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Finland Adopts New Copyright Legislation
Anonymous Coward writes "Finland has adopted European Union Copyright Directive with new changes to its national legislation, giving Finland one of the most record label friendly pieces of legislation in Europe. The article has a good summary of the new law's changes to the old, rather flexible legislation."
More information here:t ml
http://www.effi.org/tekijanoikeus/laki/index.en.h
Possession of tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. Even for personal use.
So if some particular copy protection is totally shitty and is defeated by common items, those common items suddenly become contraband?
two of my favorite artists are from finland, Amorphis and Nightwish
Well, I'm afraid what you suffer from isn't overpolicing, but liars, maniacs and incompetents in uniform, and a weak-kneed government unable or unwilling to do what's needed.
Well, the real problem is the so-called "good" cops are too wrapped up in the buddy system to oust the idiots and lunatics, and too busy making excuses for them.
I've always been of the opinion that, because of the powers police have, they ought to serve double-time upon conviction of an offense. Police just too easily fall into the "us-vs-them" mentality, and only extraordinarily harsh laws forcing them to give up the bad apples and walk the straight line themselves will do. Every police officer involved in the murder of that Brazilian ought to rot in ahole for a decade, and each forfeit all pensions and assets to the family.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nightwish, HIM, 69 Eyes, Poisonblack ...
Great goth rock over there :)
Economic powerhouse? Doesn't seem that way. Bigger governments encompassing bigger populations tend to hurt their economies in the long run with tariffs, regulations, crony favoritism and inflation.
I don't expect any successes with the EU, except for the pocket books of those with clout.
Are you trolling? Finland has lots of bands that play excellent music, especially heavy metal, though I'm not sure whether they are well-known outside Europe. See Category:Finnish musical groups and Category:Finnish heavy metal musical groups.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
As a Finn, I have always taken pride in our country - even though we don't have things like the Bill of Rights, we have our fundamental rights, and our copyright legislation isn't at least as horrible as the DMCA. Well, that has now changed. Finland has enjoyed #1 position in international competitiveness ratings and has been considered a vanguard of the spearhead of information age societies, but this piece of legislation has now set us back years, nay, perhaps even decades.
What wrenches my gut is that despite Finland's top rating when it comes to low corruption, shenaniganry in creating and passing this piece of legislation has been plentiful. The law was prepared in the Ministries of Culture and Education in close rapport with people who work for the very organisations that lobby for stricter controls on what citizens can do with the things they have bought. When sixty-six expert statements were collected on the law, only one was from a consumer-oriented organisation, that being EFFI.
Its passing was surrounded by nothing but smoke and mirrors, with misleading statements based on intentionally erroneus interpretations of the already-muddy law by its supporters. And finally when a demonstration was arranged in front of the Parliamentary building on Tuesday, when the bill was discussed for the very last time, a representative of a musicians' organisation was put on the wires stating the demonstrators' cry for free speech was tarnishing the concept for free speech because the demonstrators just want to download songs in its name. This while behind him people were touting DeCSS signs and spreading out short DeCSS programmes on flyers with the text "distributing this flyer will become illegal".
Not to mention the EEA statute, which makes distributing works not published in the European Economic Area illegal in the EEA, unless they have been acquired for personal use. No more import manga from stores if the publisher overseas decides that the market in Finland is too small.
Well, now there's a galvanised group of a few hundred people who are just really pissed off. We're already setting up forums for "organised discussion" and thinking up ways to turn ourselves in en masse to swamp the system. The Parliament has made an initial decision to modify the law later on, but until then, we'll have to just suck it up.
And guess who used her authority to press the bill through no matter what? The Minister of Culture, a former Miss Finland, whose only merit in getting into Parliament was that she was Miss Finland, and whose only merit in getting into the Ministry was that she raked in so many votes. No, I didn't vote for her.
