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Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing, Crypto Breaking?
Martin Kallisti writes "The Swedish Department of Justice has today proposed a bill to be put into effect, if it passes Parliament, on the 1st of January, 2004. It is in accordance to EU directives, but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Furthermore, it will become illegal to break cryptos, circumvent copy protection (mod chips et al), copy books, and as I understand it, use software that is designed to help with any of these tasks, and many other things." An anonymous reader points to an English-language article about this Swedish EUCD proposal, which also mentions a hefty $4 levy on blank digital media such as CD-ROMs.
Man and I thought the DMCA was bad. This law is just ridiculus. If sweden has any free speech rights in their constitution I doubt ths law will be enforcable. Does this law really have any support?
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Well I don't think this will do much. It's like when the US outlawed the selling of Alcohol. People continued to buy it, just illegally. It will be the same here, just with file sharing instead of alcohol.
This isn't going to affect Swedish porn is it?
My Blog
but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder
How do you KNOW if what you're downloading is copyrighted or not and whether or not you have permission. For instance, variouis sites have ripped off Slashdot's icons, which I believe are copyrighted by OSDN and/or Rob Malda.
By accessing the above link, you are downloading copryighted material without the permission of the author.
My journal has hot
And there'll be file sharing barons who'll send you your Britney Spears audio tracks in an iPod stashed in a bowling ball that rolls through a series of underground tunnels, with the authorities none the wiser
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
there is no possible way for them to enforce this.Even if they did I could imagine the headline... 1/3 of population rounded up in latest crackdown on downloading.... story at 11
This can't be true. All the draconian IP laws come from the US. The MPAA and RIAA come from the US. The DMCA and UCITA are US laws. Microsoft and its DRM partners are all lcoated in the US. Alan Cox is boycotting the US. Every few weeks some random Slashdot poster threatens to emigrate from the US to preserve their dwindling freedoms.
But this is Sweden! As with all non-US nations, it's a socialist paradise of digital liberty. Is Holland going to criminalize marijuana next? Either this is April 1st in the Mayan Calendar or this must be a transcription error...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
$4 is awfully expensive for a per cd levy. The levy is 40 times what one would reasonably expect to pay for the media. If anything, this will simply cause the black market for blank media to explode. I'm already opposed to such levys, since this assumes that the only possible use of the media would be for piracy. From what I can tell, the only effect this legislation will be to elimante all IT from Sweden, since backups will be prohibitively expensive. Immagine trying to backup a 4TB database. Even backing up to 8GB tapes, at $4/tape it works out to $2048 per backup, plus the pre-tax cost of the tapes. Of course, I haven't even touched on the myriad of other issues this type of legislation brings with it, since I'm sure others will do so. This legislation is rediculous. I can only hope that the $4/cd addendum was attached so as to prevent this from passing.
Note: IANAROS (I Am Not A Resident Of Sweden)
There's no sig like SIGSEG
Freedom of speech is regarded by European governments as an important component of civil government, but they don't worship at it's throne like US Citizens regard the First Amendment.
It won't prevent pirating, I think the fact that the law doesn't address *use* is a concession to that point. It seems that they rather seek to prevent pirating from becoming a European industry. I think this is analogous to US laws against gambling, where they still exist.
IANAL, but in Texas, the law against playing poker for money actually makes the *house cut* illegal. I think the lawmakers conceded the point that people were still going to play poker, they just wanted to prevent it from becoming an industry.
The best way to do is to be.
Don't pirate anything, AND pay for not pirating anything.
Greedy and ridiculous.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
What a great idea! Imagine, indie bands having to pay $4 per blank CD for the privilege of recording their own original music without a label. The competition might eat into corporate-music profits, after all, so it must be piracy and the majors should be reimbursed somehow! [We all know that the reason for the RIAA's declining sales couldn't possibly have anything to do with their elimination of the single format or statements comparing Eminem to Sinatra.]
I also like the opportunity to inderectly pay the operating expenses of a large software company, whose products I utterly refuse to purchase or use, for the privilege of creating and maintaining bootable CDs for my Linux installation.
Way to go, Sweden!
Has anyone else noticed that Swedes are the some of the best file-sharers in the world? It's largely because they have such awesome upload caps, typically much higher than other European broadband, and maybe 10X that of standard North American DSL. If this turns out to be enforceable, expect online filesharing to get noticeably worse.
