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."

Comments

Banning Discussion?

[TubeSteak]

Italics are from the original text

Worryingly, even "organized discussion" on how to circumvent copy protection mechanisms, will be illegal. (and no, Finland doesn't have similar to American Supreme Court that determines whether laws are against constitution, but when laws are approved, they by default are in harmony with constitution and can't be later overturned on basis that they are un-constitutional)

While you can't argue unconstitutionality, can't citizens claim that tihs clause violates various human rights accords?

Or maybe not, England (as a European example) has fairly restrictive free speech laws

Abdication of Responsibility

[Infernal Device]

It's interesting to note that the government claims it won't pursue those who break the copying law for personal use. Isn't it the duty of Government to pursue those who break it's laws? While the people might seem to have a right to break those laws they feel are unjust, I wasn't aware that this was an ability granted to the Government.

whoops...

[advocate_one]

Distributing (even for free) tools (whether physical devices or software) that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. (this includes DVD rippers, tools that allow copying copy-protected CDs, etc)

[...]

Possession of tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. Even for personal use.

there goes Linux... a wet dream for Microsoft... getting Linux outlawed...

So, basically -- buy a portable MP3 player and a copy-protected CD. And you can't copy the music from the CD to your MP3 player legally any more, as you'd break law if you circumvent the copy protection mechanism found on CD.

and there goes the entire point of owning a personal MP3 player... now the users will have to purchase any music specifically for that player, even if they already have it on CD...

This law sux.

[JollyFinn]

I'm not so jolly Finn anymore.
This made my future voting decision simple.
Christian democratic party and Nationalists(Perussuomalaiset) where ONLY parties which all voted against the law.

Demonstration meant nothing

[halfnerd]

I took part in a demonstration against this law on tuesday 1300 Finnish time. There were over 300 people outside the parliament demonstrating against this, and this amount was assembled on under 5 days (or so we were told by the organiser). Only a handful of the members of parliament came out to listen to us or answer our questions, most of them already aware of our case and supporting it. I saw many people peeking out from the windows, looking scarily at us and then leaving, without coming out. One speaker told us something like "we'll have your mp3s sorted out later". What an idiot! Seems like no-one cared to even read the parts of the new law that we stated were problematic. And to think that we only cared about mp3s. We need more people in the parliament who actually understand what this new technology is about. Most of them would probably have problems grasping it if it was explained as LPs and cassette players. Geesh!

Re:So....

[Roadstar]

Actually, according to the new legislation, it is a lesser offense to download an illegal than to rip a copy-protected CD-wannabe (as we all know, those lookalike thingies don't conform to the standards) you have paid for. To top all that, we get the restriction on discussing copy protection circumvention techniques. This is a really sad day for all us Finns, but at least we don't give up without a fight. According to all the IRC discussions I've been following, there seems to be a major uproar building up. In the meantime I have stopped buying records from all record companies that were demanding this law to be adopted. And I am far from alone with my boycott. Not to forget the fact that I used to buy rather many records (many times above the average consumption) on a yearly basis.

Previously I have more or less despised P2P networks, but now that the government is giving the signal that it's more OK to download an illegal copy than to apply fair use policy into stuff you've paid for, it seems like I'll have to start getting my music from illegal sources. Sure it's an offense in the new legislation too, but at least I'm not getting fined or jailed for that like I could get if I ripped a copy-protected record to my iPod.

This new legislation clearly shows what you can expect when you have the former Miss Finland as the Minister of Culture (no, I'm not kidding). I hope we can get a decent government in the next election. At least the voting statistics related to this law give us rather good guidelines on who not to vote. Meanwhile, as the government has regulated: Let the warez flow, but don't you dare to circumvent a copy protection, no matter how weak the so-called protection is.

Re:Selective Enforcement

[TwentyLeaguesUnderLa]

I'd just like to bring up a country where something of the sort is on the verge of being the case - Russia. That's why some Russians are quite frightened by the Yukos case, involving Khodarkovsky. Basically, the story behind it is (apparently) that he tried to get involved in some political things he shouldn't have - so the government slapped him intto jail for Tax evasion. According to the tax code, he was most definitely guilty of that. The thing that worried people is that the laws were unreasonable, pretty commonly ignored (and these infractions ignored by the government), effectively making EVERYONE guilty and thus suspect to prosecution whenever the government felt like it.