The boss of a prominent ISP in Sweden has criticized moves by the government which could criminalize hundreds of thousands of Internet users. Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung says the country is stuck in the past when it calls for harsher punishments for file-sharing and should instead concentrate on developing better legal options.
Source: ISP Boss Criticizes Calls to Criminalize File-Sharers – TorrentFreak
The story in Sweden is somewhat famous. Sweden was home to the Pirate Bay and had sky high piracy rates. And then Spotify — a company also born in Sweden — launched at home. And piracy rates fell off a cliff. But only for music. Piracy for other products such as TV and movies remained high. Under pressure from the US, Sweden passed a strict anti-piracy law, IPRED. And, when it went into effect, there was a notable decline in piracy rates… but, within months, those rates rebounded to where they had been before, as people quickly figured out new ways to do what they were doing before. And then Netflix launched in Sweden. And piracy rates for TV and movies dropped.