The EUCD was supposed to be a law in all European Union member countries already by last December. That is after each parliament had two years to pass the law. As far as I know, only two or three EU member nations have modified their laws to comply with the EUCD.
On the other hand, sooner or later the national laws must be passed. I personally wish that at least one EU member would refuse to implement the law so that the issue would be brought back to the EU parliament.
After the fall of Soviet Union, EU became the new safe haven for bureucrates so it's really hard to say how the EUCD situation will develop due to lobbying and politics. What is clear, however, is that most of the national parliaments have not been all that happy with many regulations the EUCD is trying to enforce. I hope that the Swedish parliament will protect its citizens from this legislation that goes way over any reasonable balance.
I have said it in the past and the same logic still pops into my mind.
How can a government body justify making honest people pay for "assumed criminal activity." When do they start adding cost to paper because someone might attempt to use it in counterfeiting?
If it's criminalized to use P2P networks, then it is unfair to charge more for media to "compensate" for criminal acts assumed to be occuring without proof and due process. I can see one act or the other, but not both.
Frankly, the act of purchasing CD media and being charged enormous prices because of assumed criminal use, then it should then be LEGAL for me to put anything on it -- legal or otherwise since I have paid for the right, in advance, to do something illegal. In effect, it's double jeopardy -- punished before the fact and then to be punished again, for the same crime if caught.
I have no idea what recourse EU-folk have against this, but I hope it can be stopped.
It says here that Swedish law currently includes a meatier fair use exception to copyright law than, say, US law; anyone can make one copy of a copyrighted work for personal use (computer software excepted). If this is right, then this new proposal is maybe even more surprising than it appears at first glance.
This post is dedicated to all of those
Laws, laws, laws. When your business is failing, laws. When your prices are too high, laws. When you're exposed for the fraud you are, laws. Laws are supposed to ensure the safety and security of folks within a society. This round of DMCA-style laws is just the latest in series of laws designed to ensure that the few on top remain on top. Those who enact the strictest and most ridiculous laws simply hasten their own demise. The issue of copyrights will become an election-decider within two to four years. Folks like us who stay informed are the canaries in the mine shaft of laws. When those in charge get out of hand, we're the first to be alarmed, yet no one has taken notice since we started yelling about copyright abuses in 1999. What will make them take notice is when these broad, overbearing laws begin to affect a large portion of the population, thereby ensuring a backlash the likes of which copyright holders can hardly imagine.
I predict, on this day, that within 5 years, we will see the crippling or perhaps even the complete elimination of all copyright, patent, and trademark laws. Things will get worse, much worse, before they get better. But mind you, when things get rough, we must remember to continue getting the word out to the uninformed masses while we wait for our revenge to fully take hold, that it may obliterate the copyright bastards of our time.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I hereby copyright this post. I expressly forbid these words from being read anywhere inside of Sweden.
Man I can't wait to see how many people end up in jail now.
"Derp de derp."
Asking them to clarify a few things.
It won't actually be as dreadful as the DMCA, since it will only be illegal to break a copyright protection system if you're going to make a copy, it won't be illegal to circumvent it to use it as it's meant to be used. I.e. watching a DVD movie on your linux computer using DeCSS to "break" the crypto won't be illegal.
Neither will these redicilous "region codes" be protected, they can still be legally circumvented.
Further, it won't be illegal to break the copyright protection system on these new "CD's", if you're only going to play them in your computer.
If anyone has any questions regarding this, just send them a well written e-mail, since they're very helpful and will answer all of your questions quite fast. (a few hours for mine) -L
Reading the /. blurb (and not the full article), doesn't that mean no one in Sweeden can then download my (freely available), yet copyrighted dissertation without asking my permission first? That's nuts.
First off, it's tied to the web, and unless I specify, anyone can download the PDF we deliver to the ETD project. I don't care who dowloads this crap.
Secondly, I don't want emails asking for my permission to download this, or anything else I work on, yet copyright.
Ugh, this RIAA/DRM/patent nonsense really makes me loathe working with computers now.
