Swedish Antipiracy Law Goes Into Effect… Internet Traffic Drops
from the coincidence? dept
A new antipiracy law went into effect in Sweden on Wednesday, allowing copyright holders to demand the IP addresses from ISPs if a court finds that there’s evidence of illegal activity — and, as News.com notes, internet traffic took a major dip in Sweden, though it’s not entirely clear if the two things are connected (though, it notes a similar dip occurred, back when The Pirate Bay was taken offline a few years ago). Not surprisingly, some audio book publishers wasted no time in trying to use the law, filing lawsuits to get information on certain file sharers. Sweden, as many of you know, has had very consumer-friendly copyright laws for quite some time. The departure from this (and the introduction of other new laws that are being pushed) has come from massive international pressure, usually starting with the American entertainment industry. It will be worth watching how the country reacts to increased and more draconian copyright rules.
Filed Under: anti-piracy, copyright, identification, laws, sweden
Comments on “Swedish Antipiracy Law Goes Into Effect… Internet Traffic Drops”
sad day for Web Freedom
this is a sad sad day…
i see the future.
in the future people can snitch on their friends for media rights infringements and get cash rewards. Probably what that civilian military Obama’s been talkin about.
doesn’t matter Internet2 is going to come out and force users to give up their anonymity once and for all. Then there will be an underground internet where true freedom exists but will be attacked by computer hackers working for the Obama civilian brigade.
all of this fuss, just because i want to watch the simpsons without messing with my bunny ears, or submitting to the beast that is cable tv. All because marketing departments at fox want to keep on making a bagillion dollars a second for commercials. The Scribes sure made a fuss when the printing press came out and they weren’t able to horde all the information any more. Newspaper companies are dying now and tv stations will follow in the next 10 years. Its inevitable. You CAN NOT STOP THE MAD CR4zY 1337 C0D3rs AND H4x0rs and dont under estimate them. i think the pirate bay has a BACKUP PLAN if the sh!t goes down in Sweden.
Re: sad day for Web Freedom
Yeah, you see the future.. In fact, I also see the future, and it includes you asking me if i want my windshield washed with that oil change….
You seem to see a retarded future… Go figure…
’bout time we get to work on a nation civilian mesh network. wireless, anonymous, free
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i hate to do this but i got to invoke the Nazi’s. Youth brigades snitching on their parents. its a damn NIGHTMARE.
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sorry panda i understand your post now and i agree.
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Go look up a program called Tor. It’s just about as anonymous as it gets. It still uses your existing internet connection, but why spend millions to create a new infrastructure when we can usurp their’s?
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I thought Tor just worked on web browsers, not all web traffic.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
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who says it will cost a millions? yes anything of scale will eventually reach that mark, however…in many metropolitan areas you would be hard pressed to not be in radio distance of a simple wifi router. With a simple software upgrade to the router or a cheap (less than $80) server these can be networked together.
Tor is a great thing and the same technology can be used areas outside of the mesh coverage to link up to it.
But as restrictions from isp’s become tighter and tighter simply using tor will be fine, but running a tor server/relay as a resident might become difficult to do.
both options have their difficulties as far as coverage bandwidth and latency goes, but a true grassroots network infrastructure would be a beautiful thing to see come into existence.
You can debate whether or not it should be decriminalised but the fact remains that it is illegal to make unauthorised copies of copyright material.
The positive thing that comes out of this is that there is judicial review. Before an ISP is forced to potentially identify someone (which with dynamic IPs isn’t as clear cut as you might think), a court will have to be satisfied that there is evidence. Seems like they have just formalised actions that a copyright holder could have taken anyway. At worst it is now cheaper (but not free) to go down that path.
This is much much better than has been proposed elsewhere, where the industry wants ISPs to actively spy on their customers without judicial oversight or without evidence terminate customer service after three (possibly unfounded) accusations.
Personally I think it sounds like a good compromise.
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you are incorrect.
Depending on the nation, it might be illegal to disseminate copies, but not to simply make them. In the US as you may be presuming, it has never been illegal to make copies.
This whole thing is pointless, Sweden gave in to the copyright cops on this one.
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Matt, it really depends. If you make a bunch of copies and stand on a street corner giving them away, at some point you might get in trouble. If you make copies and sell them, you certainly would be in trouble. If you make copies and give them away on an ad supported website, you probably would be in trouble.
You can make all the copies you want for your own use, but the intention of mass copying isn’t just for backups, now is it?
Sweden didn’t give in to anyone – they just stopped giving criminals a place to hide. If the activity is legal, then who cares? It’s only an issue because underlying the whole thing is a crime.
infinite distribution, done infinitely illegally.
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Yet again WH shows his inability to comprehend simple concepts…
Matt clearly stated that it is not illegal to MAKE copies and your example is DISTRIBUTING those copies.
Yet again the Americans are trying to rule the world!
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America is the only country that could have ruled the world had they wished. The ironic thing about your statement that the US wants to rule the world is that these laws are being imposed by the farthest left factions of the US in terms of political affiliation.
