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

U.S., cough, international pressure much?

[tibit]

I wonder how much U.S., cough, international pressure will they get so that there's no chance of any such law ever passing. Should this initiative succeed in Finland, there's no knowing what other countries may pick up on the idea - and that would really be disastrous to the public image of the media cartel. Note that I specifically said "disastrous to the public image". As far as I can tell, it'd actually improve the bottom lines of the cartel, but they themselves seem to pretend otherwise. It's an industry driven by a bunch of control freaks, it's not even about money anymore.

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

[Vanderhoth]

It's a fine balance for the media cartel. They can't come out and say, "Yeah, piracy is helping improve our profit margins." because 1) they make money from suing pirates, while making money from piracy promoting their products and 2) if they admit they've been lying and everyone starts pirating content there's a chance piracy could end up hurting their bottom line.

Personally I think it's best for them just to ignore piracy and not comment on in one way or another; just go on selling your products. If you're offering at a reasonable price, in an accessible format and people like it then they'll buy it, but trying to control every aspect, especially with digital content, is just going to generate malice and is just cutting off their nose to spite their face.

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

[Ragzouken]

no one wants to control people who create things; nobody is trying to force the people who create things to do anything. they just want to remove the control over people who reproduce what other people have created.

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

[Pecisk]

No need for U.S. or international pressure. Finland is subject of multiple so called "intelectual property" agreements, which require lot of rules in question to be implemented in national law. And you can't overrule it - sorry, that's why they went "IP trade agreements" in first place.

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

[Vanderhoth]

I don't know, I'd kind of like it if those content creating people would just let me buy/use their products in my country. I live in Canada for frig sakes and I can't subscribe to Hulu and get the crappy watered down version of netflix without a proxy server or VPN. It's like they go out of their way to limit their markets to stop us from giving them our money. I can't count the number of times I've clicked on a link in an article to some news story or a youtube music video and received the "Content not available in your region".

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

[Thanshin]

Yeah, like wedding photographers, jewelry artists, poets, screenwriters, game producers, web programmers, novelists, small film makers - nothing but control freaks!

Not that I agree with the previous post, but you seem to mistake the media industry with the media creators.

The relationship between the two is more or less the one between cows and Nestlé. They milk the cow, process the product and even draw a cow in the envelope picture, but I wouldn't equate attacking Nestlé with being against cows or milk.

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

[NeutronCowboy]

The people who create things want to control how they bring their work to market. You want to control the people who create things. Who's the control freak?

Coming from a staunch conservative like you, this line amuses me. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of what copyright is, where copyright originated, what its purpose is and why people are upset with the current copyright regime.

Here, let me clue you in:
1) Copyright is a law that restricts the ability to make copies of anything human made.
2) Copyright is an evolution of the old royal print charters. Knowledge was known to be power, and the kings of yore realized very quickly they didn't want just anyone printing whatever they wanted.
3) The purpose of copyright is to control the flow of information and goods. Some of it can be good (it gives writers a chance to make a living), some of it can be bad (it gives people the chance to manipulate the flow of knowledge).
4) What people are upset about is that current copyright terms go far beyond benefiting the original creator, have criminal penalties on them and actually make it very difficult to create something without getting lawyers involved. The only reason you don't see every novelist ever being sued by everyone else is because most are penniless.

Now that you know the story, feel free to participate in the discussion.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, it's not the creators who have the control.
Secondly, it's the punishments that go overboard.

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

[Ragzouken]

Maybe there are good reasons to give people control over intellectual property, but I don't get why anyone would think that's obvious or some inherent right or entitlement. Why should making something prevent other people from making the same thing with their own resources? When you introduce an idea into popular culture you are planting a seed on someone else's soil. Then, like Monsanto, you are saying "you aren't allowed to use this plant without my permission, or in ways I don't approve of". It clearly doesn't have the same strength as physical property, and I can't take it as obviously something a creator is entitled to.

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

[NeutronCowboy]

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.

Because no one - no one, not a single person on earth, ever - creates in a vacuum. Everyone steals from everyone, gets inspiration from everyone else, and so much content gets created that it is guaranteed that two people will create very similar art. As such, copyright is by definition an inhibition of the creative process. For a real-life example, see the lawsuits about red double-decker buses in front of a black-and-white Big Ben.

People do create less when they are unable to earn an income doing so.

Some of the most fun I had with music was attending house concerts a friend of mine was throwing. These people will keep singing with or without copyright. Some of the best pictures I've seen come from amateur photographers. They'll keep doing it with or without copyright. Same for painting, games and any other art form.

