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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."
Analyzers of this law has deemed it to be pretty toothless against piracy. The police themselves has announced that copyright crimes wont be prioritised. It's not even clear if they will investigate things further on invidual downloaders/filesharers since they consider this a crime which will not be a jailable offence. Most likely a smaller fee like for speeding or parking ticket. But we'll see what the antipiracy groups comes up with before we know anything for sure.
You mean I wasted my time learning Swedish?!
I dont think that $10000 fines for throwing cigarettes is the right way to go. Just as much as fining 14 year old girls for double that amount for downloading or sharing Britney Spears latest album.
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.
ATTENTION: People of Sweden.
You may no longer download the Linux kernel. As you will note in all the file headers, it is Copyright (C) Linus Torvalds and many others.
As you have a blanket prohibition on downloading "copyrighted" material (and not just "copyrighted material which does not permit you to download it or make it available for downloading"), you may not download the Linux kernel.
i hope that osama guy starts using BitTorrent soon so we can actually catch his @ss and put him down...
Yarrr, maties... now when one of us walks the plank, the whole crew goes to Davy Jones' locker. Yarrrr.
Or, however that would go in Swedish.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The law speciefies that the copyright holder must give the permission. Thus reading newspapers is entirely legal since we've got a "responsible publisher" of the newspaper. However, downloading the newspapers unpublished newsarticles is not. It's a method to protect their copyright.
Bork! Bork! Bork!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
A cøpyright nøtice ønce bit my sister...
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It's good to see you have your prioirties right. Punish copyright infringement more harshly than murder or armed robbery!
Seems the world is headed toward imprisoning people for stealing a SLICE of bread, much less the whole loaf. Les Miserables for the new generation...
You are wrong. I've seen that raising fines or penalties doesn't lower the crimes. What lower the crimes is when you know that you are going to be caught regardless. If you know there is a big posibility of nothing happening to you, then you will do anything that is ilegal. If every crime is being punished and nobody is learning not to do it, then you can raise the fine/penalty.
Before we go to such extreme measures, don't you think we should have a national debate on the right balance between citizens and copyright holders?
It looks to me that we're developing a hodge-podge of copyright/patent laws that has no policy thought and is simply a collection of knee-jerk reactions to what's news this week.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The bill also raised the tax per blank 700 MB CD-R to 24 cents a disc (I assume in Euros, not USD). I thought the idea of these taxes was to pay the *AAs for piracy?
There's a trick in U.S. laws regarding this. If they can't get you one way, they'll get you another. So if you aren't nailed for distribution of copyrighted material, you'll get nailed for possession of stolen goods. Hell, go ahead and really piss of the DA and they'll slap a terrorist label on your forehead.
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.
You know, that's exactly the right idea. Just like how the death penalty makes people think twice about murdering. In fact, if there was the death penalty for littering, I think people would think thrice. Why, we could make all laws (including the civil ones) end in death penalty. I mean, sure it's ludicrous. But not only do we get rid of all the criminals who dare step out of line, we also simplify the legal code and instill that sort of fear necessary to insure only the insane will ever be put to death--I mean, it'd be insanity to jaywalk if you knew the penalty was death.
Yep, that'd be a great legal system. Iran and Saudi Arabia are two countries which, AFAIK, are closest to this ideal. But they still have a lot of rules that don't involve execution. Well, here's hoping Sweden (and the US) moves towards the great and practical ideals that Iran is closer towards.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I'm disappointed that BBC calls downloaders pirates. The term "pirate" when applied to copyright infringement first appeared to denote publishers who didn't pay the authors. They were likened to high sea pirates because they intercepted some of the money that the author could have received, like pirates who intercept goods in transit. Those who bought books from "pirates" were not called "pirates". To continue this analogy, only uploaders but not downloaders could be called "pirates" because it's they who competes with the original publisher. Of course, it would still be an overkill to liken an occasional file sharer to a publisher who did business on someone else's work.
I absolutely diagree with you on this!
As a general rule, the idea of charging people fines is a terrible way to punish the breaking of minor laws. I can't really speak for other nations, but in the U.S. - I see fines being levied as tax collection tools more than for any real interest in stopping the crimes they claim to help stop.
