pass a law that makes sharing for no money *legal*. I wonder how many real pirates love this debate because it distracts from real money making pirate operations ?
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Like the polls (Score:2, Interesting)
So they can rent a 10$ a month server in Tonga, install utorrent on it and stream the downloaded stuff via VPN with 100mbps?
Or just do as many I know, buy an account at a commercial Usenet host with SSL tunneling support and no logging, and just leech on..
Also, it is no surprise the traffic volume drops if people just grab what they need from usenet instead of keep seeding torrents for foreign peers to maintain quotas on regtrackers.
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:1, Interesting)
No but seriously, don't underestimate the impact of the weather for us sweedes. No joke. Whenever then sun pops out we tend to go do everything outdoors, just because we can.
My 2 cts. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>I cannot for a moment imagine -- and would be embarrassed to admit to -- living in a country where I had to import my *culture* from overseas.
You just insulted the entire European Union -- 500 million people -- who voraciously import American music, movies, and tv shows. Nice job bro.
The fact of the matter is that western culture operates as a whole, and has for centuries with Italians listening to German Bach, and Germans listening to Italian Vivaldi, but record companies want to erect artificial barriers in order to stop this sharing between nations and the Euro-Canadian-American western civilization. It is the record companies that are in the wrong, and abusing copyright which was originally intended to PROMOTE the growth of culture, not stifle it.
In a truly operative copyright regime, Europeans could watch hulu.com, Americans could watch cbc.com, and Canadians could watch bbc.com without any limitation. And after a reasonable length, say 50 years, the media would become public domain.
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:4, Interesting)
If I'm spending more time outside, that means less time inside, which means less time available to watch movies and use the computer, which means less reason to bother downloading movies, games, and apps (unless you are simply a hoarder).
Re:So your point is? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the days where not everyone could afford a 'copying machine' it was perfectly okay. Things have changed, laws essentially didn't.
The laws changed. In the opposite direction.
Culture is spread around the earth in a fraction of a second. Music, movies and games are changing so fast and produced in such amounts that most is forgotten after a year.
Copyright? Extendened to a century and more.
Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun (Score:1, Interesting)
The only reason you're not "importing culture" from other European countries is because you can't speak the fucking language. Berlin, Berlin [imdb.com] is a fantastic comedy-drama. Sucks for you if you don't speak German, though.
Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun (Score:3, Interesting)
I just figure it's a moral issue. The only reason Copyright is mentioned in the Constitution of the United States is because without it there would have been less of a chance for the newly founded country to build its own culture. However, corporations have turned Copyright into a method for perpetual ownership. As this is not what was intended, I feel no moral obligation to support them.
I do not go out of my way to obtain what I want for free, but I also do not feel I am doing anything wrong when I do.
Re:April 1st (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me know at the end of April, if the amount is significantly lower than March.
It will most likely be significantly lower than March. This years March, however, was almost double last years March, so one might expect this years April to be more in line with last years April.
Look at the longer term statistics at http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums/Stockholm_GE.html [autonomica.se] and you'll note that the change in traffic isn't so much a drop as it is a return to normal after a massive 6-9 month spike. People aren't downloading less than usual, they have been downloading much much more than usual just in case.
Re:Not fun anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
You miss the point of the EU. It's one of the most successful policy laundering institutions in the world (WIPO is another).
The EU isn't punting the Orwellian crap: the national governments push it to the EU, knowing that it will be as popular as a rat sandwich to their domestic populations. So, once it gets bullied, cajoled and pushed through as an EU directive, those same governments turn around to their electorates and say "Oh, we have to do this now, it's an EU directive, and we ain't got no say in the matter".
The Data Retention Directive, for instance, is a creation of the UK government. When introducing the legislation to Parliament, they specifically said that it had to be done because it was an EU Directive. No mention that it was their EU directive.
Bastards.
--Ng
Re:So your point is? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, it's not the authors that hate file-sharing. Essentially, file-sharing is advertising for the authors, "paid for" by the music labels. Muscians in general make most of their money from performances and concerts. I read somewhere that only 4 out of the top 50 top-revenue-earning-artists made more money from selling cds than from performing.
For some proof, there's a similar artist coalition in Canada called "the Canadian Music Creators Coalition"
Until now, a group of multinational record labels has done most of the talking about what Canadian artists need out of copyright. Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies, but let's be clear: lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels' control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels' foreign parent companies.
- CMCC [musiccreators.ca]
Here are some of their interesting press releases:
Montreal, January 30, 2007 - Nielsen SoundScan numbers released January 17th show that Canada's digital download market grew more than any major market in 2006. This exciting news has the Canadian Music Creators Coalition asking: 'Why are the record labels still pushing for ways to sue Canadian music fans?'
- link [musiccreators.ca]
And I'll throw one last link in:
And then in 2008, Canada again outperforms U.S. in digital sales, and Industry Canada commissions a study which shows a positive correlation between file sharing and music purchasing. CMCC argues against anti-circumvention legislation. link Michael Geist [michaelgeist.ca]
Re:So your point is? (Score:1, Interesting)
The idea of copyright is to encourage the development of creative works by giving the creator a temporary monopoly on distribution rights in order to recover their investment. That digital distribution costs are negligible is irrelevant; the creator is still entitled to recover his initial investment of time, money, and other resources. Unfortunately, "temporary" has turned into "perpetual"; that is the real problem here. Because of that, I am not opposed to the idea of pirating things after a "fair" amount of time. For instance, I don't think it's right to download the latest DVD releases; however, I feel something 5 or 10 years old is fair game. The original term was 14 years, which in this day and age I think is more than fair.
Re:My dilemma is this ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a serious question, and I'm not trying to flame, I'm just curious.
The UK has a healthy TV/film industry, as does Japan, China, France, Germany, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and probably a dozen more countries I can't think of right now.
Why doesn't Sweden? I mean, why would you even be slightly interested in a show designed for American/Canadian audiences in English only?
Anyway, I just think it's really weird. As an American, I don't think "oh it's tragic you can't get US TV easily in Sweden," I think, "it's tragic Sweden (apparently) doesn't produce its own TV."
Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun (Score:3, Interesting)
If the Pirate Party manages to become important enough to be considered for a government coalition you can bet that the other parties are going to re-evaluate their stance on filesharing. Getting into the government is more important to them than anything they might or might not believe in, so they'll consider a more filesharing-friendly stance.
In short: The handful of guys getting laws passed will win, but in Sweden that handful of guys might actually end up being on the filesharers' side.