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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."
It seems the entire world is now a plutocracy, with all nations' laws up for the highest bidder.
Are there any legitimate governments (not owned by the MNCs) left at all?
It seems Finland is as bad or worse than my own (US) government. Very sad.
I wonder if they were thinking of online forums and such. Unless they want to buy a piece of the Great Firewall of China, thats a worthless piece of legislation. Even if they did find a way to block forums based in other countries, how will they control IRC/IM?
This is ridiculous, politicians need to quit palying with the pretty colored fire.
Actually smoking pot, I believe, is still illegal in Finland. Nonetheless your point is well taken. With actions and speech being illegal as long as it is related to music is not music to any ear.
More like you can't trust the EU.
The EU was sold to us as an economic union. Then we were told we needed a constitution. That the EU would guard our basic rights.
Well, thanks a lot you bastards. Thanks a lot for the corruption and injustice you've brought with you. Seems like old Finnish legislation was doing a better job until your directives forced it to change. I weep for the future.
The EU as an economic powerhouse could be a great thing. The EU as a source of bad legislation is a recipe for disaster.
My Sig: SEGV
Why would it make you, as an American (or so you claim), glad that the freedom of the citizens of another nation have been eroded? A true American, one who actually believes in the ideals of freedom and liberty expressed by the Founding Fathers, would be horrified and disgusted by this development.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
the law is there to punish people after they do it, not to stop them. so who needs controls for that? just punish whoever you feel like, whenever you feel like! just like speeding laws... the chinese way however is very different. they want to control the information coming into the country because the information itself is dangerous to them.
"This actually makes me glad to be an american... for the first time in a while..."
Do you remember where all this neo-copyright bullshit started? Do you remember what corporations lobbied the EU to pass this legislation?
My Sig: SEGV
That's what happens when people read the document you try to use to refute their point.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Expect the "we won't persue copying" claims, in practice, to mean that people will continue pirating, everyone will continue pirating, but only those who politically are the enemies of the record labels will be singled out for it. Want to download the entire Led Zeppelin song catalog, in clear and obvious violation of law? No one will stop you. Want to create an innovative new software program which could change the way music is distributed, but which incidentally could maybe be used to pirate music? Prepare to have the copyright directive, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills, come down on your head.
Ayn Rand's said exactly one lucid thing in her entire disastrous body of work, and it was this:
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Are you nuts? Just look across the pond at the USA for an example of a large country that turned into an economic powerhouse. Europe has been hampered for decades by having too many different currencies, tariffs, customs checks at every border, etc. In the US, we don't have any of that crap. I don't have to deal with customs to sell my products made in California to someone in New York, but someone in Paris selling to someone in Rome had to before the EU. This has a huge stifling effect on the economy.
After the EU formed and converted to the Euro, look how well that new currency has prospered; it's now stronger than the Dollar. Trade barriers always hurt economies; the only reason to have them is to protect your national self-interests (like keeping foreign companies from dumping and putting your domestic companies out of business, keeping stuff produced with ultra-cheap or slave labor from putting your domestic industries out of business, etc.). They make sense when there's a large disparity between trading partners because the more powerful partner wants to keep control of that, but in the case of Europe where most of the member were more or less on the same footing (labor rates, etc.), it didn't help them at all.
The problem the EU has is certainly not economic, because they're doing better and better there for the moment. Their problem is with the EU government screwing with individual countries' rights and freedoms. Just like we have different states in the USA with different laws (gambling and prostitution are legal in Nevada, but illegal most other places for instance) because the people in those regions like it that way, Europe needs to make sure their different member countries can run themselves the way they like, so the Dutch can keep their marijuana and prostitution, the Germans can keep their Autobahn with no speed limits, and the Swedes can keep www.piratesbay.com.
Not so very long ago, in many countries, you had to be a land owner in order to vote. Times may have changed, but government power hasn't. Today, governments aren't run by the people, but by the large multinational corporations. Either way, the vast majority of people wind up with no say in how things are run. Even if they vote (which is rare enough), they have a choice between corporate candidate #1 or corporate candidate #2, with the occasional choice of extremist candidate #3, just to give the media something to panic about during the 6 o'clock news.
Orwell was right, gang. The government is not under our control, we are under its. Our every step, and every breath, is monitored from birth thru death by our corporate overlords thru credit cards, phone bills, Tivos, and spyware. Free speech is censored by Google, Yahoo, and others. The openness of the Internet is a lie spread by ISP's who advertise huge bandwidths but close down anyone who actually tries to use it. 1984 was filled with dim-witted, ham-fisted amateurs, compared to the real world.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Denmark adopted the EUCD as one of the first countries and we're still allowed to break copyright protection if needed. Don't blame the EU for this one, Finland made this mess themselfs.
Yes, the EU often make mistakes, but this is not their fault. That being said, the EUCD is still a dumb idea and completly useless.
Then why is the US so successful? I agree that bigger governments often (always?) make a mess of things, but the reason the EU will help growth is that it will open internal borders and standardize business practices/logistics across the union. If it works out...
Whether or not the U.S. is "so successful" depends on how you look at it. As a U.S. citizen, I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before things break down if they keep heading in their current direction. For the past century the federal government has been gaining more and more power over the states, wasting more and more resources due to the inherent inefficiencies of governing at that level, and favoring the interests of whoever has the most money to spend on lobbying - with citizens steadily becoming more disillusioned and hopeless all the while as a result.
Another problem with it is that, as humans, we always seem to standardize on whatever most people are already doing. If 5 people herding reindeer in Lapland have the best accounting methods, then the whole union should switch, not force them to change, damnit.
Yes, it's called "democracy", and like all other forms of government invented so far it has its drawbacks. Really, though, I think that governments go wrong more often as a result of trying to govern too many people and not from the system they follow (with a few exceptions like small countries that are seized by corrupt dictators).
I think Europe had a good thing going with small countries (on the same order of size as U.S. states) with governments that strike varying balances between democracy and socialism. Trying to unite them under one governing body (especially an economic one!) is just going to introduce the same problems that the U.S. is experiencing (ignoring the people's interests in favor of the interests of whoever has the most money, bureaucratic waste, gradual leeching of power away from individual countries to a self-serving centralized government, etc.)
In closing, I should mention that I'm a computer programmer and not a political activist. I'm also American so I'm probably largely ignorant about the EU situation.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
While I agree with many of your points, it's worth noting that the international criminal court was intended for INTERNATIONAL court cases, ie. ones for which there just is no applicable national laws (or conflicting ones; or involving countries that do not recognized applicability etc). It's not meant for overriding national laws involving only national issues. That is, things like war crimes, crimes against humanity. I mean, lots of things dictators do may actually be legal according to laws of countries they lead: not unsurprising when most laws have been (re)written by the tyrants in place. I don't think that applying national laws of the most powerful nations outside their borders (like what USA is doing, and many other bigger nations would love to, too) is much better than trying to come up with an international court that is focused on specific area where there is a vacuum.