File-Sharing Sharing in Sweden Tamed. For Now.
Swedish file sharers scared by the IPRED
Illegal file sharing in Sweden began its downward race about four months ago due to two main events that received a lot of media coverage: the conviction of the founders of the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world – The Pirate Bay and the introduction of a new anti-file sharing law meant to help prosecute alleged illegal file-traders. The percentage of illegal file-sharing dropped then surprisingly low by 30% as ISPs were given the power and/or obligation (depends on how you see it) to hand over the data of those suspected of infringing copyright law to copyright owners.
Since then services promising anonymity online saw a real boost and P2POn reported about the matter but according to the local Dagens Nyheter, Swedish file sharing never really “recovered”, on the contrary, it plunged even further to 40%.
Naturally, this state of affairs can only be to the liking of record labels especially that the IFPI also published some figures according to which record sales in Sweden increased by 14% in the first six months of this year and Internet sales went as high as 57%.
Dagens Nyheter quoted IFPI spokeswoman Lisa Cronstedt with a statement full of confidence and persuasion (given that a wave of other public trackers, or even a federated tracker network, probably more powerful than Pirate Bay, originated in Sweden, are preparing to take the Internet by storm, things could easily change): "The law clearly signals that it's not okay to download illegally that has resulted in several good services on the internet and that new players get a chance to compete on the legal market."
