In Switzerland Downloading Copyrighted Materials for personal Use is Legal

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sabredog

This is the sort of argument the corporations make where they equate every download as a lost sale, when plainly it is not.

Good to see that lie shoved back into their collective faces, at least in Switzerland.

Piracy is not simply an issue for large corporations. There are an awful lot of individuals who rely on intellectual property rights to make their living, whether it be in the field of software, books, or music. I have, for example, on several occasions found people selling pirated version of my software on eBay, and while I have on occasions been successful in taking action against those involved, I'm sure that those that I do catch are merely the tip of the iceberg.

[TGS]

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.

But nothing is being stolen, so the analogy breaks down.

[Zetmolm]

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.

Before you make comments like this, please make some effort to investigate what the rules are in countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands that have this type of legislation, and also took a look at how artists etc. are compensated in these countries. You would be surprised!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Zetmolm

Before you make comments like this, please make some effort to investigate what the rules are in countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands that have this type of legislation, and also took a look at how artists etc. are compensated in these countries. You would be surprised!

I have never received received a penny in compensation from all those Swiss citizen who are taking my software without paying for it. Should I be expecting a cheque from the Swiss government to arrive?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by sabredog

This is the sort of argument the corporations make where they equate every download as a lost sale, when plainly it is not.

Good to see that lie shoved back into their collective faces, at least in Switzerland.

And it is equally delusional to believe that not one single illegal download represents a lost sale, and some people could do with that lie being shoved in their collective faces.

[karunaji]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

And it is equally delusional to believe that not one single illegal download represents a lost sale, and some people could do with that lie being shoved in their collective faces.

Why should we care about a single lost or gained sale? Only average sales are important. It is possible that the original assumption that people who download pirated content spend the same amount of money on entertainment is not exactly true. But then again, if we don't really know then we should carefully study the issue instead of making unwarranted assumptions.

[kacir]

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.

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.

[carld]

I have to agree with HarryT. If you care about the IP rights of creative people this is not a good thing.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kacir

The border between downloading something copyrighted knowingly and unwittingly can be very hazy, and could be very difficult to prove.

In most cases it's perfectly clear. If you download the latest blockbuster movie from a bittorrent site, you know damned well that it it's not there with the permission of the copyright holder.

[sabredog]

Before this thread devolves into the usual argument, it is still worth considering that the big corporations simply do not want to change at all.

They employ legions of copyright troll lawyers and agencies at great expense. That money and the vast profits still being made would be best employed to make wholesale changes to how their respective businesses operate, bringing them into the digital era.

At the recent iiNet vs AFACT high court appeal here in Australia, one of the high court judges questioned why movies tickets are close to $30 and DVD's are still being sold for AU$30 when it costs nothing to download one. The lawyer for AFACT had no answer for that.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/281803...for-iinet.aspx

Delusional? Nope. I intensely dislike lying hypocrites and Bullshiteing about EVERY download is a lost sale does not come close to being part of a percentage of.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397173,00.asp

[kacir]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In most cases it's perfectly clear. If you download the latest blockbuster movie from a bittorrent site, you know damned well that it it's not there with the permission of the copyright holder.

Yes, that is true.
But even in this case you do not need the law to go after the downloaders. You need to go after uploaders and *everybody* who downloads file using bittorrent is automatically an uploader as well. The functionality is built into all torrent clients. You need to go after uploaders, but going after the original seeder (the first person who actually stole the movie) would be much, *much* more effective.

If you make it a law that downloading the copyrighted content is punishable by law, you are creating an ugly mess that can be very easily abused. It is true, the law could be used to battle what you call "piracy", but it would be much more effective to go after uploaders. Plus there would be complicate mess of proving that somebody acted in bad faith downloading something. What is even more important is, that laws that can be abused *will* be abused. Just have a look at how the anti-terrorist law got abused in Britain for seizing private property of individual citizens of Iceland during the last financial crash.

[Belfaborac]

As far as I'm aware (which admittedly might not be that far), all independent research on music piracy carried out to date has concluded that piracy either has no discernible effect on music sales, or does in fact have a positive effect. To a lesser extent this also applies to software piracy, where such has been lumped in with music piracy in some studies.

While there are certainly studies which conclude differently, all of them (or all which I have read/skimmed/glanced at/heard of) have been paid for by the MPAA, IFPI and/or other industry organisations. To my mind research paid for by an interested party should be automatically ignored as inherently untrustworthy, regardless of subject, which means that all empirical knowledge currently available concludes that piracy is either harmless or mildly beneficial.

Probably the first ever independent study was carried out by University of North Carolina, by Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf. The best known study was carried out by the University of London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research in 2006.

A 2009 study funded by Virgin Media again found that pirates buy more music than non-pirates, echoing a similar study from the same year by the BI Norwegian School of Management which found that pirates bought up to ten times the amount of music compared to people who never used file sharing, torrent services or similar.

Finally a very interesting study titled "Media Piracy in Emerging Economies" was released earlier this year. This is a 440-page collaboration by social scientists from six countries and takes a much broader view, delving into causes, enforcement, policies and much more. Very well worth perusing if one is interested in the subject.

There are several more studies for which I've not bothered to supply links, but which ought to be readily available for the google-savvy. Notably a Swedish and a Spanish study, both independent.

Of course, whether music piracy is directly comparable to ebook piracy is an open question, as I'm not aware of any research at all dealing specifically with ebooks.

In any case it seems to me to be a consistent trend here, in that every new piece of independent research on the subject of piracy continues to come up with data negating the message spread by the MPAA, IFPI et al. While I don't think that necessarily makes piracy A-OK or that there's nothing more to debate, I do wish that the debate was grounded in the empirical knowledge that's available, rather than gut feeling and self interest.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Well, there's "Heidi". And the "Swiss Family Robinson." And, umm, Friedrich Duerrenmatt.

:-)

Isn't Celine Dion Swiss?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by kacir

You need to go after uploaders, but going after the original seeder (the first person who actually stole the movie) would be much, *much* more effective.

That is pretty much my view on it. Without the original uploader nothing else would happen, so that is where all the effort should be put. But instead of that we have corporations buying new laws to criminalise 25% of the online population and introduce collective punishment, as well as put the burden of proof on the accused rather than the accuser.

Originally Posted by kacir

Just have a look at how the anti-terrorist law got abused in Britain for seizing private property of individual citizens of Iceland during the last financial crash.

They have been abused in much worse ways than that.

[Greg Anos]

And for those with a sense of humor...

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-co...aign-111201/?_

Let's see...US statutory damages...Times how many discs....

Or maybe we just sue the unwitting buyers...