Finally, what comes to the EU directive garbage, it was just an attempt to deflect blame by the Government. There is only an alleged record of a single EU official stating how tightly the EUCD should be implemented. Finland now has the strictest EUCD implementation in existence. Greece implemented it with most of the stupid parts axed out; a French court has now declared that copy protection (more like "use restriction") has no protection of law. DVD area codes are illegal in Belgium. The only thing the EU directive argument served was the populist and anti-EU True Finns party.
Oh FFS. I think I'll just move to Canada. Bonjour Monsieur, ca va bien, eh?
This nice piece of legislation also makes it illegal to import copyrighted material outside of the EC. For example, it is illegal to buy an anime DVD from Japan if the DVD in question isn't already being sold within the EC.
you can buy pot and you may carry up to 4 grams. In the rest of the EU it is forbidden.
Read, refresh, repeat.
Downloading mp3 from the internet or creating mp3 out of your own copy-protected cd, both are illegal acts. I dont really get the "anti"-piratism part of this law. Now you dont need to bother to buy the cd, you will be breaking the law anyway!
I forgot to mention that the youth organizations of nine different parties, i.e. all the significant parties from left to right were supporting the demonstration on Tuesday and opposing the new legislation. One could easily think that this extremely rare mutual agreement between youth organizations of parties with completely opposing political viewpoints would give the older (read: computer-illiterate) MPs a signal that there is something badly wrong with the new legislation. Did they get the hint? Obviously they didn't. Lobbyers 1 - Common sense & consumer rights 0.
Careful about telling people to read the whole document. They may flip out about Article 29(3): "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." Seriously, there was a lot of discussion about this in a previous story about the UN. WIPO, part of the UN, seems partial to DRM, so would Article 29 come into effect?
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
Under UK law they can arrest you for no reason, they can forcibly take blood, DNA and bodily fluid samples, that can hold you in a cell for several days (Blair is trying to make this weeks under the "terrorism" banner). All this was put into law in the 80s under the "criminal justice bill". A bill that also included arresting people standing around talking, and arresting anyone going to a "rave", or where they played "repetitive beat music".
Fortunately it isn't exercised, but it's blooming well there if any law enforcement wants to use it.
This page (in Finnish) has a list of crimes that have a maximum sentence of one year as a consequence of this legislation and for the sake of comparison other crimes with the same sentence (compiled a couple of days ago and AFAIK nothing changed this). A brief translation of the most important parts:
* Circumventing a copy-protection mechanism in order to copy the work or in a manner which "otherwise causes notable damage".
* Distributing/selling/renting/advertising a device for circumventing copy-protection mechanisms (a DeCSS shirt qualifies).
* Publishing a method for circumventing copy protection (such as pressing the shift-key).
And the maximum sentence is the same for...
* Insurance fraud.
* Breaching a restraining order.
* Prison escape.
* Using counterfeit money.
* Buying sex from a minor.
* Possession of child pornography.
This is seriously FUCKED!!! I have now decided that until this changes I won't buy a single fucking CD or DVD. If I can't get enough good free music legally or enough entertainment from television or the software I need as FOSS I'll live without it. Period.
It looks like it is a perfect time to sue some big retailer on the base of that law. He definitely sells DVD readers (tools for copyright protection violation) etc. Some big splash about suit in media can help to get attention to this law.
Enough? that's not even half of the entire list.
This completely changes how I will vote in the next presidential elections that will be held in 2006.
For example, I was going to vote for Heidi Hautala. But now that I saw how she voted FOR the new law, I decided that someone worth my trust is going to get my vote instead.
Internet really is a handy tool, it didn't take me long to find out how everyone voted.
Well we do have elected representatives in the EP. They lack power in notable areas in wich the unelected Council decides, something that the constitution was going to fix, but the French and the Dutch apparently didn't like parliamentary democracy.
And to the grand parent:
Bitching about bad Union legislation is one thing, but claiming that national legislation is doing a better job is just plain BS. Go and have a look in your legislation, I'm sure you will find a lot of strange stuff that has come solely from the national level.
And don't come and claim that the EU was sold as a pure economic union, the very nature of the Schuman Declaration 1950 suggested that the only real solution for ensuring peace and prosperity in Europe was to build a European federation.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"