Three Strikes Law Shifted File Sharing From Torrents To Tunnels

Cables

Shifting file sharing

A survey commissioned by the MPAA and friends last year stated that seven out of 10 people surveyed said that they would stop illegally sharing files after they received one notice from a copyright holder under the three strikes scheme.

Perhaps they should have also asked how many people would just change how they download files illegally?

The WAND Network Research Group at The University of Waikato has been measuring how traffic flows through a New Zealand ISP. They can split traffic into types with a pretty high degree of accuracy without having to “look inside” too much. Donald Clark compares it to looking at the postmark of a package and giving it a squeeze and being able to tell, in general terms, what’s inside, without having to open it.

Here’s a graph (ht Tech Liberty/1through8) showing the change in traffic volume in September 2011 and January 2012 by type relative to January 2011. In January 2011 the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act (the three strikes Skynet law) wasn’t in force. On September 1 2011 copyright holders could start sending notices to IPAPs, and around that time there was a strong media interest in the law. January 2012 is a few months later.

The resulting data is a valuable insight into how residential DSL customers at this particular ISP reacted to the new law.

WAND Three Strikes ISP data

More graphical goodness can be found in the slides from a NZNOG presentation here.

There was about a 75% decrease in BitTorrent traffic straight after the law was introduced, largely sustained into 2012, with huge increases in remote and tunneling traffic. The law isn’t stopping file sharing, just moving it underground, using VPNs, seedboxes and sites like now closed Megaupload.

There was also a big decrease in newgroup traffic, even though it doesn’t appear to be targeted by the new law.

Here’s what the project leader, Shane Alcock said:

“P2P, P2P structure, Unknown, Newsgroups and Encrypted [not all shown in the graph above] have all decreased massively from their January 2011 levels. Interestingly, each of these categories can be tied to the illegal downloading activities targeted by the CAA [Copyright Amendment Act]. P2P and P2P structure are obviously related, Newsgroups are a common source of torrent files and the Unknown and Encrypted categories were strongly suspected of containing a significant quantity of encrypted P2P traffic.

Even more interestingly, Remote, Tunneling and Files experienced similarly large growths in the amount of traffic downloaded by DSL users. This is probably indicative of people changing their approach to downloading copyrighted material. Instead of participating in file sharing on their home machines, it has become more common for people to use machines based in other countries and ship the file back home via another protocol. This might be via SSH, VPN or FTP, for example, which are all covered by the growing categories.

Similar trends are observed when looking at traffic transmitted by the DSL users. Categories associated with P2P file sharing have seen much less traffic compared with January 2011, whereas Tunneling, Remote and Files have soared.

It should be noted that although Tunneling has grown significantly, the overall amount of Tunneling traffic is still much less than the total amount of P2P traffic. But the sudden changes in application protocol usage are still very noteworthy and suggest that the CAA has had a major impact on people’s Internet usage.”

Image credit: technoloic

MPAA Propaganda

Look what I found at the end of the Hoyts ticket counter:

Respect Copyrights leaflet 1

Respect Copyrights leaflet 2

Respect Copyrights leaflet 3

Respect Copyrights leaflet 4It contains some interesting content.

“Remove unauthorised material from your computers”

“While not required under the new law, illegally obtained copyright protected material may still be file shared and therefore should be removed.”

Read: buy the files you downloaded illegally in the past. Helpful advice would be to remove peer-to-peer software from your computer if you’re not using it, or to stop sharing illegally obtained material if you’re doing so (eg. stop seeding).

“What are the risks of P2P file sharing?”

“P2P file sharing can expose your computer to harmful viruses, worms and trojan horses as well as annoying pop-up advertisements. There is also a real danger that private information on your computer may be accessible to others on P2P networks.”

Finding files through moderated sites (which can remove harmful torrents), reading the comments on torrents and having up-to-date anti-malware software all reduce this small risk of harm.

The “real danger” of private information being inadvertently shared is practically impossible with torrenting. LimeWire, FrostWire and friends were possibly deceptive about what user’s folders were actually being shared in the past, but now LimeWire is dead and FrostWire exclusively uses torrents, so it shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

But points for including the relatively unbiased URL of NetSafe’s The Copyright Law, albeit in tiny print down the very bottom on the back page.

Respect Copyrights.co.nz

This site is interesting, especially when you compare its list of legitimate places to buy movies and TV shows to the US version‘s list.

Our list for TV shows is basically the On Demand sites for the free-to-air TV stations, plus iSky. On the movies side we have iSky, the console networks and iTunes, which is also listed as having TV shows, but that’s not the case in New Zealand.

Respect Copyrights New Zealand legal alternatives

In comparison, the US site lists 43 legal alternatives, including iTunes (which you can actually get TV shows from in the US, or by using a US iTunes account), Hulu and Netflix.

Respect Copyrights US legal alternatives

And the MPAA wonder why people illegally download movies and TV shows in New Zealand?

On a plus, Respect Copyrights has removed that ridiculous clause from their Terms of Use stating that no one was allowed to link to their site without their “express written permission”. Their grasp of the internet is growing!

Spotify

Good news on the music front though. Music streaming subscription service Spotify is coming to Australia and New Zealand, possibly around February next year. The downside is that they’re now in bed with Facebook, so you’ll need a Facebook account to use it.

NZ Movies

Jonathan Hunt and Lance Wiggs illustrate how inadequate the sites MPAA lists are. MPAA, NZFACT and friends love harping on how people pirating movies like Boy are harming our movie industry in New Zealand.

But you still can’t download it legally from iTunes.

And I wouldn’t count on it being added either. Remember Sione’s Wedding? You know, the movie released in 2006 that cost “its investors an estimated $1 million” because it was pirated?

It’s not in the New Zealand iTunes store five years later.

Sione's Wedding New Zealand iTunes Store

But of course, it’s in the US iTunes store as Samoan Wedding.

Samoan Wedding United States iTunes Store

Nice one. Perhaps more kiwis would support their creative community, if, you know, you actually made it easy for them?