Swiss DMCA Quietly Adopted 137
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."
Re:Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Funny (or really not) .... (Score:2, Informative)
Swiss prisons and other tidbits (Score:2, Informative)
What is going to be needed is much more than geek prisons. If governments keep finding new, twisted ways to put people in jail, there is a foreseeable need for prisons dedicated to those incarcerated for treading on corporate interest. Now if they'd keep corporate crooks who ruin companies for their own benefits in there along with the system's victims, THIS would become interesting.
By the way, what do you think happens in Switzerland whenever somebody high-placed does anything extremely wrong - violating the separation between executive and judicial powers or making a government-funded company crash so that taxpayer money has to be used to save it?
Answer: nothing. Trials are made but nobody gets condemned, merely slapped on the wrist. One such example is the Swissair bankruptcy affair. Some of its perpetrators actually got away with a ~400k$ compensatory payment for the trouble.
Switzerland is ruled by an oligarchy of bankers, investors and upper management members from the country's major corporations. Interestingly, the swiss people can force them into things they don't want through the referendum/initiative system, but they keep pulling the strings and steer what the people thinks and wills, so they're never really taking many risks.
Overall, it isn't too different from any true democracy out there, except that when the people gets really worked up, things get done its way faster than before the next elections. If anything, we're just 1. one hell of a lot slower to take decisions 2. desperately trying to hide the shit that's happening in our country in the naïve belief we're a "special case" (Sonderfall, in german) compared to the rest of the world.
The truth is that behind the mask of orderliness and cleanliness, we do have problems. Four cultures coexist in this country and the reason that they still do is partly because they do not understand each other. Poverty has been revealed to be fairly widespread in a state where nobody talks about it (or one's income/fortune in general). Violence is flaring up in a similar way it does in the rest of Europe, proving once more this place is part of it. Cartels artificially raise prices for most goods and services (except consumer electronics for example, go figure) by 20-30% compared to the neighboring countries. Men in their twenties kill people and themselves with the weapons the Swiss Army gives them, trains them to use and makes them keep at home - we're talking about SIG-550 assault rifles here, and the number of people killed by military weapons is estimated at 300 per year. In a 7.5-million-people country.
In the end, it's a place like the rest of the world, only desperately trying to stay nicer and cleaner. Oh, it's comfortable and very nice indeed, but it's far from being devoid of problems. The hardest thing to stand is how everybody in here tries to justify his own acts by pretending it's for the common good, but it's probably just the same elsewhere.
Boing-Boing gets it all wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wth.... (Score:5, Informative)
A petition is the weakest of the three possibilities. Anyone (minors, companies, you name it) can start one and gather however many signatures he/she/it deems necessary for any purpose whatsoever (e.g. changing "Stockwell" to "Doris" in Mr. Day's name). The government only needs to acknowledge the existence of such a petition, period. There's no need to discuss it, comment on it or do anything at all about it apart from acknowledging it.
A referendum (signed by 50'000 out of some 7.4 million in the course of 100 days) forces a national vote on a recently-instated new law. Still, more than 50% of all voters participating in that vote will need to "nay" it in order for it not to be instated.
A public initiative (signed by 100k in 180 days) triggers a national vote about any issue at hand. If i can get 100k people to agree that all cars need to be yellow, the government is obligated to include this question in the next round of public voting. To date, some fifteen out of some 150 initiatives have been accepted in such a vote, chances are slim.
Of course, all details mentioned herein refer to the Swiss system (and IANTooFamiliarWithAllThis, so I may be wrong in some, many or all points), which I find to be rather nice (especially when compared to some other ones).
Re:Swiss prisons and other tidbits (Score:2, Informative)
Phila. leads big cities in murder rate [philly.com]
We had 406 MURDERS in our city of about 1.5 million for 2006. (The gamer in me wants to scream NEW HIGH SCORE!) This doesn't even include the suicides. If all you're working with is 300 gun related deaths in a population of 7.5 million, most of which were suicides, allow me to say that I'm more than a bit jealous.
It's not quite enough to get me to move, (I still love this area, and roots are all here) but it seems to me y'all got it pretty good.
Re:Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:3, Informative)
Amusing? Perplexing? Not really. The likelyhood of being shot in the US is smaller than in many other places, but the likelyhood that a self defense shooting will be put in the "crimes involving a firearm" category is 100%, but that is no surprise, since aggressive shootings (cop initiated, cop carried out, cop gets off innocent) are generally the norm, whenever cops are involved during the "crime".
True, they've replaced those with tasers now, but it seems that the cops are the typical thugs who would otherwise have roamed the streets unable to actually do anything productive or intelligent, and thus begun a life of crime and had it end at the hands of someone ready to stop crime against themselves.
As for the currency (not to be mistaken with "money" which is always a substance of commodity, something that people will value regardless of what is printed on its face (gold, oil, ammo, etc), and currency is not, currency is merely an alias, given strength by government fiat and government guns pointed at those trading, currency has the following meaning "current as money", but it IS NOT money.) I've played the markets for some time now, so regardless of what wikipedia says this week, I've watched the actual day traders (many of whom I know) lose their shirts trying to bank on shifts in the CHF. Day traders gamble with their lunch moneys anyways, but that's aside from the fact that the CHF used to move against the USD and Euro/Pound at the same rate gold itself did. This was fun to watch because you could tell what is worthwhile and stable (solid foundation concept) and what is not (legislative fiat, promises of governments, control systems designed by those who were subject to and completely beholden to existing control systems made by others of their like circumstances. The concept is no similar than trying to dig yourself out of a concrete well... the only way to dig is DOWN, and down there is only water and the depths of the well, freedom is up, and unreachable through digging.)
The more curious thing that the Suisse should worry themselves with is this. Why are the movers and shakers moving their valuables OUT of Europe? I'm not talking about politicians, I'm talking about the real players, the big names who are the boogeymen/messiahs of the money world. It's curious to me, but I doubt others would be watching.