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Piracy Your Rights Online

P2P Traffic Drops 10% After New NZ Law 110

Posted by samzenpus from the stop-sharing dept.
harryjohnston writes "Following the introduction of New Zealand's new copyright legislation, which we discussed last week, major ISP Orcon reports that international peer-to-peer traffic has dropped 10%. This might mean that the law is actually working to some extent, though experts say the effect will probably only be temporary."
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P2P Traffic Drops 10% After New NZ Law More

P2P Traffic Drops 10% After New NZ Law

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  • Nice! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday September 08, 2011 @05:09AM (#37337490)

    So 5% got a seedbox in Tonga after all, now the traffic will just be FTP instead of P2P.
    The other 5% switched to Rapidshare and Co.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by don.g ( 6394 )

      After all, Tonga is a country well known for its fast and cheap internet and therefore an ideal place to locate seedboxes.

    • Re:Nice! (Score:4, Funny)

      by adamofgreyskull ( 640712 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @06:15AM (#37337762)
      Or 10% are towards the end of their billing cycle and are trying to stay beneath their ridiculous data cap... ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by delt0r ( 999393 )
      Most of my NZ friends have seed boxes because NZ internet is total crap.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Good luck with seedboxes... so far, I've not found any reliable providers that won't just take your money and pretend that it is "Internet trouble". These companies remind me of the "DDL warez search engines" pre-BitTorrent days -- they promise a lot, but you will never find one that actually works.

        Pick one: Reliable VPS in a country that logs the results and passes them on a silver platter to the *AA, or a VPS that just takes your cash and then gives you nothing but excuses, or even profanity.

        Show me a

        • And your description reminds me of the websites that promise to give you drivers, only to instead lead you into a maze of search pages that find other search engines, all laden with ads, through which you quest in the slender hope that the next link may be to an actual download to make your old hardware work.

          There are a lot of pirate services operating under the radar - just a few tens of users, but very dedicated ones. I have also heard of (and once actually found) super-seedboxes hosted in IPv6 space onl
    • A question for knowledgeable Kiwi's.... does NZ to Australia traffic count as 'international' by Orcon's terms? (It may seem a stupid question, but Australia and NZ occasionally ignore the fact that we're separate countries).

  • Hahaha. it failed. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @05:09AM (#37337492) Homepage Journal
    if its just 10% drop at the advent of the law, it means it outright failed.

    moreover, they just made piracy 'cooler' and more worthy of doing for a lot of rebel types and kids.

    • Re:Hahaha. it failed. (Score:5, Informative)

      by nzac ( 1822298 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @06:02AM (#37337688)

      Its worse than that some ISPs are only able to say they noticed a drop and other ISPs report no drop.

      Since no notices are being set as of yet I expect it will recover and then exceed previous levels if no notices are sent.
      The government said they would review the law if it failed to work so the rights holder may want it to fail.

      • How well are they publicising this law? Simply having the law in place does feck all if nobody knows about it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nzac ( 1822298 )

          Everyone will have herd about it except for possibly people who do not use the web. I guess a few may be unaware of the date it came in.

          I think the education from the government is meant to come from infringement/warning notices (no fines are initially given) but as no one is issuing these yet that may not happen.

          It is also possible that people intending to infringe have avoided being the ones to sign up for being the account holder since this law has be going to come in for a couple of years thus they will

    • Internet access is very expensive in New Zealand, and virtually always data limited (5, 10, 25GB offers). You pay about 1$/GB.
      Its insane. But there is no proper competition, a small population, and no demand from the users.

      So people don't usually run Bittorrent et.al. so much, and renting DVDs is pretty popular.

      • Re:Hahaha. it failed. (Score:4, Informative)

        by nzac ( 1822298 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @06:15AM (#37337760)

        Don't know who your friends are let me assure you that leeching is very much alive (no one seeds at $1-2.5/GB). It does not seem to be confined to one demographic either. The inability for some to stream at DVD def (slow connections) and having to pay for extra bandwith to watch on demand with ads makes torrenting very attractive.

