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Denmark Poised to Legalize Music Sharing
Cryogenes writes: "Denmark's minister of culture is pushing a law that will legalize private music sharing. This is a logical step for a small country that has no music exports anyway: by weakening copyright they are making their citizens richer without losing revenue. And what with Denmark being an EU member, nobody will dare call them a rogue state or something. Further information on infoanarchy and on Politiken (in danish)."
isn't this a beautiful irony.... I am fairly certain that Lars Ulrich of Metallica is originally from Denmark?
DENMARK: What happen???
MINISTER OF JUSTICE: Someone set up us the lawsuit.
MINISTER OF STATE: Main screen turn on.
DENMARK: It's you!!!
RIAA: How are you, Denmark?
All your tunes are belong to us.
You are on the way to embargo.
DENMARK: What you say?!!
RIAA: You have no chance negotiate make your settlement.
DENMARK: Move 'EU'. You know what you doing. For great MP3z!!
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
dinner: it's what's for beer
The post says they will compensate copyright holders with a 60 cent CD-R tax.
How well would that go over in the US?
Imagine RIAA members getting 60 cents everytime you backed up your por^H^H^H hard drive.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
...Big Swedish music exports include Abba, Ace of Base, Roxette...
...and as a result, Sweden is now classified as an exporter of weapons of mass destruction.
;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
What about Aqua? It says "music" ;-)
Cheers,
Tim (ducking and running...)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Actually, there are those of us here in the UK who don't think that it's a very good idea at all, given the dangers of it starting another arms race.
After all, if you had been relying on your nukes to keep you "safe" in a "they'll never attack, it would be suicide" sort of way, then someone deployed a system to neutralise that "safety", wouldn't you try to reestablish the balance?
Still, this is a discussion for another time, methinks - we don't want to go to far Offtopic, do we?
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Well, its nice to see the Danish government wants to allow file sharing - and they're allowing it by taxing writeable CDs.
This isn't a victory for file sharing.
At best, the CD tax is just a throwaway "shut up and take it" measure. At worse, however, it is the start of the idea of enforcing profits. Either way, it sets a dangerous precident.
This is a tradeoff - taxes on specific media sent right to copyright holders so people don't get harassed or arrested for sharing files.
If something like this was tried in the United States, companies would demand taxes on everything - disks, videotapes, audiotapes, photocopier use, etc. It'd be used as nothing more to funnel money to them - enforced profits.
Let's hope Denmark's idea DOESN'T catch on.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Hi
;)
Being Danish, I feel I must make a few comments here.
Currently, it's illegal to make a personal copy of a CD. Say, one for the car and one for the living room. I think this also includes MP3's, but the laws are hopelessly outdated. (Actually, it's illegal to make exact digital copies. If you run your CD through a Digital-to-Analog-to-Digital converter, you should technically be OK.)
The new law (in the making) suggests that it should be legal to make digital copies for personal use. Second generation copies (copy-of-a-copy) should not be legal, as a mean to avoid music piracy.
The artists should be reimbursed with funds coming from a new CDR-tax, of appr. $0.50 pr. disc[1]. (Good thing I just stockpiled 100 80 min. Kodaks, heh.
Of course, we copy stuff as crazy, so I don't see this being of much practical importance.
On a somewhat related note, this is the country that just ruled that *linking* to MP3's is illegal. Yes, two kids, 16 at the time of the "crime", had been having a competition of who could collect the most MP3's from their homepages. They weren't storing them, just linking to them. Just got a bill for about $15.000. Freedom of speech, anyone?
Bo
[1] I find this somewhat fscked up, as not all CDR's are used to pirate data. Granted, in reality, that's probably the vast majority, but take my friend for instance. He runs a small side-business (linuxpusher.dk) selling homeburned Linux-distros. If the new law comes through, he's going to be sending ~$100 away in taxes each month, for something he doesn't have anything to do with.
Don't forget that it's unreliable. As SMDI found, it's very easy to distord a signal so that the recognition fails, but without noticable effects to the human listening.
ala Amsterdam, though instead of hanging out in coffee bars getting stoned, they'll hang out in cyber-cafe's trading MP3s.
And when you get back to the States, Customs will go over your laptop and CDs with a fine tooth comb.
From the CDR Faq: Because of the media tax imposed by the Canadian government (see section (7-13)), you are allowed to copy any music for your own personal use. This means that you can go over to a friend's house and copy any number of discs you like, so long as they are for your own use. You are not allowed to make copies of music and then give them to others.
You can check the law yourself. The recording industry kinda skipped over this one. At least you get something for yet another miserable tax, er, levy. After all, just because a corporation doesn't LIKE something, doesn't make it ILLEGAL. What is illegal after all? The government is supposed to reflect the will of the people and the best interest of society, not the short term gain of the RIAA. (Especially if you're not IN America). That's why copyright is supposed to expire; why you have the right to parody and fair use; etc.
Now, does this apply to file sharing software? It hasn't been argued in court that I'm aware of, but perhaps it should be. After all, it's legal for me to copy cds that a friend has - why not their mp3 equivilants? Keeping mind of course, for personal use implies that there is no financial gain, which kinda hurts napster-like models. This might give some canadian users some power if they get hassled by their ISP for whatever.
