Swiss insist file-sharers don't hurt copyright holders
P2P still OK for personal use, government rules
The Swiss government has ruled that downloading pirated copies of films, music and videogames for personal use will remain legal because it is of not detrimental to copyright owners.
Last year, the Swiss Senate ordered an investigation into the impact downloading may have on society, in case further legislation was required on the matter. The Federal Council has reported its findings, and effectively ruled in favour of personal file-sharing.
Drawing on results from a previous Dutch File-sharing survey, the report insists the entertainment world doesn't lose money because of piracy. While around a third of Swiss citizens over the age of 15 download pirated content, they don't spend any less money on entertainment than usual.
"The percentage of disposable income spent on consumption in this area remains constant," the report notes, though it points to changing patterns of spending: less on music, more on games, for instance.
The report also deems other countries' anti-piracy measures repressive and questions the legality of laws such as the three-strike Hadopi method imposed in France. With the UN labelling Internet access a human right, the report reckons Hadopi is far too harsh and should be repealed.
Any other Internet censorship, such as filtering or blocking websites has also been rejected as it would damage freedom of speech and violate privacy protection laws.
There's nothing quite like the blissful safe-haven feel to Switzerland is there? Last year, the Federal Court ruled tracking companies were not allowed to log IP addresses of file-sharers, making it virtually impossible to prosecute the casual P2P user. ®
COMMENTS
Plus 10 points for Switzerland
Law based on actually studying a case properly rather than give in blindly to lobby groups! That is real old-school, man!
It would be perfectly ok...
... if you could make an exact copy of food from the original food thus creating double the amount of food than existed previously.
In fact you'd probably win the Nobel prize.
infringment NOT theft
Please get your facts straight.
Copyright infringement is NOT theft. Theft is defined as depriving someone of an item, copyright infringement is making a copy without the permission of the creator/owner.
By claiming that downloading is theft you are showing that you are gullible and have been brainwashed by the media companies into thinking exactly what they want you to.
To claim that downloading a perfect digital COPY of a DVD/BD is theft is like saying that you are stealing the Mona Lisa if you download a high-res digital photo of it.
Go Switzerland...
Might be a strange and quirky country, I know I lived there, but they do have some common sense and nice cheese.
There's a difference
When you steal food, someone looses something. After you steal the food the store can not then sell it to someone else and has therefore lost a sale. That's not the case at all with filesharing.
When you download a song, there is nothing to prevent the producer from selling the same song to someone else. As study after study after study has show, the vast majority of file sharers would not (and truely, in most cases, could not) pay for the content that they download. So the sell to the pirate would never have happened anyway (and therefore is not lost) and the sell to a paying customer is not prevented (and therefore is not lost). Therefore, nothing is lost and the content owner is in no way harmed. The same holds true with pretty much every other form of frequently downloaded media. That's why filesharing is not theft. Which is not to say that it's not immoral - that's a seperate discussion (and one I suspect you and I would agree upon judging from your comment here). However laws should not be based upon morality. Morality is too subjective to make a foundation for law, unless you like the idea of laws preventing the sale of liquor on Sundays or bans on gay marriage (both the products of morality based law). Harm, however, is much more testable and verifiable and makes a much more firm basis for law.