        I get annoyed at people who waste bandwidth re-downloading youtube. I do use this to rationalise the downloading of low quality mp3s.

    • if its just 10% drop at the advent of the law, it means it outright failed.

      No, it is highly successful. The 10% of P2P that were used for piracy have stopped, while the 90% that were used for legitimate purposes are still there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nzac ( 1822298 )

        No, it is highly successful. The 10% of P2P that were used for piracy have stopped, while the 90% that were used for legitimate purposes are still there.

        I know you can be idealistic on /. but come on. Almost all legal p2p downloads have mirrors for ftp/http downloads. Generally our internet is so slow that our bandwidth from the ISP limits the speed. The only reason I can think of is if the download is non resumeable and you could run into the time limit and be cut off (thereby not being able to download the file, not being able to clone the suse kernel from git is annoying). The 10 percent overhead from leaching is to be avoided.

        There is legitimate torrent

        • The internet needs a font for sarcasm.

          • Generally italics gives emphasis to sarcastic bits. But for clarity, change the colour to magenta.

          • Let me introduce my friend the sarcamflex: ~!

            I hope you hit it off. Observe:

            Look at me Marge, I'm making people Happy~!
            I'm the magical man, from Happy Land, who lives in a gumdrop house on Lolly Pop Lane~!!!!......

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwandy ( 907337 )
      We have no idea of the success of this law as they're measuring the wrong thing.
      Hopefully a decrease in p2p is not what the media publishing/distribution industries actually want. Hopefully they want increased revenue (more specifically profit, but in theory an increase in revenue is an increase in profit for this scenario). So unless we see an increase in sales that we can directly attribute to this law the law has failed regardless of the change in p2p traffic.
      And to me this would still be measuring th
      • It's hard to measure. It's hard even when looking at simple retail issues - how many downloaders would buy it? But when you try to factor in things like reduced TV viewership lowering the value of advertising time, it soon reaches the point where you can just make up any number you want.

    • ...moreover, they just made piracy 'cooler' and more worthy of doing for a lot of rebel types and kids.

      Amen. Simple psychology will always hold.

      <humor>
      I believe 9% of the 10 heard about the new law and looked at their kid's computer for the first time.
      </humor>

      Actually, maybe that's not too far from the truth :)

  • What about streaming?

  • p2p traffic down 10%. vpn traffic up 10% :D

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kent_eh ( 543303 )
      Pretty much my first thought too.
      A couple of private trackers that I'm on have recently reversed their policy on VPNs, now allowing them for existing members who can demonstrate an e-mail address or IP from NZ

      And , yes, there are cappers, uploaders and seeders from NZ.
      It's cool seeing travel shows from other places. I've learned a lot about the Kiwis since I joined.

  • No notices have been sent yet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nzac ( 1822298 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @05:35AM (#37337568)

    Interestingly the law has yet to be used (or at least no news sites have reported it).

    The 25 dollar charge couple with low chance of actually getting any money back have made the law seem pretty useless. I would think the fines would be around the minimum of 300 or so there is little chance of making a profit or even getting your money back.

    The problem with putting the burden of proof on the accused is that judges will find it hard to award large damages (500+) since the account holder could not lock down his network and does not have the skill or money to prove it did not happen. Getting someone’s net cut off so they can't buy music legally is not the best business model either. If they have to get a friend to do it, there will be high chance of copywrite infringement immediately afterwards.

  • Some thing happened in Sweden. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    First reports of "the law working", then a few months later everything was back to normal again.

  • What they fail to recognise, is that NZ is an isolated far away nation who are often a test bed for new things. Internet banking for instance, years and years ahead of the rest of the world because it was simple to do. Having weak politicians who can be used to purchase laws by foreign companies is another. As a by product of the fact that you DSL line has 'national' and 'international' traffic rates - NZ netizens are actually a bit more organised that many countries. For years and years, there have bee

    • Having weak politicians who can be used to purchase laws by foreign companies is another.

