The Importance Of Realizing Your Content Is Probably Available Online For Free

Sweden's Anti-Piracy Law Boost Market For Encryption Technology

from the keep-whac'ing-that-mole dept

Mon, Apr 6th 2009 5:55pm — Mike Masnick

With Sweden's new antipiracy law in effect, it seems that one industry is getting a nice boost: apparently there's a lot of new interest in encrypting your internet traffic, and services that provide encrypted VPN services are getting lots of new business. This, once again, points out that near total pointlessness in playing Whac-A-Mole over file sharing. It just become an endless game where each side continues to elevate itself, and it makes it that much more difficult in the end for the entertainment industry to do what it will inevitably be forced to do anyway: start building business models that embrace file sharing. But the further they push users of such services underground, the more and more difficult they'll find it to embrace these services down the road. Each attempt to knock out these services or their users only comes around to backfire on the industry itself.

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Filed Under: antipiracy, encryption, ipred, sweden

20 Comments

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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 6 Apr 2009 @ 6:05pm

It's always the lawyers
Lawyers, like jackals, don't care about taking down the herd. They just know that the slowest of the herd will get taken down, and that means they will still have work.
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Rob Friedman, 6 Apr 2009 @ 7:36pm

TOR
The Onion Router
:)

Swedes have fast Internet connections which would be perfect for sharing via TOR.
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- Anonymous Coward, 6 Apr 2009 @ 8:27pm
  
  Re: TOR
  tor is way to slow for large downloads
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  - Rob Friedman, 6 Apr 2009 @ 9:41pm
    
    Re: Re: TOR
    It only gets faster the more users share.
    It only gets slower the more users use.
    
    There has to be balance.
    
    Also I'd use closer exit points given the chance to increase speed.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Apr 2009 @ 8:16pm

Re:
So, you're going to come here, where we discuss IP issues on a daily basis, and advertise your illegal server, right? Uh huh. Smooooth.
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Weird Harold, 6 Apr 2009 @ 8:33pm

Encrypted VPN will likely be the next "you can't use this on your home DSL" product. Extremely large volumes of traffic over VPN will make file sharing very obvious, and encryption could be takes as an attempt to hide.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Apr 2009 @ 2:07am
  
  Re:
  Lots of people use VPNs for telecommuting, though. If ISPs start interfering with that, they'll have a lot of legitimately pissed off users.
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Felix Pleșoianu, 6 Apr 2009 @ 9:56pm

WH, you seem to think ISPs don't need customers. First and foremost, if I want to hide what I do on the Internet, that's my business. It's called "privacy of correspondence". Second, here in Europe we have a little something called "healthy competition". If a service provider of any kind fails to give us what we need, we go to the one next door. Third, even if along comes a law that forces them to block encrypted traffic, that will just push people in the know to switch to mesh networks. Not to mention the effect such a law would have on e-commerce.
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Claes, 7 Apr 2009 @ 1:25am

Pirate Party see rise in members; first usage of the law
It's also interesting to note how the membership statistics of the swedish Pirate Party has developed. During the last four months it has doubled - thereby surpassing that of two of the parties in parliament (member count - not votes). Their political youth organisation is now the second biggest in Sweden in terms of member count. For each time there has been a public debate about laws for broad surveilance, The Pirate Bay trial, or laws affecting file sharing there is a bump in the statistics with many new members joining rapidly.

The Pirate Party is increasingly being seen for what it is - not just a party for copyright/patent reform, but also the only party to defend the right to privacy, the right to fair and balanced trials, the right to anonymity online, and so on. With the possible exception of the two smaller parties on the left (which might very well give up their stance on these issues for something else in return) both the opposition and ruling parties practically agree about the current depressing politics.

The Pirate Party draw people both from the group of young people for which file sharing is an integral part of their lives and the group of liberal (in the true sense of the word) minded people both to the left and right who have a hard time accepting that their government forces ISP:s to deliver a copy of all internet traffic passing Swedish borders to an authority for data mining and analysis of traffic patterns (and also that the police gains access to this technology and infrastructure), and that they plan to use people's own cellphones to monitor and log their movements and whereabouts (like we were electronically tagged criminals), and to monitor who mails or calls whom.