You're mistaking getting rich with making money, creating art with selling art, and that less is always worse. Even if 90% of all artists stopped creating, there'd still be more art around than you can ever consume.

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

[Pecisk]

They are technically "overruling" even constitution, it doesn't mean that they can be incompatible with it though. Only way to strip those rules from law book is void agreement. But for that there can be much wilder political and economical consequences.

Would like to see healthy discussion about it anyway of course.

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

[silanea]

The subtle point of the Initiative that seems to be lost on you is that there exists a whole spectrum of possible implementations of copyright law in between the quasi-Hitlerian approach taken by Hollywood and the rest of the high-volume industry and the free-for-all approach envisioned by fourteen year olds in the comment section on TPB. Making sure artists are compensated for their work is one thing. Very few people seriously argue against that. But allowing the monopolisation of culture for the lifetime of several generations? Bankrupting or imprisoning people for sharing a few songs or films? We treat arsonists, drunk drivers and drug dealers less harshly than the punishments some of the high-profile filesharing cases resulted in.

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

[green1]

I believe the authors should get exactly the same type of protection I do on their livelihood. I get paid hourly, once I have completed an hour of work I will never be paid for that same hour again. Why should it be different for someone who makes something copyrighted? I am not able to obtain any future royalties on the ethernet cables I install today, and the end customer gets full control of them to do whatever they want. They will never have to compensate me further if they want to move them, re-terminate them, sell them, or put data signals accross them. Once I've installed them, and they've paid me, we're done and I no longer have any say whatsoever in what they do.
Authors created work for thousands of years before copyright was invented. I don't see them stopping even if copyright were to vanish altogether.

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

[Miamicanes]

> But why should someone who creates something not be able to control how it's used?

Because there's a blurry line that, once crossed, transforms a creative work from a mere commercial expression into part of society's cultural tapestry. Once that happens, you could argue that the creators should still have the right to profit from it for a term, but that the original creators themselves no longer truly "own" it in any moral or cultural sense. It has become bigger than they are.

Some examples:

* Disney's "Victory through Air Power" and "Song of the South". Walt Disney himself sought to personally destroy every copy of VtAP after World War II. He failed only because a lost copy was sitting in a Department of Defense warehouse. The film, viewed today, is positively horrifying... a thousand times more when it sinks in that it's a *DISNEY* film showing yellow planes with slanted eyes divebombing American ships. It's definitely not a cartoon to show little kids for entertainment. BUT, it's one of the most potent records we have today for understanding the cultural background of America's involvement in World War II. It vividly illustrates it in ways that are chillingly real because it's so over the top. The era's newsreels are so sanitized, they almost qualify as comedy. But a *DISNEY* film playing to blatant racial stereotypes? Whoah. That's big. It makes it really sink in how totally Americans were into World War II locally.

Under Berne-inspired copyright law, Disney (as the film's creator) has the absolute right to destroy it. ***SHOULD*** they?

* Disney's "Song of the South". This has always been a problematic film for Disney. It was controversial when it opened in theaters because it talked about one of America's most culturally-taboo topics at the time. No, I don't mean race relations... I'm talking about (*shudder*) /divorce/. Yep, that's right. For anybody who's never actually seen the original movie from start to finish, it's about a kid from Atlanta who gets sent to live with his grandparents on their farm in the rural south while his parents go through a messy divorce out of sight. Everything else was subplot. Complicating things even MORE for Disney, some of their most popular and enduring characters, memes, and marketable songs came from that very movie. Hell, half of Frontierland's characters and rides were inspired by it.

Under Berne-inspired copyright law, Disney has the absolute right to destroy it, or at least prevent anybody from watching it commercially. ***SHOULD*** they? ESPECIALLY when you consider that even the original high-ranking NAACP members who complained about it later admitted that they'd never actually WATCHED it prior to issuing their condemnation, and conceded that while they weren't really *happy* with it, their original gut reactions were a bit overblown.

* Star Wars. The holiest of holy films that defined the childhoods of Generation X... and George Lucas' determination to screw with it to wring a few more bucks out of the original (or at least, the current copy re-edited and re-assembled from original footage). Nobody will argue that Lucas shouldn't have the right to make "improvements" with each new release... but should he ALSO have the right to suppress distribution (even when he's compensated fairly) of the original version? Remember, we aren't just talking about a mere movie. Star Wars (oops, "Episode IV: A New Hope") practically DEFINED the childhoods of millions of American (and eventually, European, Asian, and other) kids. If the Earth were about to be hit by a planet-killing asteroid, a rocket ship were about to leave earth with a few dozen survivors to keep the human race alive, and they had to choose between a copy of Star Wars (the original) and the bible, I put the odds at at least 40-50% that the rocket would be taking off with a copy of Star Wars on board.

