[governance] Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal

[parminder]

        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.


          ... parminder


Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal 
<http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/> 


*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.*

In Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the entertainment 
industries have been complaining about dramatic losses in revenue due to 
online piracy.

In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the 
impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings were 
presented 
<http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/ejpd/de/home/dokumentation/mi/2011/2011-11-30.html>.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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 study 
<http://torrentfreak.com/economy-profits-from-file-sharing-report-concludes-090119/> 
conducted by the Dutch government last year, since the countries are 
considered to be similar in many aspects.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 not allowed 
<http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-monitors-banned-from-operating-in-home-country-100909/> 
to log IP-addresses of file-sharers, making it impossible for 
rightsholders to gather evidence.

http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/ 


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