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Sweden Sees Boom In Legal Downloading
Quantos writes with word that in Sweden, in addition to a drop in traffic following the introduction of the IPRED anti-file sharing law, the country also saw a doubling of legal downloads. "The sale of music via the Internet and mobile phones has increased by 100 percent since the Swedish anti-file sharing IPRED law entered into force last week, according to digital content provider InProdicon. '...I don't know if this is only because of IPRED, but it is definitely a sign of a major change,' said managing director Klas Brännström. InProdicon provides half of the downloaded tunes in Sweden via several online and mobile music services." Meanwhile The Pirate Bay's anticipated VPN service has seen over 113,000 requests for beta invitations since late last month; 80% are from Sweden. Traffic numbers may begin to rise again once the service goes live.
While going from 18 to 36 legal sales is technically a doubling... I'm not sure I'd call it a boon.
I know, its harsh and maybe too soon, but essentially that is what is going on here. Finally, a real credible threat of prosecution due to file sharing, and so SOME started buying legally. Sales go up and now this is going to be used by corps as evidence that we need stricter online laws etc etc, file sharing dies, corps rake in more dough for subpar products. Nothing good will come of this... that is of course until smart, talented coders come up with even a more anonymous way of sharing that keeps everyone's nose out of our business. Pirate Bay is trying something in this respect, but not quite there, still just disguising you using the old method. New guys will code around this by summer and things will go back to normal - I will hope.
DNRTFA, but given the source I'd hold my horses until someone with a less obvious bias comments on the effects of the law.
I read the article and his blog and came to the conclusion that somewhere some medical professionals are looking for him.
I don't see anything on his site that has any verifiable information on it. He's put a lot of work into trying to connect the dots, but to me it just sounds like a conspiracy theory nut.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
Swedish anti-file sharing IPRED law entered into force last week, according to digital content provider InProdicon.
I'm sorry, but I'd use any numbers provided by content providers with a grain, or a block, of salt. It would not surprise me in the least if numbers weren't fluffed a little or a lot to provide further leverage for future legislation.
In my experience, from watching the projects of TPB, and trying to use the PRQ services, they are pretty stupid. They lucked out with their main project becoming popular and giving them name recognition, then they boosted that with how they condescendingly treat lawyers.
But from a hardcore geek level, they don't seem to know what they're doing. They're like those anarchist warez kids everyone knows, who know enough to land jobs in datacenters or big companies, but still seem to have some stunted development keeping them at a teenaged level.
I'd never trust their "anonymous" services. They've made obvious security mistakes that I had no trouble finding, making me doubt everything they do. If you're finding faults in their VPN idea, you probably have the skill to find them everywhere else if you took a look at how they do other things.
Stick with people who know what they're doing, like Tor developers. Help find better ways, because it's unlikely the TPB will ever offer anything truly worthwhile.
Indeed. The record industry sanctioned alternatives, including services like Spotify, have been growing in popularity since long before the IPRED law. They continue to grow at roughly the same rate. Only relative to the non-sanctioned downloads have they grown significantly, and seriously, this is probably just a bump in the graph. This is not sensational news.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert