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Swiss DMCA Quietly Adopted
roady writes "We have seen a lot of talk over the years about the Canadian DMCA. But few know about the Swiss version recently adopted by law makers ... not even the Swiss people.
The government and media have been very quiet, probably to avoid a referendum. Indeed, Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50,000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote against the new copyright law. In this version of the DMCA, sharing a file on P2P networks will land you one year in jail, even though the law mandates a levy on blank media. The history of the law is available online."
Yes, it is certainly hard to understand. In Spain we have a levy on media (which can be bypassed by buying from an international store online), but it is LEGAL to download copyrighted music, if it's not used for profit, only for private use. So, I can download every movie and every song on the internet, and I'm rightfully allowed to do it. To compensate, I have to pay a levy on media. Worth it, in my opinion, as this levy only affects CDs and DVDs for the moment, and not HDDs.
This treats all spanish people as pirates, but says pirates are OK.
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