      ORLY? [transparency.org]

      • A few places above Sweden and Canada? That doesn't say a whole lot IMO.

      • Re:Time Indeed for the Cypher Revolution (Score:4, Informative)

        by Colio-Light ( 2456734 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @08:08AM (#37338424)
        Not since the 80's with David Lange has NZ stood up against Americans with uranium on their breath and truly been able to say they are an individual country.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeHTziiFVx0 [youtube.com]

        so yes, transparency.org might list NZ as high - but what does't get told much is the relationship between big business and MP's, and the fact that corporate law in NZ is the fastest changing in the world.

        http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/warner-bros-sought-job-law-change-film-the-hobbit-nz-135087 [nbr.co.nz]

        "Warner Brothers used the threat of filming The Hobbit movies elsewhere to gain changes to New Zealand's employment laws, it was reported tonight. An email obtained under the Official Information Act showed the production company wanted "stability" to film the movies in New Zealand and was worried about "grey areas" of employment law, Radio New Zealand reported."

        http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/us-lobbied-nz-over-copyright-laws-wikileaks-cables-4149178 [tvnz.co.nz]

        "The cables also show that the US offered to spend more than $500,000 to fund a recording industry-backed IP enforcement initiative. According to the cables, the US actively lobbied several cabinet members while New Zealand was working through its copyright reform in 2008"

        "A February 2008 cable notes that Consumer Affairs Minister Judith Tizard and Trade Minister Phil Goff were presented with a list of shortfalls to submit as the legislation was being drafted. "Post has presented the list of noted shortfalls in the draft legislation to Minister Tizard (Consumer Affairs), Minister Goff (Trade) and to officials within the Ministry of Economic Development, the agency primarily responsible for drafting legislation and monitoring IP enforcement. "Post remains engaged with Bronwyn Turley, Senior MED Policy Advisor for IP issues to maintain a dialogue to address the needed technical corrections," the cable noted. New copyright laws were passed in April 2008."

        • Total costs: NZ $533,000 (US $386,158)
        • Start-up costs: NZ $78,000 (US $56,510)
        • Salaries: NZ $215,000 (US $155,768)
        • Operating costs: NZ $240,000 (US $173,880)
        • Start-up costs (NZ dollars):
        • Furnishings $25,000
        • IT costs (equipment) $45,000
        • Sundries $8,000
        • Salaries (NZ dollars):
        • Unit head $90,000
        • Intelligence and policy development $60,000
        • Licensing and enforcement officer $40,000
        • Administrative support $25,000
        • Operating costs (NZ dollars):
        • Accommodations (rental, utilities) $55,000
        • IT support $15,000
        • Legal costs (investigation, prosecution)$75,000
        • Training (internet piracy, law) $50,000
        • Travel costs $35,000
        • Employer liabilities $10,000

  • 10% is weak (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @05:45AM (#37337606) Homepage

    In Sweden after IPRED it was 30%, after half a year they were essentially back on the same curve as before. Everybody fears a token crackdown, like people speed everywhere but right after they've reduced speed on some road it's very wise to stick to the limit a while because it's always followed up by a bunch of controls on that road. It won't last since everybody knows they don't have the resources to go after everyone, it's just temporary.

    • Some people get scared when they see this plastered all over the news and they stop.

      Then over the next year, they watch as their mates continue to download with no reprisals, and eventually start doing it again.

  • Internet Traffic down 10%. (Score:3)

    by Jason Pollock ( 45537 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @05:47AM (#37337634) Homepage

    It's the _total_ international internet traffic which is down 10%. Given that P2P forms 30-50% of an ISPs traffic (supposedly), that means that there has been a 20-33% drop in P2P traffic. So, while it sounds small, it is actually a large difference to P2P, all without a single $25 letter being sent out.

