It is not often that one gets to see justice, of a sort anyway, happen so quickly. Just Thursday, The Economist magazine, one of the most influential and widely read business news publications in the world, published an article and corresponding editorial crowing about how the problem of piracy in the music industry was coming to an end. In the view of the Economist, “the battle against online music piracy is turning,” and that the music industry had finally learned “how to sink the pirates.” In their view, a two pronged approach of offering innovative new online services like iTunes and Spotify to win over former music down-loaders to legitimacy, combined with a new and more effective enforcement policy of “graduated response,” that includes an ISP enforced ban from the Internet, had scared file-sharers far more than individual lawsuits ever had. Copyright lobbyists are trying to get such a punishment regime enacted around the world, particularly in Europe, and have had some success in Scandinavia and South Korea. Yet, disturbingly, the evidence for the Economist’s claim derives almost entirely from a single study done in Sweden after a change in the laws on infringement there in June. The GFK survey purported to show “that 60% of Swedish file-sharers had cut back or stopped altogether.”
Needless to say, for anybody reasonably knowledgeable about the downloading community, the notion that a sea change away from piracy had occurred earlier this year would seem highly implausible. However, maybe Sweden was an isolated example, and the (likely) spread of such “graduated response” laws would ultimately lead to the first real downturn in file-trading since the heydays of Napster. Sadly for the Economist and the entertainment industries, new evidence also came out on Friday that demonstrates just how misguided and premature any claims of victory over piracy really are. Enigmax at Torrentfreak cites a new report from Swedish Internet backbone Netnod, that shows there was indeed a very large dip in Internet usage overall in Sweden in April, as much as 30%. Whether or not that decrease can be ascribed entirely to the change in law regarding downloading cannot be proven, but in any case, the latest figures show that the drop in Internet usage was wholly short-lived. By the end of October, Swedish Internet traffic was completely back to pre-April levels, and in fact, may well be even higher. Has the initial scare over the harsher laws receded to the point that they are now being ignored? On the other hand, seasonal effects have been noticed in file-sharing before, with decreases in summer months and increases in the fall corresponding with the return of young people to schools and universities, and that could be in play here as well. In any case, if recording industry executives were about to start celebrating their long wished-for end to mass copyright infringement, they should put the champagne back on ice for the time being.
Related
- Swedish file sharers fined
- Politicians smell votes in Sweden’s file-sharing debate
- Reports – MPAA Sued for Defamation Over Piracy Lawsuit
- Sweden Clamps Down on Copyrighted Downloads
- New Law empowers Anti-piracy lobby in Sweden
As Torrentfreak noted, an increasingly relevant subfactor in understanding these sorts of statistics is the rising embrace of network privacy services that shield their customers from the prying eyes of their ISP, the cartel mercenaries, and even backbone-level efforts to categorize what is – and is not – peer to peer traffic.
Within our own secure network, for example, traffic appears to outside observers as HTTPS/port 443 data, irrespective of what the protocol or port of the underlying session actually is. Anyone doing analysis at the backbone level will incorrectly categorize this traffic as "web traffic" when it isn't necessarily that.
How much traffic does our secure network carry, worldwide? Is it enough to make a substantive impact on some of these statistics? Well, since no reporter or journalist has ever bothered to ask us that question, we've never answered it. It's somewhat indicative of the primitive nature of most "reporting" on these questions that such analysis simply isn't done.
Despite that, three's no question that, over time, security services online will continue to increase their customer base and total traffic carried. It's an inevitable consequence of the failure of the civil justice and political systems of individual countries to stand up to the paid lobbyists of the media cartels. With "civil society's" institutions largely bought and paid for by a tiny handful of powerful multi-national media conglomerates, it's up to those of us in the private sector to provide the kinds of protection and assurance of privacy that customers demand.
Alas, this is another story that's yet to be told by the press. No matter; our industry will continue to grow exponentially based on our own success in meeting these needs and, perhaps, someday the "media" will eventually decide that it's a subject worthy of acknowledgment.
D. Spink | http://www.torrentfreedom.net
As Torrentfreak noted, an increasingly relevant subfactor in understanding these sorts of statistics is the rising embrace of network privacy services that shield their customers from the prying eyes of their ISP, the cartel mercenaries, and even backbone-level efforts to categorize what is – and is not – peer to peer traffic.