Under Berne-inspired copyright law, George Lucas has the absolute right (assuming he hasn't sold it to Disney) to refuse to ever license the origina

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

[SuricouRaven]

"But why should someone who creates something not be able to control how it's used?"

Enforceability. Laws don't come free - it costs tax money to run even civil courts, and much of copyright is now a criminal matter so there is the cost of investigations. There's the social costs too - it's near-impossible to enforce copyright in the digital age, so the only way to be effective in doing so requires either an automated censorship system of some sort (youtube), or restrictions on the availability of technology that can be used for infringement (DMCA laws, the 'blank media tax'), or draconian punishments for the few who are caught in order to scare the rest straight. All very bad things. Then there's the classic issue of rights: They are often in conflict. If you grant a creator control over something they thought up, then you are also denying the use of that something to other people.

You can't just pass laws based on vague moral hunches. You need to consider if the costs (outlined above) are justified by the benefits (Increased production of creative works, created jobs, moral rights of creators).

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

[SuricouRaven]

There are alternative models. My favorite is the kickstarter approach:

1. Studio makes a trailer for their potential awesome movie (Movie in this example, it works for other media too).
2. Studio announces production cost.
3. People pledge their money towards production, considering how much they want to see the movie, how much they've liked things by the studio in the past, and so on.
4. If enough people pledge, the studio takes their money and makes the film. They have an incentive to do a good job, because if they churn out rubbish no-one is going to contribute to their next project.

The content gets made, the people get paid, and no copyright is required at all.

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

[SuricouRaven]

I'd also add a more modern classic: The Church of Scientology has a history of using copyright to silence any criticism of the books central to the organisation. Anyone who quotes or even paraphrases from the books in order to point out the sillyness within faces the risk of a lawsuit - and even if they can successfully claim fair use, the legal fees can easily drive an individual into financial ruin. How much control should they have?

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

[tibit]

We don't have respect for the work because they don't have respect for themselves. Myself I'd like to see copyright law that forces one's hand: either you license it on reasonable terms, or it's public domain. Media hoarding should come to an end. A publisher of a book out of print doesn't care for a reprint or a digital edition? Boom, public domain. A video available in U.K. has been unavailable in the U.S. for a year? Boom, public domain. And so on. That way there would be no more human creativity that's basically locked up by a system of law that promotes indifference and laziness - the very anathema of promoting the progress of useful arts.

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

[dgatwood]

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.

I build a box. I sell it to you. It is your box. If you decide to use it to ship something to your cousin Raul, that is your right. If you decide to cover it with a tablecloth and use it as a plant stand, that is your right. If you decide to use it as a toilet, that is your right. Once legitimately transferred in exchange for payment, that box becomes yours. This is the natural ownership model that goods have had for millennia.

Why should content creators have the right to dictate what the purchaser of their content does with it at all? Merely because more work went into the design and less into the manufacture? That's a fairly arbitrary distinction.

See, the problem I have with copyright reformers is that copyright is a quite well thought out piece of law (relative to most, anyway).

Not sure about Finland, but that's certainly not true in the U.S. Over here, there are so many contradictory exceptions and edge cases that it is often almost impossible to know if you are on the right side of the law.

It gives people who create things an optional tool that they don't have to use.

Again, no. Copyright is automatic in Berne signatory nations (the U.S., most of Europe, etc.). Copyright isn't optional. Unless you explicitly release something into the public domain, it is protected by copyright. And even if you do release it into the public domain, because many countries do not recognize the right of a creator to release something into the public domain, it is not possible to fully opt out of copyright if you create a work in a country where copyright is automatic, as it is in the U.S. The best you can do, legally, is provide it under a perpetual "Do whatever you want with it" license.

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?

Not at all. They feel that people who create things should get paid for actually creating new things, rather than stringing out copyright to near perpetuity and resting on their laurels while milking their works for every penny that they can possibly get. They feel that once they have paid for something, they should have the right to use it in any reasonable fashion that they desire, just as they would if they bought a box or a table. The alternative—content creators being able to dictate things like transferability, format shifting, import and export, etc.—is a highly limiting form of sale that requires some very substantial justification before we will consider it reasonable, precisely because it is so highly unusual.