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You’re right, we should have let Hitler destroy your ass.
I hate that News sites get into the april fools day thing, I just wish they would go back and clearly mark everything as a joke after the day is done, there are too many stories that really could be true but I’ll mark it off as a joke because of the day it was printed
yeah at first look i thought it was gonna be a joke but……
sydney
so the fucking shitting riaa fucktards have got a fucking cunt of a law passed and now we are fucking screwed and not gonna have any fucking freedom now that the cunts are taking control of our fucking shitting cunty inter fucking net. fuck them and the fucking horse they fucking rode in on the fucktard cunts. fuck them all the cunts. fuck off you fucking retarded fucking cunts. fuck you cunts. all of you fucking cunty shitty fucking cunts. fuck off you cunts… and also cunt off. you cunts.
Re: sydney
wow – just wow
that was rantastic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an incoherent argument so brilliantly expressed
You guys live in Sweden???
no but i have family there. besides that, sweden has been the safe haven for The pirate bay’s servers, because im pretty sure their only computer law is no kiddy porn
You know what? The Swedes are amazing at figuring out what people really want. I don’t know understand why they keep getting a bad wrap.
So let’s go. All of us. Let’s join them! However, we have to make a pact: Our efforts must involve the Swedish Bikini Teams we encounter, and solving their problems. This should be easy as most problems not involving copyright, but properly sizing bras we encounter. After all, 70% of women don’t wear correctly sized brassieres. And we can share proper sizing and removal procedures for the young’ins.
Let’s make Techdirt an adult site.
Amazing how people aren’t so brave when they can’t hide. Talk about guilty consciences.
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Talk about guilty consciences.
Or maybe they’re simply trying to avoid being unethically (illegally?) flagged as a file sharer.
You never did answer me if you pay royalties for images used on your website.
Be lucky you don’t live in Sweden, you hypocrite.
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Miles, I have answered you a bunch of times on that issue.
Don’t you have to get to school already? You don’t want to be late for class.
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No, you haven’t. In fact, you’ve skirted many of the questions relating, if indirectly.
Please point me to the answer regarding your web hosted images.
As for the school comment, done with that. Which is why my replies to you are received with returns of insults, failure to take responsibility, and ignorance.
If you’re trying to call me a child, do so. But we both know who the real child is here.
At least I’ve been educated. What’s your excuse?
See you at the flagpole at 3pm. Sharp.
Apr 1st
While the article itself was printed on April 1st, the article about the law in general that is linked to from the Apr 1st article, was written on March 31st, indicating that this is actually real news.
It is indeed sad to know that yet another country has decided to bend over and take it in the rear from the copyright holders.
Money talks and yet more polluticians have been bought out.
Huge percentage of people there oppose the laws and yet the government passes it anyways.
When will the governments around the world actually start representing the people instead of the rich copyright mongers?
The real question ...
… and the one that matters:
Did sales of the copyrighted material show a major increase?
I suspect not. Amateurs. They passed the wrong law. Forcing people to purchase copyrighted materials – that’s where the money is.
Niggers all of you
Easy way riot and kill your elected officals.
Kill all the god damn niggers and their forms of law.
Piece of shit society we live in needs to end as soon as possible
Re: Niggers all of you
Pretty sure whitey wrote the bulk of the laws.
Some reflections by a Swede:
When Finland introduced the same kind of law they saw a temporary drop of internet traffic of one third. After three months the internet traffic was back to normal and rising again. It’s quite likely we’ll see this in Sweden too.
Allen said: “The positive thing that comes out of this is that there is judicial review. Before an ISP is forced to potentially identify someone (which with dynamic IPs isn’t as clear cut as you might think), a court will have to be satisfied that there is evidence. Seems like they have just formalised actions that a copyright holder could have taken anyway. At worst it is now cheaper (but not free) to go down that path.“
In practice the court will only lend its credability to the system without actually contributing anything. The rights owners will present a couple of screendumps saying that file sharing of this copyrighted work was done from this IP address at this time. The court has no way of knowing whether this is true or not and a screendump is easily falsified. So either it can choose to only trust some rights holders giving us unequality of the law or trust almost everyone or nobody. The court doesn’t need proof that a certain person did anything, just that a file was shared from a certain IP address.
When the right holders have gotten hold of the identify of the person who pays the internet connection bill they will send a letter saying things like: “pay up or we’ll take you to court where you’d have to pay eight times as much” (an offer you cannot refuse).
Albert Nonymous brought up the most important thing. Can we now expect a corresponding increase in sales? (surely cutting down people’s culture consumption can’t be the goal).
fuck anti-piracy
that is a fucking retarded law. sweden is where thepiratebay is. the fucking RIAA, MPAA and all other ritch boy fucks that sue 7 year olds for anti-piracy have a bigger plan than stoping piracy. the RIAA/MPAA wants to take the world over. i’m going to be pissed if thepiratebay goes away. FUCK anti-piracy i love pro-piracy.