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Switzerland Remains 'Extremely Attractive' For Pirate Sites, MPAA Says (torrentfreak.com)
While the European Union has worked hard to strengthen its copyright laws in recent years, one country in the heart of the continent chooses its own path. Switzerland is not part of the EU, which means that its policies deviate quite a bit from its neighbors. According to Hollywood, that's not helping creators. From a report: Responding to recent submission to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the MPAA has identified several foreign "trade barriers" around the world. In Hollywood's case, many of these are related to piracy. One of the countries that's highlighted, in rather harsh terms, is Switzerland. According to the MPAA, the country's copyright law is "wholly inadequate" which, among other things, makes it "extremely attractive" to host illegal sites. "Switzerland's copyright law is wholly inadequate, lacking crucial mechanisms needed for enforcement in the digital era," MPAA writes. [...] The European country has plans to update its laws, but the proposed changes are not significant improvements, Hollywood's trade group notes.
The allegation is that Swiss copyright laws are like their cheese?
Switzerland, if MPAA is your worst enemy, I'd have to say you're doing it right. Godspeed.
>> one country in the heart of the continent chooses its own path. Switzerland is not part of the EU, which means that its policies deviate quite a bit from its neighbors. According to Hollywood, that's not helping creators.
Clearly we must invade. If only we could find someone with skill in mass media to develop a propaganda campaign.
I guarantee Gibraltar is orders of magnitude more liberal with copyright. It’s a total free for all on everything and the government is happy to just play a long. The northern part of Cyprus too is a lawless area with a lot of pirate TV stuff.
It's Switzerland (at least when I was last there) it's legal to download copyrighted material as long as you're not uploading it and you're using it for private purposes.
Switzerland hasn't implemented the draconian copyright laws that we suckered the US and Canada into by painting them as the biggest sources of piracy, so we're going to paint Swiss people with the same brush.
Even as a copyright holder myself, I recognize that copyright law in the United States is completely and utterly broken. Only in the United States could it make sense to have:
And if those media execs still think that HDCP is a good idea even after crazy mounds of evidence to the contrary, there's no way they'll *ever* be smart enough to realize just how stupid it is to waste time chasing after pirate sites. Stopping profit loss from piracy by going after pirate sites is the technological equivalent of trying to end world hunger by hiring fifty people to fly around the world, and, upon seeing a locust, land the plane, put on boots, and stomp it to death. You will never win that way. You will only look silly.
If the huge drop in piracy after the rise of the iTunes Music Store taught us anything, it is that piracy is not caused predominantly by people being unwilling to spend money, but rather predominantly by content owners refusing to take it, and doing everything in their power to maintain tight control in ways that consumers can't deal with. If you create content that people want and make it available in a form that people are willing to pay for, they will do so. If you don't, they'll pirate it. And no new laws will ever change that, no matter how draconian. At best, you'll just force it further underground, where you can't track it or earn ad revenue from it.
The cause of piracy problems isn't Switzerland, but rather the content distributors' unwillingness to work together to improve access to content, coupled with their irrational fear of allowing any single outlet to gain enough power to drive prices down to levels that consumers find reasonable. They need to quit looking for countries to blame and start looking in the mirror.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The one good thing to come from Trump. His harpooning of the various trade agreements which the MPAA had corrupted to their benefit are being systematically dismantled around the world, even the TPP which he pulled out of is now a much better agreement as with the US gone so too went all the insane copyright shit they were trying to force the rest of the world to swallow.
Switzerland seems to be one of those rare oddball countries where the government actually works for the benefit of its citizens. Not the benefit of some other countries' citizens, or for the benefit of whoever gave out the most bribes to the politicians.
Utterly shocking if you're from place with a corrupt government like the United States or the EU.
That is because Switzerland is a "direct democracy". You see, the people actually vote on things. All it takes is 50,000 citizens (or 8 of the elected politicians) to call for any recently enacted or changed laws to require a direct vote by the citizens (a simple majority yes/no vote). It makes it kind of hard for special interest groups with big pockets to get to all but 50,000 people in the country to prevent a direct vote.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
While Hollywood wants the whole world to obey whatever IP regime benefits the studios most, the EU wants all other countries to "harmonize" with the Union's high tax rates. Switzerland manages industrial prosperity on much lower tax rates, and governs mostly at the cantonal (county) level, which reduces centralized bureaucracy. Brussels has never liked having a safe, stable-for-centuries adjacent country that Europeans can just take a train to and make a suitcase of money disappear.
Switzerland prides itself on an engrained neutrality that allows it to trade freely with every part of the world while avoiding the entangling alliances that have caused so many European wars. This also means staying out of international trade agreements that it feels threaten its freedom. That's why it could be the first organizer of international copyright a century ago with the Berne Convention, while at the same time staying out of the Hollywood cartel.
On the other hand in 2009 they voted to include alternative medicine (i.e. pseudo-scientific snake oil) in the constitution. Maybe someone from Switzerland can say how much effect it has had; AIUI it was effectively nullified by the fact that politicians didn't change the rules on funding treatments to remove the "proven effective" requirement.
Direct democracy can be great, but can also result in nonsense, so it's important to have strong checks and balances. Problem is that people get very upset if they vote for something a a check or balance frustrates it, e.g. Brexit.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
All they need to do is ask all their members to close their Swiss bank accounts they use for their Hollywood Accounting. That will show that they are actually seriosus about it.
Why would they do business with a country that does not respect them?
Another thing they can do out of protest is ask their members to go on the streets and smash their swiss watches. (I'm helping them, right?)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The 5 forms of alternative medicine voted in 2009 were included in the basic healthcare coverage for a trial period, pending evaluation of their effectiveness. I think homeopathy got included in the basic coverage due to the “placebo effect” actually having some value, with the majority of medics prescribing it knowing it’s basically fresh water but still obtaining good results. About the others I have no idea.
Furthermore, that inclusion concerns the basic coverage mandated by law: most people actually interested in alternative medicine treatments are likely to supplement the basic coverage with complementary insurance options anyway.
Yes, but Gibraltar is not a country. It's just a British enclave in Spain. It has it's own gov't and laws, but it's still not a country.