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ISPs Dragged Into Swedish File Sharing Battle
paulraps writes "Swedish internet service providers may soon be required by law to take greater responsibility for unlawful file-sharing. Although rejecting the ludicrous idea of an overarching broadband fee which would be shared out among copyright holders, a government report published on Monday called for internet providers to be 'bound to contribute to bringing all copyright infringement to an end'. Under the proposal, copyright holders whose material is being shared illegally would be entitled to compensation from ISPs which did not ban users. Needless to say, the country's ISPs are not happy."
making roads take more responsibility for drunk drivers?
>>> 'bound to contribute to bringing all copyright infringement to an end'.
Does this mean they can donate to organisations that want to end copyright altogether ?
Seems rather absurd way to deal with the problem to me. Why not make telephone companies responsible for policing wire fraud crimes then?!
Now that we'll soon see the post office being held liable for every mail bomb delivered.
Hey, why not? It's exactly the same. They mustn't look what's inside and are liable for it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here in Belgium Scarlet telecom has recently lost a lawsuit issued by the belgian RIAA (SABAM). The judge has ruled that the ISP should ban P2P traffic, needless to say Scarlet has appealed against this bs decision. All other Belgian ISP's have received a letter treathening to sue them too if the don't cut off P2P traffic.
I'm sorry for my poor knowledge of English and i am currently fortifying my house out of fear for the grammar nazi's.
Encryption, my friends. Govt can't censor what they can't read. And personally I believe it's ridiculous to equate a downloaded file to a lost sale - many of them wouldn't be sales, anyway. (Also check my manifesto for a more revolutionary opinion)
The equivalent has been done, and it doesn't bring relief from the media corporations. Canada for instance has a surcharge on blank CDs that goes to the media trade groups. From what I can tell very little of it goes to pay the artists, and pretty much none goes to the independent labels.
I can't imagine that it would go better here, where the government and courts are even more beholden to the interests of the media conglomerates.
Oh yeah, they are just "indexing" the material not actually doing anything like making it available or anything. Right.
Yes, exactly right. That is all they are doing: they don't host the offending files. If you want to control what they are indexing, well, now you're talking censorship to one degree or another. In some countries that would be fine, in others it will run into trouble. Google is an index, and it points to a lot of content that many would find objectionable: at what point do you decide to tell Google, "Sorry, you can't index this stuff." That's already happening in places like China, and frankly I don't want to see it happen here.
You decide which is worse: copyright infringement or the loss of the greatest medium for communication ever invented. Because that's where this is going.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Canada for instance has a surcharge on blank CDs that goes to the media trade groups.
:-p
Sweden actually has the same kind of organization ( http://www.copyswede.se/default.asp?ML=10622 )... I think it even applies to hard drives!
That's also a pretty crappy idea, because what happens...? Well, since we became members of the EU, making online orders from outside the country became much cheaper, and I can just order 50 DVD-R's in bulk from Denmark for a cheaper price than in Sweden due to these fees, even including the shipping charges. All they're really achieving with these leives is risking making Swedish businesses lose profits due to these uncertain reports of how much the piracy even impact sales. I guess the fallacy being that Sweden is alone in the world, and they can do whatever they wish without impact to the economy.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!