..don't panic
It depends where "here" is. You could have been a bit more specific. What continent/country/county/state do you live in?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
depends on your definition of 'friend' I guess. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. the RIAA is my enemy. anyone who downloads music is RIAA's enemy. And damnit, the RIAA will never tell me who is, or isn't my friend :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Often when I look for a song nowadays its because it is no longer in stock (rare techno songs I listen to) so I search for it to hear for a few times. Other times I look for a song I may have heard and like, wanted to purchase but didn't know the title or the artist, again in future plans to buy the CD.
All the governments and companies are doing at this point is waisting money and arguing over spilled milk which never fell from their cup.
Why not create an AntiNapster based site where those artists concerned with theft of songs could enter their names into that database, and have those songs filtered. After all studies have shown that people who download mp3's end up buying the songs anyways. I'm sure once some of those artists start realizing how much their competition is making off the move, they'll get those dildos out of their asses and make that switch.
Ever notice how when things are "taboo" more people will sometimes seek it out with greater passion than they normally would if it were readily obtainable? Industry sparking all these "anti-mp3" issues dig their own coffin, and I wonder if they're too stupid to realize this, or are trying to prove a point to bolster their own egos, or company reputations.
Solution: Find a real life Tyler Durden and sic him on RIAA, and others like them.
Blogger is hazardous to your E-Health
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watch where you point that statement, boy... just because there's only a couple of hardcore black metal fans out there that buy their music from sweden, norway and denmark, doesn't mean it has NO music export.
If I have a CD and my buddy wants a copy, I can legally give him one (there's so court case that says it's okay, but I don't know where it is).
But that's a bit different then putting something online for anybody to grab. That's not really sharing with your friends, that's closer to distribution.
--
Free Mac Mini
You can read the lawproposal online at Forslag til lov om ændring af ophavsretsloven., it will help you if you understand danish, because there are no translations.
A quote: Forslaget indebærer, at der kun gives adgang til kopiering af tekst, musik og billeder m.v. i digital form til personlig brug f.eks. med henblik på optagelse af radio- og tv-udsendelser til tidsforskudt brug, kopiering af en musik-cd til bilen, til sommerhuset eller til en walkman, kopiering til en opsamlings-cd og kopiering til en pc med henblik på elektronisk afvikling inden for husstanden. Derimod vil det ikke være tilladt at fremstille digitale eksemplarer, der bruges uden for den enkelte husstand, f.eks. kopiering til bekendte og skolekammerater. Det vil heller ikke være tilladt for køberen af et digitalt leveret musikværk at videresende musikværket via e-mail til venner og bekendte. Kopiering til personlig brug omfatter endvidere ikke kopiering som led i arbejde eller undervisning.
A rough translation: The proposal implies that it only will be allowed to make copies of text, music and pictures and so forth, in digital form for personal use, for example the recording of radio- and tv-broadcasts for timeshifting, copying af music-cd's for the car, holidayresidence or for a walkman, copying of sample-cd's for use in the household. It will not be allowed to make digital copies, that will be used outside of the individual household, f.ex. copying for friends and schoolmates. It will further not be allowed for the buyer of a digital musicproduct to give away copies to to friends or aqaintances via email. Further copying for personal use does not imply copying related to work or studies.
So I don't see how this can legalize Napster, it will only decriminalize the downloading, but the users are not allowed to share their collection with the work, and isn't that the purpose of Napster?But at least it will be legal to use a Browser in Denmark now, because the existing law prohibits all digital copying, and as you all know, a browser allways makes digital copies, one in the RAM-cache and one on the disk-cache. That was an oversight in the old law, and it was never uphold.
"there's nothing rotten in the state of denmark"
It will be interesting to see how the RIAA reacts [if this laws passes], either by claiming that Denmark violates international law, or by trying to get .dk banned altogether, or both. Perhaps they will lobby to change the law in such a fashion that access to file sharing and MP3 sites / networks must be forbidden for foreigners.
Maybe the RIAA will advocate the US declare war on Denmark for threatening the dominance of american culture. Or try to ban the internet because it is such a threat to their way of life (greed)
In general, I like the fact that more and more major artisits are starting to side with the Napster side of the argument, seeing how the major labels are abusing the artists they say they are protecting.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
US while allowing China to pollute as much as it wants
Ohh the big evil China.. anything can be justified because of the Chinease - i seem to remember anything being justified becuase of the Russians at one point... americans are fucking sheep... get a clue - your media & government whip up a public hysteria about 'the enemy' anytime it wants to do something stupid - are you people that fucking dumb?
this has nothing to do with China or other polluters - it has to do with bush repaying the big companies who elected him buy not upsetting the status quo (for any reason - no matter how grave) just to protect their pocket books. They are allowed to rape and pillage the commons now - they make profit now - they like it this way.
Who are the twits who go along with the 'china is an economic adversary - we cannot let the chinese any advantage!" propaganda? Maybe you could petition the UN to ask China to *ALSO* join Kyoto. That would be a solution - not *DROPPING OUT* just to maintain your economic imperialism... fucking assholes.
America is a rogue state. It is not a Democracy but a Plutocracy. It should be expelled from all international bodies - the world should end trade, travel and co-operation with the USA until they democratically elect a government and remove the puppets with Big Corp. up their ass.
Like this guy? Pardon me while I stuff cheese in my ears.
He is (probably unwillinigly) today's Cruel Site of the Day.
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Yes, the nick is flamebait