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.

Not entirely accurate. They create differently. We've created a large industry that can afford to create these blockbuster films (which, incidentally, it looks like people are finally getting tired of). By contrast, an industry with fewer restrictions on copying would tend to reward smaller-scale donation-based or even patronage-based works that, although less expensive to produce, are often of similar quality. Moreover, because the money is not concentrated in a small number of businesses, the culture is enriched by having a greater number of people creating those works, with more unique voices, different points of view, and so on.

That said, nobody is asking for copyright to go away. They're asking for criminal copyright charges to go away

Power to the People

[sincewhen]

Can anyone from Finland chime in and let us know if this is likely to go ahead untarnished by the political process, or will it be a given lip service and normal politics resumed ASAP?

Re:Power to the People

[Anonymous Coward]

A Finn here.

There is absolutely no chance that this results in changes in Finnish copyright laws. They'll have to vote on it, and they'll vote not to do anything just out of pure spinelessness.

Re:Power to the People

[Anonymous Coward]

Finn here.

This is the Litmus test.

The proceeding is somewhat new -- the previous initiatives have regarded the ethics of Fur industry, and gay rights (adoption, etc). Those are still pending.

How this differs, is that this is essentially one of Finland's core industries today, and the leading supporters are 35~ rising, well off, entrepreneurs, IT-professionals, etc. It is not just populist activism, but a real concern that has profound impact in actual business and prosperity of the country.

While this might be thrown aside by our politicians (whose work of late has been mostly harmful instead of beneficial), this will not be shut down with a whimper, but with an uproar -- there are powers behind this draft that won't take no for an answer without a convincing, public argument. On top of that, there is already support in the parliament, as some representatives there are former IT-professionals.

I am eagerly waiting to see where this leads to.

Re:Lobbying lawyers are also citizens...

[Gaygirlie]

It would be really surprising if there are no "eastereggs" written by lobbying lawyers in there...

The proposal in its entirety is fully-accessible online and can be read by anyone. Also, it's not editable by everyone, it's not a wiki -- lobbyists can't just pop in there and add or edit stuff as they please.

The article and summary a bit misleading

[DMNT]

The political process is not as straightforward as the article suggests: It will first be passed on to a committee which will listen for various experts and interested parties, including copyright holders' associations. The committee will then be free to make amendments and changes to the proposal, even though the proposal is already written in a form of law text. After the committee it will probably be subjected to other various committees for review, for example the constitutional committee to check if it is in alignment with the constitution. At the end of this long committee process is the public vote in the Parliament, which is most often just a formality.

Therefore it is not guaranteed at all that the intended changes will pass even if the law will be changed in the parliament.

Nothing will happen

[CptPicard]

There will be no "vote on copyright law that is drafted by citizens". Some committee will just say that there are legal reasons why this can't happen and that's it. All this stuff does is stir up public discourse, which is IMO a good thing though.

Re:Lobbying lawyers are also citizens...

[smittyoneeach]

Stand by for this exercise in self-government to be crushed in 3 ... 2 ...

Crime or not a crime? Make up your minds

[fnj]

... calls for removal of copyright infringement as a crime, reducing violations by private individuals to a misdemeanor.

Uh, guys, a misdemeanor IS A CRIME Petty theft and simple assault and battery are also misdemeanors. Maybe something has been lost in translation. Otherwise I think this initiative is a sad sellout. Copyright infringement ought to be a civil matter, damnmit.

Re:Lobbying lawyers are also citizens...

[Gaygirlie]

Anyone can log in and make a proposal, even a complete newbie and layman, but as I said the system is not a wiki: only the people who create a proposal can edit it. Anyone can suggest additions and fixes to an existing proposal they didn't create, but obviously it's the people who created it in the first place who decide whether to do anything with those suggestions.

Re:Lobbying lawyers are also citizens...

[TranquilVoid]

And rightly so. Admirable as giving citizens a direct voice is, it's not necessarily representative. All it proves is that there are X people out there who support change Y. People against change Y may be more numerous but aren't taken into account. That's why elected representatives do their own polling. On the positive side, this sort of 'click the button' skewing probably does provide a counterbalance to traditional lobbyist skewing.

On this particular issue I'd expect it to be smacked down. Being the only first-world country to reject international copyright agreements is going to cause trade problems, especially in your own I.P. output. In the case of Finland imagine if, for example, other countries were legally free to make copies of Linux?