Levels of illegal P2P return to levels seen prior to controversial anti-piracy law, perhaps reaching record levels.
Just days after the the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) filed suit in a Stockholm district court using the country’s controversial IPRED law to force an ISP to identify a customer it accuses of illegal file-sharing, Netnod, an independent Swedish company responsible for ISP coordination in that country, has reported that illegal “file-sharing is healthier than ever” and may, in fact, have reached record levels.
It was back in April that Sweden passed IPRED, a controversial new law that allows copyright holders to seek a court order requiring ISPs to divulge the names of accused file-sharers.
Netnod soon reported that Internet traffic dramatically plummeted afterwards, dropping by almost half, from 200Gbs to 110Gbs on the day the new law came into effect.
InProdicon, a Swedish digital content provider that provides over half of the music tracks downloaded through several online and mobile services, then claimed that legal digital music purchases increased by more than 100%.
So many copyright holders pointed to these statistics as proof that IPRED was working despite the objection of critics who pointed out the fallacy of the numbers, that Netnod only measured P2P traffic between people WITHIN Sweden, and not file-sharing connections with people outside the country.
Others noted that file-sharing would would inevitably return to pre-IPRED levels after they figure out ways to circumvent copyright holder detection methods, pointing to The Pirate Bay’s IPREDATOR VPN service as a example.
Now Netnod is confirming what critics foretold, reporting that P2P traffic is up, perhaps reaching record levels.
“All together, even with a conservative estimate of increased traffic together with the increased number of sites and more options, you can say that file sharing is healthier than ever,” researcher Kristoffer Schollin told The Local.
The game of whac-a-mole continues.