Within our own secure network, for example, traffic appears to outside observers as HTTPS/port 443 data, irrespective of what the protocol or port of the underlying session actually is. Anyone doing analysis at the backbone level will incorrectly categorize this traffic as “web traffic” when it isn’t necessarily that.
How much traffic does our secure network carry, worldwide? Is it enough to make a substantive impact on some of these statistics? Well, since no reporter or journalist has ever bothered to ask us that question, we’ve never answered it. It’s somewhat indicative of the primitive nature of most “reporting” on these questions that such analysis simply isn’t done.
Despite that, three’s no question that, over time, security services online will continue to increase their customer base and total traffic carried. It’s an inevitable consequence of the failure of the civil justice and political systems of individual countries to stand up to the paid lobbyists of the media cartels. With “civil society’s” institutions largely bought and paid for by a tiny handful of powerful multi-national media conglomerates, it’s up to those of us in the private sector to provide the kinds of protection and assurance of privacy that customers demand.
Alas, this is another story that’s yet to be told by the press. No matter; our industry will continue to grow exponentially based on our own success in meeting these needs and, perhaps, someday the “media” will eventually decide that it’s a subject worthy of acknowledgment.
D. Spink | http://www.torrentfreedom.net
You are a leech.
Would you care to explain how offering a service to people is being a leech. The government is not being democratic, a company has identified a fundamental weakness to legislation and is giving society what it demands. The members at zeropaid have been telling you for months how useless attempts to censor filesharing is, yet you continue to believe the copyright cartel can legislate a victory.
“You are a leech.”
No, you are.
Technically, my seed/leech ratios at the trackers where I'm active is more than 10:1 so I'm not quite sure "leech" is the word you were seeking.
If you're going for the parasite angle – kind of odd, in terms of describing a commercial business that isn't really dependent on any other "host" entity – then maybe "tapeworm" would be better? Taperworms are sort of cool – in their own parasite way, of course. Or vampire bat? Not really a parasite, but the whole vampire-thing at least fits my daily schedule. There's a whole world of wonderful parasites out there, "leech" is just so lacking in creativity and originality, eh?
Perhaps you could expand on your incisive yet oh-so-tantalizingly-Lilliputian commentary?
D. Spink | http://www.torrentfreedom.net
Just in the context of p2p networks, You make money off of something which is supposed to be free. You are making money off of the generosirty and goodwill of others and spread fear and doubt. Leech.
In the larger scheme of things, as a businessman, you're dependent on content in which the creators get no control or share. Leech. You bring nothing creative to the table and only take. Leech. You leech off of others. Yes, parasite is a good word, but Leech is more accurate, because you are sucking the blood out of the system.
“You make money off of something which is supposed to be free.”
There is nothing wrong with that in general. A free offering does not mean complete lack of revenue streams.
“You are making money off of the generosirty and goodwill of others and spread fear and doubt.”
Making money off of those who use the service? If it’s a paid service, obviously there is going to be revenue, so generosity and goodwill are completely irrelevant to the matter. If you’re regarding advertisements, generosity and goodwill are still irrelevant.
Spreading fear and doubt? Not even close. In fact, that applies to you.
“… you’re dependent on content in which the creators get no control or share.”
Do you know what a torrent is? Do you know what the role of a privacy service is? And no, it does not involve getting content of random creators.
“You bring nothing creative to the table and only take.”
You seem to be mistaking an online network with the entertainment industry.
“… because you are sucking the blood out of the system.”
Out of which system? If it’s your system, then sucking would be superfluous as you are already constantly bleeding. But nobody wants your system’s blood as it’s dumb-ass disgusting.
P2P Death? Maybe if the RIAA\MPAA write the press releases..
Well, what would you expect – most people would take some time to find a VPN they really like and get the bugs out of.
Apologies for the duplicate post above – this commenting system's ability to use one's Twitter login credentials is really useful, but I somehow managed to screw it up and duplicate post.
Fausty
P2p doesn’t include hosting zipped albums on rapidshare right? Because that’s how most prefer to get their free downloaded music nowadays.
So yeah, p2p is totally declining, as most people leech without sharing. But piracy down? Ha!