Crowdsourced Finnish Copyright Initiative Meets Signature Requirement

First time accepted submitter Koookiemonster writes "The Finnish citizens' initiative site (Finnish/Swedish only) has fulfilled the required amount of signatures for the third initiative since its founding. This means that the Parliament of Finland is required to take the Common Sense in Copyright initiative into processing. The initiative calls for removal of copyright infringement as a crime, reducing violations by private individuals to a misdemeanor." Torrent Freak notes "This makes Finland the first country in the world in which legislators will vote on a copyright law that was drafted by citizens."

Comments

Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much?

[IamTheRealMike]

But why should someone who creates something not be able to control how it's used? That seems pretty basic. It wouldn't exist at all if not for them.

See, the problem I have with copyright reformers is that copyright is a quite well thought out piece of law (relative to most, anyway). It gives people who create things an optional tool that they don't have to use. It allows everything from Hollywood movies to open source software. If someone felt their work was best given away for free, they could certainly do that, or they could use a creative commons style license and many people do.

Now the situation we have is that a whole generation of people doesn't have any respect for other peoples work. They feel they deserve free movies, music and software because "zomg industry!!!" (reality check - the content industries are quite small relative to others, like the tech or energy industries). They feel that people who create things should have fewer options than today, less freedom to decide how their work is used, because gosh isn't it annoying and inconvenient when you want something and can't afford it?

Much though I dislike the way the US government puts political pressure on other countries, Finland does not, last time I checked, have an equivalent to Hollywood. Probably its people would benefit if the government just shrugged and said, well, we don't create much relative to other people so why bother enforcing their copyrights? Might as well take what we can for free! Party time!!

The problem is if everyone does that, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The idea that nobody who creates movies or writes software cares about money is naive and childish. People do create less when they are unable to earn an income doing so.