Back in the day, being asked to give a couple bucks to King George III for some tea caused quite an outrage. First there were tea boycotts. Then some guys dressed up like Mohawk Indians, boarded three ships and threw their tea into the harbor. Later guns started firing. Lots of people died. A new country was born. And we're all (those of us in the US) very proud of all this.
/. high crime. Fomenting an uncomfortable discussion. And that's just talking! God forbid anyone ever actually did anything!
All because of tea.
Now money that is spent on the media used to promote free communication should be taxed? Certain senators want to destroy people's computers? The US attorney general wants to circumvent the right to a fair trial? Blowing up Palistinian families, children and all, with US missles is "defense", but the impoverished occupied Palistinian nation's response is "terrorism"? Launching thousands and thousands of sorties, killing tens of thousands of unwilling soldiers to prevent "mass destruction" by weapons that cannot be found is not ironic? Our economy is a shambles. The rich are laughing. And our commander-in-chief wants to appoint this penis to the bench!
Osama bin Laden is free today. US citizens are not. And we would like the rest of the world to follow our lead. God bless Sweden for seeing the way. I'm Swedish. American. And pissed.
Flamebait? It's a
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
This law would effectively outlaw the Internet, which is based on the premise that it provides an infrastructure for moving data between consenting parties. In its place would be the presumption that moving data is illegal unless proven otherwise.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
You've apparently never heard of Fair Use.
You don't own the bits. You own a license to play the music on the CD, for your own personal use.
If you own the CD, you've already paid for the license to listen to its contents whenever you want, at your leisure.
Since you are legally allowed to make a back-up of said music, downloading an mp3 file someone else made, is the equivalent of skipping that process. You could just as well have a friend come over and rip the cd for you on your pc, the end result is the same. You wind up with a perfectly legal backup copy of a song, for which you've already paid.
As for your last comment, it's quite idiotic, and seems more like a deliberate flaimbate or trolling, so I won't respond to it.
If I OWN something, I can do whatever the fuck I want with it. Period.
If I OWN a system, and forget my password, but can use another system I own to crack it, no law can stipulate that I cannot do that.
-- This sig for rent.
In the US at least, this is quite wrong in the case of all media except for software. Here you are sold music and books, not licensed except for digital distribution, but even then I've yet to see a license agreement stuck in front of all but a few instances.
In the case of an audio CD, you own the bits itself. You can hand your CD to anyone else or sell it without contacting the copyright holder. You are restricted by law against copying it and using it in public performances.
More importantly, with a license the company handing you the media can restrict how you use copyrighted media. A record label can not mandate that you can only play a CD on weekends no more than a book publisher can say you can only read a book once.
One might argue that the government is issuing an implicit license for copyrighted media on behalf of the copyright holders, but even then the contract contains only things you can't do, not things you can.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
In fact, it actually widens some rights, for example, the right to copy digital materials to help disabled people and easing the process for schools to make digital copies of material. But alot of people read the article and got up in arms. *Rabble rabble rabble*. The real proposal from the Justice department (in Swedish):
Press release
Part 1 of the proposal
Part 2 and appendixes
This is from an article at Aftonbladet (swedish);
:-( The minister of justice even admits the law is created to spread fear (!). It's a very controversial law that judge people before they violate it (much like the discussed $4 CD fees) and I especially don't like how they seem to be willing to ban an entire software genre (P2P software). Amazing...
- It will still be allowed to make a "few" copies of CD/DVD's for personal use, and also to use VCR's and similar devices.
- You will only be allowed to copy parts of a book (right now, I suppose you can copy entire books), to prevent the large scale copying of those especially on universities.
- A quote from the swedish minister of justice: "We have not done this to meet the demands of the international movie and music companies. Ultimately, it is about preserving earlier views on copyrights, and when the technology evolves, so need the laws to do."
- The penalty for violating them by sending or receiving illegal copies on the internet will normally be fines. If it's about organized violations (read: warez groups, etc), the penalty can be prison for up to two years. The law will mostly be used to give copyright holders a right to demand compensation from the person violating the law.
- The swedish minister of justice hope that these laws will frighten people from using file sharing software. He admitted that the law will not get a high priority by the swedish judicial system, and continued: "It's not like the police will run into peoples' homes to look for these things. It is also obvious that some persons will continue, but that is not a reason to not do anything".
