Finland Is Crowdsourcing Its New Copyright Law

An anonymous reader writes "Internet activists in Finland, upset with the country's strict copyright laws, are ready to take advantage of the country's promise to vote on any citizen-proposed bill that reaches 50,000 signatures. Digital rights group Common Sense in Copyright has proposed sweeping changes to Finland's Lex Karpela, a 2006 amendment to the Finnish copyright law that more firmly criminalized digital piracy. Under it, 'countless youngsters have been found guilty of copyright crimes and sentenced to pay thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands, of euros in punitive damages to the copyright organizations.' The proposal to fix copyright is the best-rated and most-commented petition on the Open Ministry site."

Comments

What if they "fix" it in an incompatible way?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

Re:What if they "fix" it in an incompatible way?

[c0lo]

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

What more US can do that has not already done to Finland? I mean, look... isn't enough they pushed Elop as the Nokia head? (grin: it's Obama's fault, isn't it?)

With a AAA credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas (100% dependence on Russia).

Re:What if they "fix" it in an incompatible way?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a AAA credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas (100% dependence on Russia).

And Russia is rather unlikely to do this just because USA wants it. Anything that distances Finland from the west and brings closer to Russia is going to be perfectly fine for the Russians.

Re:What if they "fix" it in an incompatible way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think the US would trade sanction an EU state? I doubt it. They may face pressure from the EU itself but the last thing the EU needs is to start pissing off the states that actually pay their own way.

Re:What if they "fix" it in an incompatible way?

[bfandreas]

It is. Gas is also used for heating. Amongst other things.
Europe is also highly dependant on Gazprom. And they have been known to throttle their pipelines in winter if something wasn't to their liking.

Re:What if they "fix" it in an incompatible way?

[Viol8]

"it's quite hard to make rubber from uranium,"

Its not particularly easy to make it from methane.

Brown Trousers Time

[bfandreas]

If this is even remotely successful then a lot of lobbyists will get their knickers in a twist.
The chances of this being ratified should be rather slim due to:
-international treaties
-legality of the law without having to rewrite other laws
-being watered down in parliament
...

I would guess a lot of lawyers will work on this thing. So chances are this might be the best written piece of legislation never to be signed.

the common democratic illness is that we vote for politians based on how well they look in a suit, how loud they shout their simple truths and how long ago they had their last sex scandal. Should be credibility, competence and merit. Oh well.

Re:Brown Trousers Time

[Apotekaren]

As for the watering down, if the proposal (a complete law text) passes the 50,000 vote mark, the Finnish parliament has to vote on it AS IS.

Re:Brown Trousers Time

[Pecisk]

International treaties is the key. Why do you think all copyright legislation has started as treaties? Because no voter in sane mind would force such law upon it's country. But voter doesn't understand, doesn't bother him - at least it's regular thinking of politicians these days. So they agree to treaty, then just come home and say "we done anything we could, but this must be a law now".

Re:Brown Trousers Time

[c0lo]

International treaties is the key. Why do you think all copyright legislation has started as treaties? Because no voter in sane mind would force such law upon it's country. But voter doesn't understand, doesn't bother him - at least it's regular thinking of politicians these days. So they agree to treaty, then just come home and say "we done anything we could, but this must be a law now".

And? If, by popular demand, the law is amended so that gets incompatible with the signed treaty, you think is impossible for the country to walk back from that treaty? Think again

Another important distinction between a treaty and a conventional contract is that a treaty lacks any enforcement teeth.

It is not like US never broke a treaty.

Re:Brown Trousers Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I read though the proposal (and signed it). It seems to make a lot of sense, and it's really well thought out.

If this is even remotely successful then a lot of lobbyists will get their knickers in a twist.

The chances of this being ratified should be rather slim due to:

-international treaties

This isn't some teenage hacktivism, this is actually really well thought out modifications. The changes aren't huge, but still significant. The proposal also takes into account internation treaties and works within their restrictions.

-legality of the law without having to rewrite other laws

The suggestion specifically refers to other laws, and how the changes make it more compliant than the current version. They also seem to have touched upon points that have to have modifications.

-being watered down in parliament ...

ok, this I just learnt from the comment below, so credit wher credit is due

As for the watering down, if the proposal (a complete law text) passes the 50,000 vote mark, the Finnish parliament has to vote on it AS IS.

I would guess a lot of lawyers will work on this thing. So chances are this might be the best written piece of legislation never to be signed.

the common democratic illness is that we vote for politians based on how well they look in a suit, how loud they shout their simple truths and how long ago they had their last sex scandal. Should be credibility, competence and merit. Oh well.

I agree that politics can be too populistic, but in general I think it's works quite well here. As for the proposal, I'm very positively suprised at the quality, the moderation and the execution of it.

Re:Brown Trousers Time

[c0lo]

They can. But there will be consequences. Unfortunately US is one of biggest consumers and no politician in it's right mind would want to piss off it and face problems with exports to US. But exports gives you jobs and allows you to repay debt you took to finance roads, schools, etc.

It's not that simple.

Uh, oh. Does it wake you up that US markets makes 4.9% of Finland's export? Comparing with the exports to Russia of 9.2%, Germany of 10% and Sweden to 11.8%, it seems quite low.

