After Sweden's New Law, a Major Drop In Internet Traffic

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."

Comments

Nothing will change.

[palegray.net]

People route around legislative roadblocks faster than legislators can build new ones. It's kinda what the Internet is all about.

April 1st

[zombietangelo]

IMO April Fools Day is the worst day of the internet (especially for news). I, for one, was hardly on at all.

very strong signal that the legislation works

[iminplaya]

Yep the bear patrol is working like a dream

I'd like to see...

[Tokerat]

...statistics on how much traffic ramped UP in the days and weeks before April 1st. I imagine that some where afraid of the new laws, and they where getting in some last-minute downloads before they had to cut the line and look for new methods to hide their traffic.

Re:I'd like to see...

[lordsilence]

Here, go ahead:

http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums_max/all_month_sum.png

This is the monthly summarized statistics for netnod. Does indeed look like a big drop at April 1st and pretty stable usage before.

Re:I'd like to see...

[rolfc]

Nope
Look at

http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums_max/all_year_sum.png

All the talk about filesharing must have spread the word. They could just as well try to sell air. ;)

Re:I'd like to see...

[nosound]

... speaking about statistics don't forget the membership statistics for the swedish Pirate Party: http://www.piratpartiet.se/partiet/medlemsstatistik-admin Notice any trend the last couple of days?

They pull a knife, we pull a gun

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Don't you see that the constant raising of stakes is simply going to end up fucking over everyone's civil rights in the end?

Cry all you want about the legitimacy of file sharing and how old media needs to adapt to the current technology, it's still legally questionable to "share" copyright works.

So now they make a law to get the names of users. You decide to start using VPN. They decide to outlaw VPN to certain IPs. You decide to use roaming servers. They decide to make filesharing software illegal.

Then everyone loses. Not just you guys who want to get your music and movies for free.

Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun

[tick-tock-atona]

LISTER: You want to talk? Let's talk.
SIMULANT: You have no weapon?
LISTER: No. You have no weapon?
SIMULANT: No.

They walk towards each other.

SIMULANT: Guess what? (Pulls out hunting knife.) I lied.
LISTER: Guess what? (Allows pole to slide from the arm of his jacket.) So did I.
SIMULANT: But I lied twice. (Pulls out a handgun.)
LISTER: Smeg, I didn't think of that.

Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun

[Thanshin]

Then everyone loses. Not just you guys who want to get your music and movies for free.

Funny how I see the exact same pattern but I interpret it as a good thing.

An arms race between government and the people that has the people as the ultimate winner? It's better than good.

The method of slowly pushing the commoners down and the rulers up doesn't stop with a reasonable and gradual struggle to make the situation more balanced. It stops when the commoners revolt, the powerful raise their armies against them and discover that those armies are too heavily outnumbered.

Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun

[Hannes Eriksson]

IANAL, but there is a passage in the swedish constitution regarding right of speech (yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen, SFS 1991:1469, which I re-read for this reason, just a few days ago) that prohibits laws being passed to outlaw equipment used for sending or receiving radio programmes or any form of recording of text, images and/or sound. It leaves a small hole for laws that require a license send things wirelessly, but is quite strict on things passing through wires.

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!

Re:They pull a knife, we pull a gun

[L4t3r4lu5]

I can't imagine living in a culture responsible for Everybody Loves Raymond.

You both have my sympathies; RobotRunAmok for the above, richie2000 for wanting it.

30% drop *in Sweden*

[wilsoniya]

not a 30% drop in all net traffic.

From TFA: Internet use in Sweden dipped by 30 percent on Wednesday...

Ah, bad science and statistics....

[subreality]

sends a very strong signal that the legislation works.

Or it might be an indicator that the legislation has a chilling effect on free speech and fair use.

Re:So your point is?

[jchillerup]

Fair points which I certainly agree to. I rest my case, however: I will not let lobby organizations like the MPAA or RIAA have more power than any other company in the world. If they start acting like the police, some authority should stop them instead of making their lives easier.

Yeah, it works.

[hyfe]

Of course it works. In Norway there has been serious talks (like, not only nerds in basements) about not routing traffic through Sweden anymore. I don't know if anything came out of it, but I'm willing to bet it's affecting long-term plans on where to build pipelines.

The bill doesn't just cover traffic to/from swedish households, it covers all traffic entering and leaving the country.

Traffic down 30%, sales up by...?

[richie2000]

The arguments for implementing and enforcing this law is to "encourage legal alternatives". So, after a 30% drop if file-sharing traffic, we'd expect to see a 30% increase in sales of CDs, DVDs and e-books. Or, there is no correlation between downloads and lost sales, just as a bunch of scientific reports suggest.

Anyone care to wager that this purported increase in sales will not, in fact, happen?

Re:So your point is?

[pimpimpim]

So, we are all like you and all stop filesharing. It's not like the surveillance will stop all of a sudden, enough alternative reasons to extend the surveillance will come up. Current german minister wanting to censor child porn websites, etc.

It's a bit naive to think that these regulations are related to the actual behavior of the population, there just needs to be an excuse that sounds reasonable enough to most of the population to accept it.

Re:So your point is?

[bigge111]

I disagree to some extent. It's in many cases not the "authors" who hate you for downloading the material. In England for example, 140 artists has organized to let their fans download their material peer-to-peer (artists including Radiohead, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox and Robbie Williams). As for Sweden, one of the most popular artists, Håkan Hellström, is used in the record companies arguments to forbid filesharing, when in fact Hellström himself at numerous occasions has said that he rather see people downloading his music for free than not beeing able to listen to him to the extent they want to. So freedom in this case is NOT turning against the artists or authors. (Writer Marcus Birro said in his radio program Karlavagnen that if people read you texts for free, then maybe you can do something else to earn your living, as long as you get the message out there. Like having your own radio show, perhaps?) I think the truth is that the record companies see a future where they are disposable. And if they continue to criminalize their onwn customers instead of adobting to the new techdriven "set of rules" in society, they will be. But it seems as for now they actually think it's more convinient to legislate than finding new business models.

My dilemma is this ...

[MartinSchou]

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!

Re:So your point is?

[martin-boundary]

The GP is wrong. The only thing that can wreck the internet (in your part of the world) is *you*. Specifically, it's people like you who refuse to protect the internet from censorship. The reason is irrelevant.

Have you forgotten about the terrorists? They are just as good a reason for censoring the net than filesharing, or X numbers of other lame excuses. If you want the internet to be free from censorship in Sweden, you have to fight by imposing your will on your politicians.

At the moment, you and the GP have battered wife syndrome, you are saying it's us, if we change then the politicians and other bad people will have no reason to do this to us..

Guess what? Your internet will be censored unless you stand up and say no. That means, not accepting simplistic demonizations of filesharers, and not accepting the travesty of copyright that now exists. Your culture is being taken away from you *today* through stupid international copyright extensions. Death of author + 70 years means you don't get to read a book freely, your children don't get to read freely, your grandchildren don't get to read freely, and on and on. When your kids ask you what you did to make the world a better place, what will you say to them?