Anti-P2P Laws Working?? Not Really.
Ars usually has a couple of really good articles when it comes to copyright, sadly this was not one of their best.
The copyright industries regularly lie and falsely inflates statistics to show that ever strong legislation is needed, so its no surprise that they claim because of laws like IPRED the music industry is gaining consumers in Sweden.
As a citizen of Sweden, residing in Stockholm, let me tell you – this cant be further from the truth.
Is Sweden, the only country to have sent a member of the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, finally giving up its swashbuckling ways?
When Sweden’s IPRED anti-piracy law went into effect earlier this year, Internet traffic across the country plummeted overnight—a sign that P2P users, fearing exposure at last, were abandoning their existing copyright infringement tools.
Not really, more like a sign people started buying VPN connections, like us at eZee.
The music business insists that the measure are working. Music’s major labels say that sales of digital downloads are up 18 percent in the first nine months of 2009 in Sweden.
Ludvig Werner, head of the trade group IFPI Sweden, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that it didn’t matter if people still wanted to pirate; the point was, they were doing less of it. “It’s like speeding, put up cameras and people will start to ease off the gas pedal. Even if it doesn’t change the attitudes, they find legal alternatives because they don’t want to get caught,” said Werner.
Like almost all the drivel that comes form this mans mouth, the above is false because 1) No one in Sweden has been caught, 2) its still much cheaper to buy a VPN connection for 5 euros a month than pay 1 euro per song or XX euros per movie.
As with most statistics in the Copyright Wars, these are hard to evaluate. Digital music sales are up, but has copyright infringement also dropped? IFPI doesn’t know.
In fact, there are reasons to suspect that legal actions like IPRED aren’t the only drivers of Sweden’s uptick in music sales. As we reported yesterday, UK-based music label EMI has reported a worldwide revenue increase of 4.6 percent in its recorded music business through 2009 to date; surely this can’t just be chalked up to tougher antipiracy laws in small countries like Sweden and South Korea?
And Swedish Internet traffic data bounced back soon after the IPRED law came into force and now exceeds the level from the beginning of 2009.
Credit also has to go the music industry for licensing its music far more widely, often to innovative Scandinavian companies like Spotify and Nokia, which is offering the Comes With Music plan on selected phones.
…
On the other hand, it seems to suggest that only minimal legal tools are needed. IPRED made it possible for rightsholders to subpoena ISPs and get subscriber names and information; The Pirate Bay case was brought under copyright law. New Internet disconnection laws, ISP filtering schemes, and similar invasive measures weren’t required.
Which brings up a huge question mark, why does anyplace need 3 Strikes laws when even Sweden “the hub of piracy” seems to change so easily with a bought law like IPRED? Again keep in mind no one (end user) has been successfully taken to court for music or movies under the new IPRED laws.
When you can’t really defend 3 strikes… now how do you defend ACTA?
Read the whole Ars article here
UPDATE:
Two real good comments on the subject
Related posts:
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.