Internet traffic fell by a third in Sweden the day that previously reported IPRED law came into effect, suggesting an awful lot of Swedes online are accessing illegal content.
The previously reported Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive is a bit of European legislation that forces EU countries to make it easier for content owners to get the contact information of suspected file-sharers. Tracking technology used to detect file-sharing only provides content owners with a file-sharer's IP address, but that's enough to tell them with internet service provider the file-sharer uses. Currently the content owner must then go to court to force the ISP to hand over the details of the customer based at that IP address, before they can take legal action against the customer.
The new directive wants to give content owners automatic rights to the contact details of suspected file-sharers without the need for the first stage of legal action (a system which was in place in the US for a short time based on one court's subsequently overturned interpretation of the country's Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Such a system was proposed in Lord Carter's recent 'Digital Britain' report, and became law in Sweden last month.
According to Swedish net measurement company Netnod, internet traffic slumped by 33% the day the new laws came into effect. While the new laws and the traffic slump are presumably linked, the Vice-Chairman of lobbying group Swedish Pirate Party, Christian Engstrom, told the BBC the fall in net usage and, presumably, in illegal file-sharing will be temporary. He said: "Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again. One of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that they can share files anonymously".
And of course, aside from the fact there are ways to hide your file-sharing from detection (The Pirate Bay launched a bit of software to help in that regard to coincide with the new laws in Sweden), the new rules will only have a real effect if record companies or other content owners take legal action against file-sharers. While such action is now easier in places where the IPRED has been actioned, it comes as such legal action falls out of fashion with the content owners, even in countries where record company litigation against individual file-sharers has been prolific. Which is why the UK record industry weren't too positive about the IPRED-inspired proposals in 'Digital Britain'.
If IPRED rules do little to stop online piracy in Sweden, what about some good old fashioned arrests? According to Swedish newspaper The Local, authorities in the country have arrested two men who are accused of uploading large numbers of films onto the internet illegally. A spokesman for Swedish anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran is quoted as saying: "The suspects are at the inner core of organized pirates within the so-called Scene, which systematically steals films and distributes them on the internet".