Iceland and USA Feel the Copyright Industry's Wrath

spellraiser writes "Iceland's Internet traffic saw a substantial decrease this week as police raided the homes of 12 individuals suspected of sharing massive amounts of copyrighted material over a private, local DC++ hub that was infiltrated by SMAIS, the Association of film right holders in Iceland. The people who were raided were questioned by the police, and had computer equipment confiscated. It is unclear at this point what their fate is, but there is a distinct possibility might face charges." And in the U.S., an anonymous reader writes "The Recording Industry Association of America strikes again with yet another round of lawsuits. Jon Newston over at P2Pnet.net doesn't hold back anything in his great commentary on it today. Best quote 'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'"

Comments

DC++?

[Emugamer]

I had to look that one up

FYI

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/faq/faq.php?disp lay=faq&faqnr=1&catnr=1&prog=1&lang=en&onlynewfaq= 1

And the UK are finally gearing up for lawsuits too

[buro9]

As this register article (from today) shows:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/uk_to_sue_ music_pirates/

60% traffic drop

[Kafteinn]

DC++ hubs were started in Iceland because we usually have to pay extra for foreign downloads so people started sharing stuff between them for free.
When they raided the 12 guys (and seized 11 terabytes of data) all the dc servers were shut down and immediatly MRTG graphs clearly showed about a 50-60% traffic between domestic connections.
We have long heen proud to say that we have very high percentage of net users here, about 95% (number pulled out of ass) of the country has the internet and DC isn't the only way Icelanders share copyrighted stuff.
In fact most people just get cd's from friends who download from DC or someother p2p sharing app.

So in our case most of the population is rampantly breaking copyright laws all the time and suddenly because of complaints from SMAIS 12 random guys are arrested and two of them held for 24 hours.
2 years in prison is the maximum punishment for a crime like this while murder is maximum 16 years and if anyone is convicted for a copyright violation in Iceland we are going to have to put the entire nation behind bars.

I'm personally disgusted that our government is even thinking about putting profits of american companies above the well being of the people it is supposed to serve.

Re:And Internet traffic...

[Juggler]

Yes, the traffic really did drop that much (I live in Iceland). It was very noticable on publicly accessible usage graphs for the largest peering point in Iceland. This graph from the Reykjavík Internet Exchange is very telling.

However, the Register article was slightly misleading in implying that the traffic reduction was directly caused by the raid - it was more likely caused by the media coverage of the raid.

Basically, Joe Sixpacks all over the country read about the raids in their morning papers, paniced and turned off all their P2P apps. This includes the managers of the other DC++ hubs.

Traffic still hasn't returned to "normal".

Re:It's a shame...

[Juggler]

Icelanders deliberately don't use such networks, because most local ISPs charge seperately for international downloads (we have somewhat limited bandwidth to the rest of the world due to a lack of competition and resources).

Downloads which are local to Iceland are "free" (included in the lease of the ADSL line), but international downloads are rather expensive.

This is exactly why DC++, with it's centralized hub-based architecture was so popular in Iceland. Anybody who understood both technology and copyright law knew better than to connect to them though, for exactly the same reasons.

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iceland isn't a member of the EU.

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[stebbivignir]

"The fishing is not as good as it used to be"
Iceland is not a member of the EU and doesn't have to folow it's utterly stupid fishing policy (wich is the biggest reason why Iceland is not a member) so the fishing is as good as it has been for years and it will be in the future.

"trans-Atlantic airplanes don't need refueling stops anymore."
The Icelandic Civil Avation Control Area has grait traffic. Also, Icelandair uses the Keflavik Int Airport (KEF) as a hub for their trans-atlantic flights (http://www.icelandair.is/routemap/index.html).
T he ammount of passangers traveling trough KEF rose up to 17% of what is was las year.

"They'll get kicked out of the EU?"
How can Iceland be kicked out if they are not even going to be members in the near future?

"Better Iceland become the world's library than Vanuatuu, because that little island could just disappear in a typhoon and take all the servers and storage with it."
Server storage? And where is the bandwith?
FARICE, the newest one of the two fiber-optic cables connecting Iceland to the rest of the world has the maximum bandwith of 720Gb/s and CANTAT-3 has the maximum bandwidth of 2,5Gb/s.
Is that enough for the whole world?

"When five companies control most of the world's media[...]"
There is actually a world outside the USA. Have you noticed it?