Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
This is a sad day for those who make their living from IP. The Swiss government is essentially saying "we don't give a damn that our citizens are stealing from you". Very disappointing.
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I think that this decision is very sensible, if you think about it.
*Uploading* of copyrighted material is forbidden, not downloading.
Consider this example:
John buys a CD by an obscure singer. He rips the song into mp3 and uploads it to legitimate site like garageband.com, pretending it is his own recording.
Jack downloads the song.
Did Jack break the law? I do not think so. John did. Jack acted in good faith and you can't expect him to conduct extensive research for every single file he ever downloads.
If you want to root out the copyright infringement on the net, you have to go after uploaders. As a casual user of the net you download hundreds of pictures a day (most of those are part of web page design), you look at youtube videos, you read lots of rants, like this one. How do you want to make sure that my avatar, for example doesn't infringe somebody's Intellectual Property? You have just downloaded it. It is sitting right in your /Temp directory now.
The border between downloading something copyrighted knowingly and unwittingly can be very hazy, and could be very difficult to prove.
In many countries (including my own, thank God) it is not forbidden to download copyrighted wok.