Surfers Scared Offline Thanks To Anti-piracy Policy In Sweden

Sweden has a brand new anti-piracy policy that could explain a 33% drop in web traffic on the first day it was enforced. This policy allows copyright holders to obtain the identity of major pirates while prosecuting them directly though the courts without having to go through the police. According to Christian Engstrom, VP of Sweden’s Pirate Party, “Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again…one of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that can share files anonymously.”