Swiss Government Declares Downloading for Personal Use Legal

Switzerland for the win once again.

Swiss Government Declares Downloading for Personal Use Legal

The government of Switzerland has issued a statement declaring that it will not take action to alter current copyright laws allowing the downloading of music and movies for personal use. The statement is the result of a lengthy study conducted by the Swiss government into the impact of so-called “piracy” on the entertainment industry.

Switzerland’s findings are just the latest in a series of reports showing that the downloading of music and movies is far less harmful than the entertainment industry would have us believe. In July Douglas C. Merrill, formerly of Google and then EMI, one of the three main record labels, said in a keynote address that his research while at EMI showed that users of torrenting service LimeWire were among the best customers in the iTunes music store. Around the same time, Telepolis published a report (Google Translation) stating that users of the recently raided kino.to website tended to pay more at the box office than the average moviegoer. Meanwhile, another study conducted by Northwestern University (PDF) showed that users of peer-to-peer client software – i.e., BitTorrent users – bring in a substantial amount of money for the large ISPs.

While in the ``land of the free``, the MPAA writes a law that's about to destroy free speech on the internet and is based on the chinese model.

In Spain, it's the same thing... as long as you don't make a cent from the downloads, it's all legal.

It's nice so see some intelligence being used for once.

I don't see a problem downloading for personal use.

Hopefully more countries will follow with these types of decisions.

So if i rent a VPN/Seed Box based in Sweden, am i still committing a crime?, or can i also be arrested for smuggling stolen goods across international borders?

reply to post by Ixtab

No, because downloading is not theft. No 2nd.

Hell yea!!

Moving to Switzerland.....

thanks V..

glad to see some sanity left in this world..

Well, even Obama can't come up with a whopper the world will believe for declaring the Swiss to be enemies, so I imagine they'll get away with this. lol....

It's real nice to see that not every nation is lock-step with the program everyone else is following. That is the kind of diversity we need more of.

As how it should be, it's not 'Stealing' as you are not taking physical property,

if you contemplate it within a wider space,

Example: a mate walks into a store, buys bread, walks out and hands you a slice, you didn't pay for so it's theft? that happens daily, i believe the terminology is 'Sharing'

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


I get that, but the crooks in Hollywood dont. Nor do the dumb as hell politicians they bribe in government get it either.

reply to post by Ixtab

Oh, I think they get it. But they get the idea of free money even better

Originally posted by Darth_Prime

Example: a mate walks into a store, buys bread, walks out and hands you a slice, you didn't pay for so it's theft? that happens daily, i believe the terminology is 'Sharing'

Except that in your example the bread is limited and can only be shared among so many people before another loaf has to be bought.

Digital sharing has no such limitation.

In theory, an artist could sell a single album which could be shared 6 billion times and everyone has a copy and only one sale was ever made.

I won't sit here and defend the actions of the corporations because they overreach like all hell; but neither will I sit here and defend the countless amounts of piracy. It may not be "theft" but you are taking something for free that would otherwise have cost you money.

reply to post by eNumbra


Your argument rests on the presumption everyone who downloaded it would have otherwise purchased it if digitally cloning it was not an option.

BUT OF COURSE!

Anyone can argue piracy etc all day long.

Originally posted by Ixtab
reply to post by eNumbra

 

Your argument rests on the presumption everyone who downloaded it would have otherwise purchased it if digitally cloning it was not an option.

BUT OF COURSE!

Anyone can argue piracy etc all day long.

Not all of them no, but there are plenty out there who pirate because they can. Why buy when you don't have to?

Like I said, it's a grey area somewhere between "theft" and "non-theft"

Finally a government that gets the big picture

(pun intended)

reply to post by eNumbra

In theory, an artist could sell a single album which could be shared 6 billion times and everyone has a copy and only one sale was ever made.

Well in theory if I had an album and 6 billion people down loaded it and 1 billion went out and got a good copy of it at $10 each on a CD I don't think there is a signal artist in the world that would not go for that.

