Arnau Gavaldà-Miralles
ABSTRACT
Though the impact of file-sharing of copyrighted content has been discussed for over a decade, only in the past few years have countries begun to adopt legislation to criminalize this behavior. These laws impose penalties ranging from warnings and monetary fines to disconnecting Internet service. While their supporters are quick to point out trends showing the efficacy of these laws at reducing use of file-sharing sites, their analyses rely on brief snapshots of activity that cannot reveal long- and short-term trends.
In this paper, we introduce an approach to model user behavior based on a hidden Markov model and apply it to analyze a two-year-long user-level trace of download activity of over 38k users from around the world. This approach allows us to quantify the true impact of file-sharing laws on user behavior, identifying behavioral trends otherwise difficult to identify. For instance, despite an initial reduction in activity in New Zealand when a three-strikes law took effect, after two months activity had returned to the level observed prior to the law being enacted. Given that punishment seems to, at best, result in short-term compliance, we suggest that incentives-based approaches may be more effective at changing user behavior.
- S. Alcock and R. Nelson. Measuring the impact of the Copyright Amendment Act on New Zealand residential DSL users. In Proc. of IMC, 2012. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- N. Anderson. Swedes start buying music; are anti-P2P laws working? Ars Technica, 24 November 2009. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/11/swedes-start-buying-music-are-anti-p2p-laws-working/.Google Scholar
- N. Anderson. Major ISPs agree to "six strikes" copyright enforcement plan. Ars Technica, 7 July 2011. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/major-isps-agree-to-six-strikes-copyright-enforcement-plan/.Google Scholar
- K. P. Burnham and D. R. Anderson. Model selection and multi-model inference: a practical information-theoretic approach. Springer, 2002.Google Scholar
- D. R. Choffnes and F. E. Bustamante. Taming the torrent: A practical approach to reducing cross-ISP traffic in peer-to-peer systems. In Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM, 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- B. Danaher and M. D. Smith. Gone in 60 seconds: The impact of the Megaupload shutdown on movie sales, 6 March 2013. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2229349.Google Scholar
- R. Farahbakhsh, A. Cuevas, R. Cuevas, R. Rejaie, M. Kryczka, R. Gonzalez, and N. Crespi. Investigating the reaction of BitTorrent content publishers to antipiracy actions. In Proc. of IEEE P2P, 2013. To appear.Google ScholarCross Ref
- D. Greenwood. New Zealand passes 'three strikes' copyright law, 15 April 2011. http://www.zdnet.com/new-zealand-passes-three-strikes-copyright-law-2062208409/.Google Scholar
- Hadopi. Hadopi, 1 1/2 year after the launch, 1 March 2012. http://www.hadopi.fr/sites/default/files/ page/pdf/note17\_en.pdf.Google Scholar
- R. D. Malmgren, J. M. Hofman, L. A. Amaral, and D. J. Watts. Characterizing individual communication patterns. In Proc. of ACM SIGKDD, 2009. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Pepitone. 50,000 BitTorrent users sued for alleged illegal downloads. CNN Money, 10 June 2011. http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/10/technology/ bittorrent\_lawsuits/index.htm.Google Scholar
- L. R. Rabiner. A tutorial on hidden Markov models and selected applications in speech recognition. Proceedings of the IEEE, 77(2):257--286, 1989.Google ScholarCross Ref
- G. Schwarz. Estimating the dimension of a model. The annals of statistics, 6(2):461--464, 1978.Google Scholar
- B. F. Skinner. Walden Two. 1976.Google Scholar
- T. Starner and A. Pentland. Real-time American Sign language visual recognition from video using Hidden Markov Models. Master's thesis, MIT, February 1995.Google Scholar
- TorrentFreak. Irish ISPs start blocking The Pirate Bay, 10 July 2013. http://torrentfreak.com/irish-isps-start-blocking-the-pirate-bay-130710/.Google Scholar
- TorrentFreak. Russia's 'SOPA' passed by lawmakers, site blocking begins "in weeks", 21 June 2013. http://torrentfreak.com/russias-sopa-passed-by-lawmakers-site-blocking-begins-in-weeks-130621.Google Scholar
- TorrentFreak. Hurt Locker BitTorrent lawsuit dies, but not without controversy, 22 December 2011. http://torrentfreak.com/hurt-locker-bittorrent-lawsuit-dies-but-not-without-controversy-111222.Google Scholar
- TorrentFreak. 200,000 BitTorrent users sued in the United States, 8 August 2011. http://torrentfreak.com/200000-bittorrent-users-sued-in-the-united-states-110808/.Google Scholar
- TorrentFreak. Three strikes and you're still in -- France kills piracy disconnections, 9 July 2013. http://torrentfreak.com/three-strikes-and-youre-still-in-france-kills-piracy-disconnections-130709/.Google Scholar
- Vuze, Inc. Vuze. http://www.vuze.com.Google Scholar
- A. Walls. 'Three strikes' file sharing law coming sooner than you think, 4 August 2011. http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/three-strikes-file-sharing-law-coming-sooner-you-think-aw-98379.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- User Behavior and Change: File-sharers and Copyright Laws
Recommendations
The Law Applicable to P2P Networks on National and International Bases for Violating Intellectual Property Rights
To provide a path to the copyright holders for filing a lawsuit against the infringers and violators through a legitimate process and applying the law that applies to that particular situation that keeps a balance between the peer-to-peer network ...
Copyright Infringement and Protection in the Internet Age
In this age of increasingly complex, Internet-based technologies, it's very difficult to protect original works of authorship. This article examines the problem of copyright infringement and the copyright law's desire to balance the interests of ...
Unblocking the Digital Economy Act 2010; human rights issues in the UK
BILETA 2013Through an example of a study utilizing the case-law research method, this paper critically assesses whether taking into account both the findings of Mr La Rue the United Nations Rapporteur on Human Rights as well as some Court of Justice of the ...
Comments