Iceland and USA Feel the Copyright Industry's Wrath

spellraiser writes "Iceland's Internet traffic saw a substantial decrease this week as police raided the homes of 12 individuals suspected of sharing massive amounts of copyrighted material over a private, local DC++ hub that was infiltrated by SMAIS, the Association of film right holders in Iceland. The people who were raided were questioned by the police, and had computer equipment confiscated. It is unclear at this point what their fate is, but there is a distinct possibility might face charges." And in the U.S., an anonymous reader writes "The Recording Industry Association of America strikes again with yet another round of lawsuits. Jon Newston over at P2Pnet.net doesn't hold back anything in his great commentary on it today. Best quote 'It's almost as if having lost its bitterly fought case against the p2p application owners and failed in its many obvious (and expensive) attempts to disrupt the p2p networks, the music industry is now determined to vent its wrath on helpless men, women and children who can't hope to stand up to it with its tremendous political and financial power.'"

DC++?

[Emugamer]

I had to look that one up

FYI

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/faq/faq.php?disp lay=faq&faqnr=1&catnr=1&prog=1&lang=en&onlynewfaq= 1 [sourceforge.net]

And the UK are finally gearing up for lawsuits too

[buro9]

As this register article (from today) shows:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/uk_to_sue_ music_pirates/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:you mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we pay more than $8 to see a movie in the theater. In Iceland we pay around $12 FYI.

And a little icelandic for ya'all
hæbssí..! which roughly translates to "hellooo..!"

Domestic bandwidth usage stats

[psykopotat]

This is pretty funny, as stated in the news report domestic bandwidth for the entire country dropped about 40%. This can be seen as clear as day from the usage stats for RIX (Reykjavik Internet Exchange) a centralized point for traffic between Icelandic ISPs. Check out the second and third from top here [isnic.is]

Re:DC++?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before anyone asks, yes there is a DC client for Linux, dcgui-qt [berlios.de]. Expect to be banned or refused by about 60% of DC hubs because you are not using the Windows-only DC++ client.

Re:And Internet traffic...

[lachlan76]

Yes, but the traffic was going over the biggest ISP in Iceland, which makes it take up more bandwidth. ;)

Re:Industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they mean...

"Those which enforce, administer and benefit from copyright and intellectual (sp?) property"

I.e. IP Lawyers, Patent offices, and software, music and movie industries etc.

It's same with the "compensation industry"

60% traffic drop

[Kafteinn]

DC++ hubs were started in Iceland because we usually have to pay extra for foreign downloads so people started sharing stuff between them for free.
When they raided the 12 guys (and seized 11 terabytes of data) all the dc servers were shut down and immediatly MRTG graphs clearly showed about a 50-60% traffic between domestic connections.
We have long heen proud to say that we have very high percentage of net users here, about 95% (number pulled out of ass) of the country has the internet and DC isn't the only way Icelanders share copyrighted stuff.
In fact most people just get cd's from friends who download from DC or someother p2p sharing app.

So in our case most of the population is rampantly breaking copyright laws all the time and suddenly because of complaints from SMAIS 12 random guys are arrested and two of them held for 24 hours.
2 years in prison is the maximum punishment for a crime like this while murder is maximum 16 years and if anyone is convicted for a copyright violation in Iceland we are going to have to put the entire nation behind bars.

I'm personally disgusted that our government is even thinking about putting profits of american companies above the well being of the people it is supposed to serve.

Re:infiltrating networks

[ManofWar]

The police promised about 50 to 70GB of new material to get on the hub, got the ip address of the biggest sharer there and started monitering his traffic, this has been going on since february when SMAIS opend the case on the operators of the hub. With in housr all traffic with all public and most private hubs in iceland stopped and people were wiping or moving their harddisks, total traffic was reduced 40% and has been for the last few days here are some graphs for internet traffic in iceland, (in icelandic, mid means wednesday) http://www-m.isnic.is/status/rix/alag/alag.html Almost all dc hubs in iceland are icelanders only, that is beacuse 1GB of data from abroad cost those that download it $32 dollars. Here is the page to the 4 largest public hubs in iceland (in icelandic) http://www.deilir.is/

Re:60% traffic drop

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. of the 5 largest of all the RIAA members, only Warner is American. The rest are French, UK and Japan, etc.

Re:And Internet traffic...

[Juggler]

Yes, the traffic really did drop that much (I live in Iceland). It was very noticable on publicly accessible usage graphs for the largest peering point in Iceland. This graph [isnic.is] from the Reykjavík Internet Exchange [www.rix.is] is very telling.

However, the Register article was slightly misleading in implying that the traffic reduction was directly caused by the raid - it was more likely caused by the media coverage of the raid.

Basically, Joe Sixpacks all over the country read about the raids in their morning papers, paniced and turned off all their P2P apps. This includes the managers of the other DC++ hubs.

Traffic still hasn't returned to "normal".

Re:It's a shame...