Also, did you know that Finland has less population than New York City? I don't know why I feel all of them will survive quite well to an upset US.

Re:Brown Trousers Time

[Kjella]

Well, Finland is only 5.4 million people so if they can hit the 50k mark it already means 1% of the population cares. That said it looks like the site has just recently opened and the highest vote is slightly over 1k now, so a long way to go.

Re:Good luck with that, thieves.

[c0lo]

I turtose the death penalty for convicted meta colestors.

FTFY

No way in hell

[qbast]

Sure, you can crowdsource and gather signatures all you want - have fun, at least you will feel more in control. All you get is to submit your proposition for parliament to vote on. At which point the same lobbyists and paid politicians as usual make the decision. There is no way in hell this is going to pass.

The copyright law has a good form!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finnish copyright law has very flexible permissions for private use.

1) Few copies of legally obtained copyrighted material can be copied for private use
2) Private use includes family members and best friends.
3) In court the "few copies" has been seen to be 10 copies
4) You are allowed to outsource the copying if needed (you can give copyrighted material to third party what copy them for you and give original and all copies back).
5) Downloading from Internet isn't illegal, it is just admonished, but sharing (uploading) is criminalized.
6) You can brake the DRM if it is necessary to get music to be heard, video to be seen or text to visible (etc)
7) You can transform content to another if it is required to get content available. (meaning you can make a copy of DVD as VHS if other has only VHS player. Or transcode WMA to MP3 if only having a MP3 player).
8) If original media is destroyed, stolen or lost, all copies needs to be destroyed.
9) You can not make new copies from copies or release them to any other third party (non-family members, not best friends)

In Finland you are allowed to borrow a CD music from library and make those 10 copies for you, to your family members and best friend. Any of those copies can be a version in MP3 files, a CD or WMA etc, as long the amount is same.
You can as well buy a latest movie/music from store with your 4 friends, make 3 copies and divide the music price by 4. Meaning 20 euros music is just 5 euros for each of one.
You can as well rent a movie for few euros and make a copy of that for private use.
You are allowed to record movies and shows from TV and make few copies of them as well for private use.

But all this has a cost.
You need to pay a small tax in every empty CD, DVD, HDD, SSD and now on memory sticks as well. It is about 15 euros from HDD what is bigger than 750GB
About a 15 cent on empty DVD and about 10 cent on empty CD.
Every importer is demanded by law to pay that and that is transferred to device/media prices.

But people are mad about it!
Many are mad of it because "I pay more about empty media/storage than I should" and many even promote their ideas by saying "I only store my own music and my own photos and videos to those medias". And still most doesn't even understand that spending a few euros a year for that tax, you can make as many copies for private use from legally obtained copyrighted material as you wish.

Teens usually listen same music with their friends. Instead them needed to buy a own CD (2 x 20 euros) to CD-player and then again MP3 version (2 x 10-15 euros for album) phone/mp3-player, they can together buy just a single CD, make copies of it and transcode music as MP3 files in 20 euros.

How about lex karpela?
Lex Karpela was a addition to copyright law what criminalized braking strong DRM. That what was "strong DRM" was not written at all. Later two man went and wanted to test that law in court. Other one made a DVD with a CSS encryption in it. Then borrowed it to friend, what made a copy of that disk by braking the CSS. And then the copyright owned (who borrowed DVD to friend) sued friend to court demanding 5 cent penalties.
The whole case when to higher court and back, and it was given a judgment criminalizing the friend who broke the encryption because it was not possible "in mistake". The problem was what many doesn't understand, the friend made DVD was not made legally public, it was a personal DVD with DRM.
The copyright law demands the copyrighted material is published legally. Meaning it is that companies what presents, plays, prints etc media, can not control citizens rights to share information and cultural material.
But when a private person makes a own media, she or he owns the copyright for it but just by borrowing it to friend, doesn't mean he or she published it. So it isn't legally obtained material in the first place unless you ask permission from your friend "can I make a copy to myself from your made movie what you

Re:Expect Astroturfers by the thousands...

[Apotekaren]

A voter must register and identify themself via their online banking, and they double-check this against the records in the magistrate.

Also, the text for the legislation is now finalized, and only accepting "up-votes" towards the 50 limit. Nothing you can do to astroturf that.

Suffrage?

[Qubit]

It's pretty close to 1% of the whole population of the nation, including newborns and the elderly.

Okay, sure, but do both of those groups have suffrage? (I can see the get-out-the-vote campaigns for the babies....free teething rings for all!)

- 1% of americans would be around 3 million people. Would you sign a petition that REQUIRED 3 million signatures?

Sure, if it was aimed at a useful result like "Don't let the telcos off the hook for helping the NSA violate the 4th Ammendment," or "Reform copyright law so it doesn't last forever minus a day". To be honest, a fair number of the petitions on the Whitehouse's petition site (that have passed the required bar to receive a response) concern issues that are interesting and relevant to most Americans. It's just that 5 or 500 petitions to legalize marijuana aren't going to do a damn thing, because the President doesn't have the political clout or the personal motivation to "make it so".

It sounds like this petition mechanism might actually effect real change -- the kind of change that political parties over on this side of the Atlantic promise up and down the campaign trail, but which, if it ever materializes, doesn't pack quite the same punch as promised -- and for that, I am quite envious of you Finns.