Fewer Swedes file sharing: study

Fewer Swedes are engaged in illegal file sharing over the internet, according to a new study.

• 'File sharing law goes too far': Swedish EU election candidates (4 May 09)
• New law sees Swedish web traffic plunge (30 Apr 09)
• Second ISP undermines file sharing law (28 Apr 09)

The changes in Swedish file sharing habits come in the wake of the guilty verdicts in the Pirate Bay Trial and the implementation of a new law making it easier for authorities to hunt down file sharers, Sveriges Television (SVT) reports.

As previously reported by The Local, internet traffic in Sweden has dropped nearly 40 percent since April 1st, the date the new anti-file sharing law went into force.

Now a new survey of 2,700 people carried out for Sveriges videodistributörers förening (‘Swedish Association of Video Distributors’ – SVF), shows that 20 percent of Swedes aged 15- to 59-years-old have cut down on or completely stopped file sharing.

However, a full 36 percent of the most active file sharers, males aged 15- to 24-years-old, are now file sharing less or not at all.

According to the study, the fear of getting caught is the primarily reason respondents give for why they are file sharing less.

“Earlier people thought that maybe the police didn’t really pay attention to the information in the same way,” a young file sharer named Joar told SVT.

“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.

The reduction in file share by Swedes has also been noticed by officials at Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency (Antipiratbyrån – APB).

“The month of April was really hectic. Now everything has stabilized and we see how internet traffic has stabilized; we see how the decrease in bit-Torrent trackers has stabilized,” said APB lawyer Henrik Pontén to SVT.