[Juggler]

Icelanders deliberately don't use such networks, because most local ISPs charge seperately for international downloads (we have somewhat limited bandwidth to the rest of the world due to a lack of competition and resources).

Downloads which are local to Iceland are "free" (included in the lease of the ADSL line), but international downloads are rather expensive.

This is exactly why DC++, with it's centralized hub-based architecture was so popular in Iceland. Anybody who understood both technology and copyright law knew better than to connect to them though, for exactly the same reasons.

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iceland isn't a member of the EU.

Re:net traffic in Iceland fell 40 per cent

[gl4ss]

ehh..

what do you suppose the of the people on p2p did after they heard 12 people had been raided? stay online? hang around online with files on share?

(however.. this will in the long run once again achieve nothing.. they will just move into using some system where it's harder to make any proof who shared what, some waste/freenet like system probaly maybe with saturation enabled)

Re:Going in Circles

[ravenspear]

You are confusing the two parts of this story. The people distributing 2.5 TB and using 40% of the traffic were in Iceland. The RIAA had nothing to do with that. They were shut down by SMAIS, not the RIAA. The article about the RIAA states that they filed an additional 762 lawsuits in the US, which, if their previous pattern holds, could very well be "moms and pops who downloaded a song to try it out". My comment was referencing the overall situation of the lawsuits the RIAA has filed, not the situation in Iceland.

Re:net traffic in Iceland fell 40 per cent

[hthb]

"So 12 file-sharers were accounting for 40% of all internet traffic for an entire nation." That's not true. In wake of the news of the arrest, almost everyone on DC stopped downloading / uploading out of fear for being arrested next. The Icelandic police sais this is just the beginning and this will be the largest legal case of it's type in the world.

Re:60% traffic drop-Pirate's MORAL Outrage.

[Kafteinn]

but it's not small independant developers that are hurting, atleast in this case, the entire 11 terabytes were mostly movies, music and tv material not being broadcasted in Iceland!! as for software piracy, most people I know learned how to use Photoshop or 3d studio or whatever using pirated copies, but when something commercial is being made it's almost never made with pirated copies. People claiming that this is not a victimless crime have not said anything to make me think otherwise, but whatever views I have now I am always willing to change if new information is shared with me. So please SHARE :)

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[smari]

Recent? The island I live on "exploded" in 1973... since then we've had Hekla erupt thrice (1991, 1995 and 2001, if I recall correctly), and it's far away from any noteworthy towns. People are expecting Katla to errupt any day now, but that's the height of it. Seriously.. Iceland may be more volcanicly active than your back yard, but it's still a pretty safe place to live.

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[stebbivignir]

"The fishing is not as good as it used to be"
Iceland is not a member of the EU and doesn't have to folow it's utterly stupid fishing policy (wich is the biggest reason why Iceland is not a member) so the fishing is as good as it has been for years and it will be in the future.

"trans-Atlantic airplanes don't need refueling stops anymore."
The Icelandic Civil Avation Control Area has grait traffic. Also, Icelandair uses the Keflavik Int Airport (KEF) as a hub for their trans-atlantic flights (http://www.icelandair.is/routemap/index.html).
T he ammount of passangers traveling trough KEF rose up to 17% of what is was las year.

"They'll get kicked out of the EU?"
How can Iceland be kicked out if they are not even going to be members in the near future?

"Better Iceland become the world's library than Vanuatuu, because that little island could just disappear in a typhoon and take all the servers and storage with it."
Server storage? And where is the bandwith?
FARICE, the newest one of the two fiber-optic cables connecting Iceland to the rest of the world has the maximum bandwith of 720Gb/s and CANTAT-3 has the maximum bandwidth of 2,5Gb/s.
Is that enough for the whole world?

"When five companies control most of the world's media[...]"
There is actually a world outside the USA. Have you noticed it?

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iceland has thousands of opportunities, and doesn't need to be the center of net traffic.

Natural resources, such as hot water, fall water make it an ideal electricity generating place. Unfortunately, all electrical factories are used to power up aluminium factories ... aluminium being one of the most lethal stuff for the environment. Iceland has been offered to build a cable straight over the atlantic, so it can provide electricity for the electricity hungry europe. But hasn't, as of yet, because all it's interests are controlled by a very selective group of individuals whose "patriotism" could be questioned.

Think about it, Iceland doesn't have an army ... it also has the lowest crime rate in the entire world. But there's a SWAT team in Iceland with heavy weaponry in their posession. Now, whome are they going to use it against? invaders? terrorists? ... or ... the people of Iceland.

The people of Iceland, need to wake up to reality.

Re:Iceland becomes the world's Library?

[stebbivignir]

"We have a lot to learn from Iceland. Twenty years ago its fisheries were in a terrible state but they did something about it. They have done a heck of a lot better than us."
The British Minister for Fisheries, Mr. Ben Bradshaw (From the Financial Times, quoted in an Opening Address by the Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr. Halldór Ásgrímsson)

I think you should at least try to know what you are talking about before you start your flametrower, Gunness-boy.