Btw. the first usage of this anti-piracy was by the Swedish Anti-piracy Agency against a private ftp server hosting lots of audio books. However, various people claim to have information that shows that the ftp server was password protected. That could mean both that the "making copyrighted works available to the public" allegations are wrong and that the Anti-piracy Agency committed data breach which is criminal (even true in case they had gained access to the password if they weren't supposed to have it). Add to that that the primary "evidence" is provided in the form of screenshots. It will be interesting to see how the court handles this when they decide whether contact info to the person having this IP address should be revealed or not.
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- Weird Harold, 7 Apr 2009 @ 4:36am
  
  Re: Pirate Party see rise in members; first usage of the law
  perhaps if these young individuals decides to stop "infringing" on copyright works, perhaps they wouldn't have anything to worry about. THe government action is a response to an overwhelming problem, not a random act.
  
  cause and effect.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Apr 2009 @ 5:39am
    
    Re: Re: Pirate Party see rise in members; first usage of the law
    Actually, the government action is a response to the bribery known as lobbying, but keep telling yourself that politicians are virtuous and just want to help the poor starving artists in their mansions with 9 cars. Or, better yet, the record execs in their multiple mansions with 30 cars.
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  - Killer_Tofu (profile), 7 Apr 2009 @ 5:41am
    
    Re: Re: Pirate Party see rise in members; first usage of the law
    WH, when most people do it, its the law that is the problem, not the public.
    The internet and new technology is here.
    Adapt or die bitches.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Apr 2009 @ 8:30am
    
    Re: Re: Pirate Party see rise in members; first usage of the law
    LMAO, WH pwn'd as usual. What a tool.
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Claes, 7 Apr 2009 @ 5:49am

"perhaps if these young individuals decides to stop 'infringing' on copyright works, perhaps they wouldn't have anything to worry about."

And if they have open Wi-Fi or if they run a TOR node? And what about parents who cannot control what their kids do all the time - should they go around all day and worry?

And what if you run a popular blog anonymously - how do you protect your privacy when anyone could exploit this law to get your identity.

What about those who are falsely accused but do not have the possibility to defend themselves? Why aren't people entitled to be treated as not guilty until otherwise proven?

Is it reasonable that a minor offense like file sharing can lead to threats to pay hundreds of thousands SEK within two weeks, search of your home, confiscation of your computer? Is it reasonable that those who are found guilty are named and shamed?

Wouldn't it be better for the music and film industry if all the VPN fees were spent on culture and artists instead? Live concerts for example.
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- The infamous Joe, 7 Apr 2009 @ 6:14am
  
  Re:
  The harder they squeeze, the more that slips through their fingers.
  
  We can see this, but they can't. It's fine by me, I don't need them.
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Claes, 7 Apr 2009 @ 5:55am

Experiences from Denmark
I forgot to mention:

In Denmark which has a similar law only four people have been convicted and they all confessed file sharing. If you have an unprotected WLAN (a large proportion of Swedes do) you go free since it's impossible to prove who has done what. The money the anti-piracy agencies in Denmark collect do not go back to the file shared artists.

So why pass laws which have no effect on file sharing and do not benefit the artists while at the same time eroding basic democratic rights.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Apr 2009 @ 8:34am
  
  Re: Experiences from Denmark
  Because it's all about the illusion of control. It makes them feel like they have it. Unfortunately for them, it's all an illusion that never existed in the first place.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Apr 2009 @ 10:45am

The peoples actions are a response to a changing marketplace, not a random act.

cause and effect.
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Raybone, 8 Apr 2009 @ 7:05am

Nothing random about this
The plans to use trumped -up issues to monitor the population has been around and published in memoirs of elites for decades. This is not "cause and effect"
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Tommy, 2 Mar 2010 @ 2:04pm

It used to be that encryption software was used solely to encrypt sensitive files. With all the new applications for it, it does seem natural that new companies would emerge and begin to profit from these needs.
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