    • The Internet is (or supposed to be) built upon the peer-to-peer principle anyway, so one may say all traffic is P2P.

      Since when has the term P2P been twisted with the connotation of illegality I don't know. The word looks like another victim with the same fate as the term "hacker".

      • Yes, but most systems are still designed using the server/client concept. Often with a large centralised server and lots of clients pulling down much more data than they send. Under a peer-to-peer concept there is no centralised server in the system (or at least if there is one, it's not as heavily relied upon as with a traditional model), and you may be transmitting as much as (or more than) you're receiving.

        Both have their pros and cons depending on the user-base and network, and yes it's sad that P2P is

    • It's the _total_ international internet traffic which is down 10%.

      No, Orcon reported a 10% drop in P2P traffic not total traffic. And other large ISPs reported [stuff.co.nz] either no drop in traffic or a slight drop in traffic.

      The only reporting I've heard that said 10% of total traffic was on Ars Technica and they misquoted the article they linked to.

  • the use of alt.binaries and IRC DCC has had a huge resurgence.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward


      The first rule of USENET, is you do not talk about USENET.

  • A recent dearth of good Linux .ISO releases. *cough*

  • In Sweden... (Score:4, Informative)

    by mmcuh ( 1088773 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @06:21AM (#37337784)
    ...when they implemented the IPRED EU directive which gives the copyright lobby the right to force ISPs to give them the names of suspected filesharers, the traffic dropped by almost 30% on the day the law came into effect. However, it started increasing again almost immediately and a year later it's higher than ever before, and still increasing - just like it has been since the late 90s.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nzac ( 1822298 )

      What the expected fine if your are caught in Sweden?

      As much as think the fines in the US are ridiculous, i just don't see how anything short of large fines could stop copy write infringement. There is no way cutting off someone’s internet can remain law for more than a decade, it will become to important to society.

      My only other solution would be punish someone by sticking them behind a restrictive firewall that would allow web traffic but be plain annoying to make p2p and a lot of other stuff work wi

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        They get "day-fines", fines based on your salary. This is the latest cases, 60 yo man got 60 of them (2000 music files), a 15 yo guy got nothing, for 24 movies. The police just said that they have a special unit to deal with this now, they have about 50 cases that they are going to argue for prison and fines for.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmcuh ( 1088773 )
        The usual punishment used to be 80 day-fines, which in Sweden would mean between 2400 SEK and 16000 SEK depending on the person's income (1 SEK is roughly 0.11 â). But in a recent case, not significantly dissimilar to earlier ones, the court suddenly went crazy and handed down a jail sentence (suspended, but that doesn't change the legal value) to a 60 year old man. No one really knows why they did that, but it's very convenient for Sweden's new prosecutors who are specialised on filesharing since they

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mmcuh ( 1088773 )
          The â was supposed to be a euro-sign. Come on, Slashdot, this isn't the 1990s. Fix your input handling.

        • On Brazil the copyright rent-seekers (as we all copyright holders now) succeded in getting laws that lead to jail time for offenders at the 90's. The result is that civil processes were replaced by criminal ones, and no not-for-profit infringer got punished after that.

  • The claim is that p2p equals loss of revenue and profits. We can now see if this is true. This law causes a drop in traffic so there should be an increase in profits and/or sales posted from this time on.
    From other stats though people who copy this stuff are the most likely to buy this stuff so my guess is that this loss of p2p won't show up in any sales figures. The people who used p2p will use social networks to find and copy the media.

  • OK (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    I bet all those NZ guys are eagerly awaiting the price-drop on all media then, given that piracy is provably (*COUGH*) lessened by these laws and so they have no need to take legal action, extraneous measures (DRM etc.).

    And sales of CD's, DVD's, Blu-Ray, etc. will go through the roof. Just you watch. Keep watching. Any second now. Wait for it. Just a minute longer...