Most songs down loaded are crap quality so there is till a market out for good sounding music same goes for movies, crap down load and then go out and buy a good blue ray.

That's what it's like.

10 th line

reply to post by Vitchilo


YES! ...It used to be legal in Canada too, but then the laws got changed to benefit the 1%.

Good catch, good news. Thanks. S&F

Originally posted by jsettica
reply to post by eNumbra

 

Well in theory if I had an album and 6 billion people down loaded it and 1 billion went out and got a good copy of it at $10 each on a CD I don't think there is a signal artist in the world that would not go for that.

Most songs down loaded are crap quality so there is till a market out for good sounding music same goes for movies, crap down load and then go out and buy a good blue ray.

That's what it's like.

10 th line

Do you actually download? It takes a little bit of work but it's not difficult to find CD quality music and full Blu-Ray rips on torrent networks. Not to mention that Artists make relatively little from CD sales, the majority of that goes to the labels.

Not sure why I have to point that out though. My example wasn't about how sharing rips off the artist, it was about how sharing a loaf of bread and sharing digital content are not the same.

The only thing CDs are good for is as hard-copy originals, I can just as easily get an album and burn it straight to a blank CD. How often does anyone here listen to music through high enough quality sound systems to hear the minute differences between audio codecs?

Suprisingly the US is not far behind -

(US) Supreme Court Legalizes Downloading Music - 2011

The origional case was filed in 2010, and after intially losing ASCAP appealed it, and lost a second time.

The United State Supreme Court has refused an appeal that would have made downloading music an infringement of federal copyright law. Take that, Metallica!

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP, had been attempting to appeal to the Supreme Court an early ruling by an appeals court in New York that said that a downloaded song constituted a public performance of the song under federal copyright law. Attorneys for ASCAP were fighting to reverse that decision in hopes that they'd be able to collect additional royalties off of songs downloaded from the Web.

...........

According to the appeals court, "Music is neither recited, rendered, nor played when a recording (electronic or otherwise) is simply delivered to a potential listener." US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli agreed with the appeals ruling and that just because a song was transferred over the Internet did not mean that it was being performed, reports Reuters.

Switzerland was always weird in my opinion. Being politicaly neutral all the time, since the 1st world war. Hitler used to go there on summer vacation, at the hights of the 2nd WW! They wud have the best smiles on their faces, all of them, Hitler, his staffs + their family. But the NAZI's never annexed it! Why?

It might be caused by Switzerland's geography though, all montain range + lack of natural resources. But again it is still odd IMHO.

They have the world famous "swiss army knife" although they dont posses any army. But the guys guarding Vatican are called "the swiss guard". Not to mention the also world famous Swiss banks. Dont u think they might serve the purpose being the central seat of TPTB? Just wondering.

I was never been in the Switzerland myself, but i have a far uncle living there. I also once saw a recent video about the Swiss, and the people living there gave me the impresion being quite insecure. They wont talk to someone on the street, almost avoiding any form of contact. I guess it comes from the communication isolations, being devided in german, french and italian, they use as formal everyday language. And being land locked too?

I also highly suspect the Luxembourgh being an important seat of TPTB, being the financial centrum of mainland Europe and stuff. And those tiny obscure so called "micronations". Why didnt they get annexed in the past, by larger powers neighbouring them?

Sorry for being way OOT, kudos.

I think of it as "Try before you buy".

If I had not downloaded some of the movies, and instead bought them just off the blurb on the back, I would have been returning them and demanding my money back.

Originally posted by Vitchilo

While in the ``land of the free``, the MPAA writes a law that's about to destroy free speech on the internet and is based on the chinese model.

Speaking of the "land of the free", why does it seem that the more one looks into it, the more one can discover that this "land of the free" seems to have among the LEAST freedom in the world...

"Land of the free" applies no longer to the common citizen thats for certain. It applies only to those of wealth and power in this country.