Sweden Sees Web Traffic Drop in Wake of Anti-Piracy Law

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 2, 2009 - 11:37am.

Los Angeles - A day after the country enacted a new anti-piracy law, Internet traffic fell as much as 30% in Sweden, home to the file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, according to published reports. The IPRED law will enable copyright holders to ask courts to compel ISPs to identify suspected illicit file-swappers. Netnod, a firm that monitors Internet traffic in Sweden, reported the 30% drop in overall Web traffic in the country.

"The majority of all Internet traffic is file-sharing. Because of that, there's no other explanation for the decrease in traffic than the IPRED law," Henrik Ponten, from Swedish anti-piracy organization Antipiratbyran, told TorrentFreak.

However, TorrentFreak noted that, in the past 24 hours, over 384,000 Swedes -- close to 5% of the total population -- were connected to The Pirate Bay, which does not represent a significant decline.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/f3mlm (Guardian.co.uk)

http://snipurl.com/f3mjx (TorrentFreak)

Published in DMW Daily, April 2, 2009

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Comments

Henrik Ponten is a genius!

Submitted by the klapp (not verified) on April 2, 2009 - 9:57pm.

100% of internet traffic is file sharing. When someone goes to any web site, they are not seeing some mystical portal into the site owners mind, they are seeing a file, laid out in a format that is readable by web browsers. Absolutely everything on every computer in the world is some kind of file. When someone sends an email they are actually sending an itsy bitsy little data packet. Data packets are files. Sending files is sharing files. I wonder if ANYONE who is responsible for making laws about the internet has a clue about what the internet is or how it works. I suspect that if they did, the pirate bay and sites like it would either not exist at all, or they would be perfectly safe from accusations of wrongdoing.

It may not have dropped.

Submitted by Karl Rosenqvist (not verified) on April 4, 2009 - 1:38pm.

The rumour that Swedish internewt-traffic dropped 30% on april 1 was started by the Anti Pirates and is based on figures from Bahnhof, the main operator, who themselves claim that there is no such conclusion to be drawn from the figures .. ie it's a lie.