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Sweden Bans Copyrighted Downloading
Xiar Prime writes "Swedish lawmakers have made downloading of copyrighted material illegal, one day after an 11-nation piracy crackdown. Prior to the passing of the law, it was only illegal to provide copyrighted material, not download it." From the article: " The law was drawn up to bring Sweden into line with EU directives and is also part of a wider crackdown on net piracy. It comes a day after the US Attorney General's office announced an 11-nation operation to catch and shut down net piracy groups."
This all comes down to being a stakes game. Are the rewards worth the consequences? I honestly feel examples are going to have to be made with *severe* penalties. I recently heard on National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/ one county was raising the fine for littering from $1,000 to $10,000! It may seem ludicrous, but I bet you one thing -- Mr Trucker is going to think twice about throwing that cigarette butt out the window. Same holds true for Piracy... make the penalties so severe that nobody in their right mind will want to partake.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Our rights as consumers are dying.
RIP fair use.
I've been under the impression that downloading something in the US is not illegal, only uploading (providing it to someone else). Lots of people seem to think otherwise, but I've never seen any spesific laws that ban this.
What's the status in the US?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's a ban on downloading unauthorized copyright materials. Based on the title, you'd think that in some late night drinking spree, the Swedish legislators just said "if it has (C) anywhere near it, ban it." If the title were true, it'd really suck because then Swedes wouldn't be able to even look at any webpage because the Berne Convention (I assume y'all are a signatory nation) gives every work a copyright even if it's not officially registered.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Strange, how will they surf the net then? Does it mean the swedes are forced to use public domain only websites?
- These characters were randomly selected.
Isn't everything copyrighted? And what if they payed the copyright owner for license to it?
We are sensible up here. However, this is all thanks to the EU.
Fuck you.
ATTENTION: Anonymous Coward.
You may no longer post on Slashdot. As you will note in TFA, it is a law that applies only to music, games and videos.
As we have a blanket opposition to posting "unfounded" material (and not just "founded material which does derive from a downloading of the available article"), you may not post on Slashdot again.
More to the point, using the word "piracy" is empty rhetoric that has no place in reputable newsreporting. The last time I checked the U.S. Code, "piracy" is a crime punishable by death (for air piracy; sea piracy is punishable by life imprisonment).
Why don't we just call file sharers "child rapists" with some equally strained analogy?
(The term "piracy" is used in some patent court decisions, true, but that's hardly an excuse.)
With great power comes great fan noise.
The topic is brain dead.
The law just disallow unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It's even better than that; swedish law (PUL) forbids any registering of IP addresses if the suspected crime isn't serious enough to render a prison sentence if caught.
This effectively means that the small scale pirate copying that most people do on DC++ etc (which not even in theory can get you in prison) isn't even possible to investigate.
This is a pure bullshit law, and everyone knows it.
Apparently these folks are unaware that everytime you download a webpage and its graphics you are using copyrighted material.
Thats the big hole in all this piracy house of mirrors. Songs and movies are not the only copyrighted material "downloaded" on the internet.
I wonder if this makes my web browser cache illegal?
Interestingly, the article made no distinction between legal and illegal downloads of copywritten material. Is this just poor journalism, or has Sweden actually outlawed sites like the Swedish iTunes Music Store that allow users to legally download music? It would be interesting to see how such sales are doing in a country with such rampant piracy.
Then I feel sad for you, your sales are not going to be what they could be.
You see it is a truism in ALL publishing industries that free copies = PROFIT! (and yes, it actually is presented that way).
How do music companies get people to buy CDs? They play tracks FREE on radio stations and music TV.
How do new TV shows get viewers (and therefore advertising dollars)? They play FREE CLIPS as commercials.
How do book authors get publicity for their book? They give FREE COPIES to reviewers and libraries.
How do video game producers get people to buy the game? They show FREE SCREEN SHOTS on TV and give FREE COPIES to gamer magazines/sites.
The simple fact of hostory from ALL publishing fields is that word-of-mouth sales, especially if you produce GOOD product. Hell, I personally own SEVEN copies of "Necroscope" by Brian Lumley...a book I original read FOR FREE at the public library!
And here I am speaking from personal experience in more than one way. I write books for a living, you see. A while back I decided to perform an experiment, and uploaded one of my older titles to the internet via BitTorrent. I did so after sales had slumped to (essentially) nonexistent.
Guess what happened? Yep, that's right. Sales went up for the next three months.
To the highest they had EVER been.
I even got several e-mails from folks stating that they had downloaded my book illegally, and liked it so much that they decided to buy it and tell their friends about it.
So by your logic (the "logic" of the **AA control-freaks), I should sue these people for thousands of dollars...for giving me money and advertising I would not otherwise have.