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<h4><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Important development,
and clear justification for not expanding the IP legal infrastructure,
especially in a manner that infringes basic human rights as being done
by many other counties. <br>
</font></h4>
<h4><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"> ... parminder</font></h4>
<br>
<a
href="http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/">Swiss
Govt:
Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal</a>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>One in three people in Switzerland
download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and
since last year the government has been wondering what to do about
it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear.
Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but
the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people
eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.</b></p>
<p>In Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the
entertainment industries have been complaining about dramatic losses
in revenue due to online piracy. </p>
<p>In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study
into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their
findings <a
href="http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/ejpd/de/home/dokumentation/mi/2011/2011-11-30.html">were
presented</a>.</p>
<p>The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright
law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is
permitted, doesn’t have to change. </p>
<p>Their report begins with noting that when it comes to copying
files, the Internet has proven a game-changer. While the photocopier,
audio cassette tape and VCR allowed users to make good quality copies
of various media, these devices lacked a in-built distribution
method. The world-wide web changed all that.</p>
<p>Distribution method or not, the entertainment industries have
opposed all these technological inventions out of fear that their
businesses would be crushed. This is not the right response according
to the Swiss government, which favors the option of putting
technology to good use instead of taking the repressive approach. </p>
<p>“Every time a new media technology has been made available, it
has always been ‘abused’. This is the price we pay for progress.
Winners will be those who are able to use the new technology to their
advantages and losers those who missed this development and continue
to follow old business models,” the report notes. </p>
<p>The government report further concludes that even in the current
situation where piracy is rampant, the entertainment industries are
not necessarily losing money. To reach this conclusion, the
researchers extrapolated the findings of <a
href="http://torrentfreak.com/economy-profits-from-file-sharing-report-concludes-090119/">a
study</a> conducted by the Dutch government last year, since the
countries are considered to be similar in many aspects.</p>
<p>The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15
years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet.
However, these people don’t spend less money as a result because
the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This
means that downloading is mostly complementary. </p>
<p>The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that
downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts,
and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who
didn’t. And in the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most
from the sampling effect of file-sharing.</p>
<p>The Swiss report then goes on to review several of the repressive
anti-piracy laws and regulations that have been implemented in other
countries recently, such as the three-strikes Hadopi law in France.
According to the report 12 million was spent on Hadopi in France this
year, a figure the Swiss deem too high.</p>
<p>The report further states that it is questionable whether a
three-strikes law would be legal in the first place, as the UN’s
Human Rights Council labeled Internet access a human right. The
Council specifically argued that Hadopi is a disproportionate law
that should be repealed. </p>
<p>Other measures such as filtering or blocking content and websites
are also rejected, because these would hurt freedom of speech and
violate privacy protection laws. The report notes that even if these
measures were implemented, there would be several ways to circumvent
them. </p>
<p>The overall suggestion the Swiss government communicates to the
entertainment industries is that they should adapt to the change in
consumer behavior, or die. They see absolutely no need to change the
law because downloading has no proven negative impact on the
production of national culture.</p>
<p>Aside from downloading, it is also practically impossible for
companies in Switzerland to go after casual uploaders. In 2010 the
Supreme Court ruled that tracking companies are <a
href="http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-monitors-banned-from-operating-in-home-country-100909/">not
allowed</a> to log IP-addresses of file-sharers, making it impossible
for rightsholders to gather evidence. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a
href="http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/">http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/</a>
</p>
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