Internet traffic in Sweden plummeted by nearly 50 percent as new anti-piracy laws came into effect on April 1. Three days on, traffic levels have yet to pick up again.
The new law makes it possible for rights holders, by way of a court order, to unmask Internet users based on their IP address, effectively ending anonymity for filesharers in Sweden.
At the same time as the law came into effect, traffic through some of Sweden's main internet exchange points plummeted dramatically. Statistics from Netnod, a company which manages six of Sweden's main Internet exchange points, show a drop of nearly 50 percent through some nodes from one day to the next. Peak values of nearly 200Gbps (bits per second) on Tuesday fell to around 110Gbps on Wednesday, the first day the law was in effect.
Three days later and throughput has still not increased significantly. Just before noon on April 3, around 60Gbps passed through the six Netnod exchanges. That is a drop from more than 100Gbps on Tuesday, the day before the new law came into effect.
Netnod only measures traffic through exchange points in Luleå, Sundsvall, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Many of the larger networks peer directly with each other and their throughput is not included in the statistics.
Netnod declined to comment specifically on the figures, but said it has no way of determining exactly what caused the drop in traffic.
One Swedish operator, Bahnhof, said the statistics from Netnod correlated with their own measurements. From throughput of around 23Gbps on Tuesday, traffic in Bahnhof's network fell to around 15Gbps on Wednesday.
Sweden has one of the most developed Internet infrastructures in the world and the largest percentage of fiber-optic broadband connections per capita anywhere, according to statistics from European telecommunications trade group ECTA. Traffic had increased sharply during the six months preceding this week's sudden drop.
"Swedish Internet traffic is now about the same as in some countries in southern Europe," Bahnhof Managing Director Jon Karlung told Computer Sweden. "With these levels, we wouldn't need a better infrastructure than what they have in Italy, for example."
Three of the largest Swedish ISPs, Teliasonera, Tele2 and Telenor/Bredbandsbolaget, have all declined to comment on the matter.
MacVideo Focus Group
We are trying to improve the focus of our sister title MacVideo and to understand our readership a little better. We would like to speak to some video professionals, especially the techies among you, to get your views of the industry. We will pay £50 for participation in our focus group. Click here to volunteer to participate.
Contact Us
Digg
It's easy and free to get the latest news headlines, reviews and opinions straight to your email inbox. Sign up NOW to make sure you receive the latest Mac news, reviews and tutorials on your favourite topics.
Comments received
Thomas said on Fri, 03 Apr 2009
Next you know, the government will want to find out the names of those who publicly malign the government. Camel's nose under the tent, and all that. Swedes should have fought harder to retain their rights and privacy.
My great-grandfather left Sweden for the US in 1888. Today, I still honor his wisdom.
alastair said on Fri, 03 Apr 2009
What this tells you is that the ISPs know full well that much of their traffic is from copyright infringement, but they don't want to admit it.
The situation, I'm sure, is very similar in other countries, though ISPs the world over are unlikely to want to admit that they're profiting from infringement.
Kevin said on Fri, 03 Apr 2009
So, if you're breaking the law, why should you get away with it. If they pass the same law everywhere else, there wouldn't be such a massive strain on the existing infrastructure.
Charlie said on Fri, 03 Apr 2009
Good for Sweden, the rest of the world should follow suit. If you're not downloading illegal content you have nothing to be afraid of.
Haku said on Fri, 03 Apr 2009
I don't exactly like or support these kind of intrusive legal approaches, but what did all the freeloaders think would happen?
I mean, did we all think the content creators would just sit back and say 'ah well, maybe they wouldn't have paid for any of it anyway, and after all a lot of what we make isn't really very good, even if we do spend lots of time effort and money creating it - let's just forget about the people who are ripping us off and sack a few people to keep profits up instead'.
That said, I hope the use of these laws is kept to a minimum and suspected cases are properly investigated rather than the horrid presumption of IP address=guilty criminal, which as we've seen countless times in the US, often doesn't actually turn out to be the case.
Matt said on Mon, 06 Apr 2009
Who deems what content is illegal?
What happens when the government deems web sites critical of them illegal? Given a chance, big business & government will anything required to keeps it's profits coming in. Yes, that does extend to murder and incarceration.
Welcome to the human race.
Mark said on Mon, 06 Apr 2009
Matt - the people that deem what content is illegal are the people that own the rights to that content - not you. I think every country should implement this as fast as possible, before the film and music businesses are completely decimated. Personally, I dont want the music that I listen to shaped by CocaCola and I dont want endless product placement in movies either.
boing said on Mon, 06 Apr 2009
Thomas, your great-grandfather certainly was prescient moving to the USA. He must have seen that it was better for his descendants to live in a country that respected the IP rights of content providers - the USA has been enabling content owners to find "file sharers", in the same way that Sweden does now, for years and years. Wow, what a smart bloke he was, almost a century before the internet was invented he could see which way the wind was blowing!
Disclaimer
Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Macworld. Macworld accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content.
Click here to read the house rules.
Click here for the latest reader comments