  • Downloading what? (Score:3)

    by v(*_*)vvvv ( 233078 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @06:53AM (#37337962)

    I find the wording puzzling, since everything we download is, well, copyrighted. So the "illegal downloading of" is dependent on there being "illegal distribution" of copyrighted material by a non-copyright-holder, in which case, shouldn't the distributors be punished *first*?

    And what about all the free legal distribution of copyrighted content by copyright holders, which in turn can easily be saved as mp3s? It is saying if someone downloads something via P2P they are criminal, but if they save a youtube stream to a file, they are model citizens.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nzac ( 1822298 )

      And what about all the free legal distribution of copyrighted content by copyright holders, which in turn can easily be saved as mp3s? It is saying if someone downloads something via P2P they are criminal, but if they save a youtube stream to a file, they are model citizens.

      They still break the law but there is no way to catch them doing this (as the download was legal) so what’s the point to scaring potential voters.

      • And what about all the free legal distribution of copyrighted content by copyright holders, which in turn can easily be saved as mp3s? It is saying if someone downloads something via P2P they are criminal, but if they save a youtube stream to a file, they are model citizens.

        They still break the law but there is no way to catch them doing this (as the download was legal) so what’s the point to scaring potential voters.

        Saving a youtube video is illegal? That sounds like bullshit, try getting that to stick in court...

        There are two possibilities. If whoever posted the video has the right to distribute it, then you obtained it from a legitimate source: if the copyright owner posted it on a publicly accessible website, then they are offering it to you and can't possibly claim you stole it. How is this different from recording a TV show, which is clearly legal pretty much everywhere? OTOH, If they don't have the right to di

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nzac ( 1822298 )

          You do know your suppose to delete TV show recording after you have watched them or within i think its 14 days (no one would waste money enforcing or detecting it).

          In NZ and probably most over places there are laws that the police do not enforce because they are trivial and not worth it let alone wasting a judges time. I understand some countries get Police ten7 (NZ cop show) there will be a lot of people get minor punishments for far more serious offences .

          I consider copywrite infringement (not stealing)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbet ( 1607261 )
        It's absolutely not illegal to save a legal download, at least where I live.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nzac ( 1822298 )

          Do you have a law that says if you don't see or accept the terms and condition you don't have to obey them. We still have stock standard copywrite law that you could argue covers this.

          I'm fairly sure you are in violation of the "licence" they gave you by modifying the service or 4C
          http://www.youtube.com/t/terms [youtube.com]

          Getting the courts to care about when youtube may have trouble detecting it is a different issue.

  • Encrypted IRC and NNTP traffic rose an astonishing 500%.

    News at 11.

  • No difference (Score:3)

    by drmofe ( 523606 ) on Thursday September 08, 2011 @07:40AM (#37338214)

    I have not noticed any difference in total international traffic at the ISP which I run between now and before the new law came into force. I do notice more VPN and seedbox traffic on residential connections and less UDP torrent traffic.

    I am also yet to see a copyright infringement notice properly formatted with the requirements of the new legislation. I have bot even received an automated form letter from a rights owner, as used to be the case on a regular basis.

    No rightsowner, or agent thereof has been in contact, nor RIANZ or NZFACT to discuss the relationship between the rightsowners and the designated IPAPs.

  • Nobody stops to think maybe it's because no big game titles or movies came out this week? Way to declare victory when your opponent is off taking a nap.

  • Bah... (Score:1)

    by koan ( 80826 )

    I am interested in what happens to the brick/online retail sector selling movies and music, did it increase? Stay the same?
    What effect dies this actually have on spending and sales?

    Or, being irritated with their ISP, will customers now double their efforts to pirate through other means?

  • Are we saying that NZ spam and p2p actually accounts for 10% of the whole world's internet traffic????

  • Dear Orcon, Sorry about the 10% drop. I had to travel overseas at the end of August so I have been using another ISP. Don't worry I returning on Sunday and your traffic will return to normal then. Cheers ukoda

  • I thought my porn was downloading faster!

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