Copyright Law

STUDY: Swedish File-Sharing Down 20%

By soulxtc

Percent of of Swedes ages 15-59yo that have cut down or completely stopped.

The Swedish Association of Video Distributors (SVF) commissioned a survey of some 2,700 people asking what their file-sharing habits are now in comparison to before the April 1st passage of the controversial new copyright law that gave copyright holders the power to obtain court orders forcing ISPs to divulge the personal information of suspected file-sharers.

It found that some 20% of Swedes aged 15-59yo have "cut down on or completely stopped file-sharing."

Perhaps more revealing is that a startling 36% of file-sharers aged 15-24yo said the same. This is the group that’s known to usually be the most prolific file-sharing demographic.

Why the decline? Fear of getting busted of course.

'Earlier people thought that maybe the police didn't really pay attention to the information in the same way,' one of the respondents said. "But now there are some who are really motivated to do something, and who have showed that they're doing something. So that makes people little scared and reserved."

Internet traffic is still down almost 50% in Sweden since April 1st, but that figure doesn’t include P2P connections with users outside the country so it’s unclear whether people really are file-sharing less. The study only canvasses 2,700 so like any statistical analysis it’s never a truly accurate picture of the group as a whole.

One things is for sure, and that’s that that file-sharers are afraid of getting busted. With several Swedish ISPs having already announced they’ll stop storing IP addresses that fear may soon evaporate and it’ll be back to business as usual for file-sharers.

The game of whac-a-mole continues.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on May 14, 2009 (boomark / email).