With the arrest of Kim Dotcom and the shutdown of Megaupload, it was expected that the authorities would be able to finally control
piracy, but a study conducted by internet consultancy DeepField Networks shows otherwise. The latest study shows that though the demise of Megaupload did had an impact on file sharing traffic, but the segment proved to be very resilient and quickly recovered from its bottom.
DeepField study showed that Megaupload had a lion's share in file-sharing segment and accounted for about 30 to 40 percent of such traffic. However, a crackdown on the site did not had much negative impact on file-sharing activities. The study included six companies, which collectively account for about 80 percent of file sharing traffic. However, once Megaupload was taken down, the users simply switched to other websites such as Mediafire and Rapidshare.
The report also studied the impact of Megaupload's closure on US ISPs. Being a US website, Megaupload was responsible or gazillion terabytes of data transfer with US ISP, however, its replacement websites are mostly originating from Europe and thus US ISPs stand to lose massive amount of data. The report states, "Instead of terabytes of North America Megaupload traffic going to U.S. servers, most file sharing traffic now comes from Europe over far more expensive transatlantic links."