So it seems like this will be another low-priority law that won't be very enforced, which mostly just adds unnecessary complexity and "grey zones" to the judical system.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Consider the fact that VDSL is just rolling out in Sweden and that it is quite affordable. Imagine 26 mbits/sec for $40 euros a month. In fact, it's a much better deal than almost anywhere else. Especially Greece, where broadband will run you approximately 850 times as much.
Now what can someone legally do with that bandwidth under the new law? You guessed it. They can watch government-okayed programming channels and view government-okayed content. These are the websites that will have gone through some sort of copyright review and approval process.
With these new laws, the powers that be will have successfully turned the European internet into something resembling interactive television. The existing media lords are of course quite happy with the new laws as their sphere of control has been strengthened. And the existing governments are of course quite happy with the new laws as it gives them even more control over their respective populaces.
It's hard to say how the Swedish populace and the rest of Europe will react to these new laws. Most likely nothing significant will happen beyond a few protests. But as someone pointed out, sooner or later the government will put one too many chains of laws and taxes on the people and the people will start to exhibit some very interesting non-linear behaviors. As history has taught us, there is only one way to take liberties back from an oppressive government.
However, for the time being, we do know one thing for sure. Sweden's rank ranking on the "most corrupt governments list" is going to take a hit. And it's about time -- Sweden is the only country on record for filing criminal charges against a news company for second guessing URL's.
Being a Dane myself, I know that free speech is not that well integrated into Scandinavian constitutions. It is possible, however unlikely, that this completely outrageous violation might actually pass in Sweden. In Denmark, general taxes are already being levied on CD-Rs, which means that the government has to some extent sanctioned a reversal of the burden of evidence: as a user of blank media, you are assumed to be a criminal until you specifically sign a document guaranteeing you won't replicate copyrighted material. Personally, I'm still reeling from that one, but as this Swedish example points out, things might get a lot worse in Scandinavia.
Fortunately, as others have pointed out, free speech is a human right, and issues such as this may ultimately have to be resolved by the Human Rights Tribunal. Interestingly enough, the amount of Danish cases that are being referred to that particular institution is skyrocketing these years, which is good in a sense - people are aware that their rights are being violated. I just think it is infinitely sad that Scandinavian countries that have prevoiusly been shining examples of well-tuned democracies choose to shaft basic human rights For a Few Dollars More.
Hey. What if someone makes an *encrypted* P2P distribution application. It would be illegal for them to crack the encryption in the first place and obtain proof that you are indeed distributing illegal content.
Having seen too many "no more free speach in Sweden" quotes, I don't think the majority of slashdot users really know about the current laws in Sweden.
The laws PROTECT anyone downloading copyrighted material. ISPs are not allowed to snif or analyse your IP trafic. That means, if you set up a warez site at home and do >1 TB/month (yes TERAbyte), they cannot do anything (and the networks support this amount of trafic without being congested). Try that in other countries.
Broadband (10Mbs) connections are very common. No need to download movies to disk anymore, you can watch them on-the-fly =) Last summer, some CTO/CIO at one of the broadband companies sayd (can't remeber which one) "We think it's good thing that people use their broadband connections (read: download movies). Otherwise, we would not get as many subscribers, would we ?"
Also, the swedish police lack in funding and hardly investigate crimes anymore.
Being a first class computer geek and living in Sweden, i'm not worried at all.
There's three different issues here.
// hdw
1. It will become illegal to download material that have been made available in an illegal manner.
It's simply the law about recieving stolen goods applied to electronic media.
If it's illegal to make copyrighted material available for download, it's only logical that it's also illegal (albeit to a lesser extent) to download it.
The right to make private copies are made clearer and allows anyone to make backups or move material to another media for private use.
Including recording of TV, radio or other streaming media for private use.
2. The law makes it illegal to create and distribute tools for breaking copy protection and likewise to use such tools.
It does _not_ outlaw generic crypto tools, just tools used to bypass copy protection.
This will not make it illegal to backup your DVD, but you can't rip it, recode it and store it in another format.
It will make it illegal to decode encrypted DVDs using anything else than the tools blessed by the copyright holder.
But that's a commercial decision taken by the DVD distributors.
3. The levy on recordable media has been there for ages, it has been extended to cover new forms of media.
It's intented to cover the _legal_ copying, like recording streaming media.
Executive Pope (small) Kallisti Engineering