Where I live, you can almost tell how small a municipality is by how often you see the police sitting in one of the same sneaky places, spending most of the day looking for speeders. Larger municipalities with a bigger tax base don't *need* to pressure their police to hand out so many traffic tickets. They typically have more important things to do with their time.
The typical fine only punishes the poor. If you make enough money, paying a fine because you parked your car in a much more convenient place that happened to be a "no parking" zone is probably no big deal. Send off the money order and you're done. Might have been well worth the price of the ticket, really.
Nonetheless, making fines so high that even the rich get "punished" just makes it *impossible* for the poor to pay them - and that makes no sense either.
Crimes of "convenience" such as littering are going to happen whether the fine is $25 or $25,000. As another poster said, it's all about the would-be litterer's confidence level in not getting caught. In the case of littering, it only takes a split second to throw something out a car window - and especially at night, people probably won't ever see that you did it.
What would be better, IMHO, is in lieu of fines, order these people to perform community service. Make them pick up litter for a couple weekends. (Right now, we've got all these "adopt a highway" programs with volunteers - but seems unnecessary if you could make the people doing the littering do the cleanup instead.)
The standard penalty for murder in the UK is life in prison, which usually (with parole) works out at 15-20 years or thereabouts. In the US, it can be a longer jail term, or sometimes, death. The murder rate in the US is higher than the UK, which suggests that higher penalties don't work (or of course that there is another, more important factor in this case).
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Someone stole my bike, the police didn't even care. Are you telling me that music is more important than my transportation which cost me several hundred dollars? Get your damn priorities straight.
There is an additional point everyone should be aware of, since it concerns not only Swedish citizens, but most Europeans (more or less the same rules will be law in all EU countries during the coming years):
What really happens under the new law is actually hanging upon two earlier cases; one regarding UPloading (filesharing of one Swedish movie) and one case regarding Swedish law on databases containing personal data.
* The first case (a guy who is charged with uploading a movie) will decide the graveness of the crime. It's not yet decided by court whether he will be fined, or whether he will end up in jail.
If he gets the maximum jail sentence of two years (which he may well get, since it will be suspended anyway), the Swedish police authorities will have the right to search the premises of everyone that's suspected of a similar crime.
The results of such a search (the content of hard disks, CD's and so on) can be used for further charges against other persons.
* The second case is the charge (from several thousand people) against the Swedish "Anti-Piracy Bureau" (an organisation of large copyright holders, record companies and so on) that their continuing datamining - automatic searching for up- and downloaders - is against Swedish law.
The regulatory body, "Datainspektionen", has already decided that this activity is against the law, but of course this decision has been appealed.
In the worst case scenario, filesharing of un-authorized material (and we're not necessarily talking syndicated crime here, but basically the average user!) will be considered a rather grave felony.
In the best case scenario (of course, this depends on whether you're a regular user or a record company), filesharing will be considered a misdemeanor, more or less like speeding. Not allowed, but nothing that will destroy your life.
The basic problem - Angloamerican "copyright" vs. Swedish "upphovsrätt" is to complicated to even think about this late at night. This will prove to be a real hornet's nest...
Raising penalties to an unreasonable level can have lots of effects.
1) It could make people less likely to commit the act.
2) It could make people lose respect for the law against the activity being punished.
3) It could make law enforcement officers hesitant to actually inflict the punishment. In the case of littering that you describe, it's gone from a stiff, "that'll l'arn 'im" fine to an unreasonable fine that could be financially ruinous to just about anyone. If I were a cop, and I was pulling someone over for littering in that county, nothing short of driving a Lamborghini would keep me from letting the guy off with a warning.
Same goes for file sharing. The fines for copyright infringement are already so high that a serious violator can end up owing more than their state of origin is worth. But people keep doing it, because the reward is great (free music), the harm to artists seems miniscule, and the likelihood of getting caught is zero in most peoples' minds.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Take means to get into ones possesion.
Take means to remove an item from one position to another.
He took home the book from the library (the library is now deprived of a book)
She takes a poster from the pile (the pile of posters is now smaller)
Copy means to duplicate something
He copied the pages of interest from the library book (the library book remains unaltered)
She photographed the poster on the wall (the poster still remains on the wall)
(Excuse my druken grammar)