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."
Levy on Media? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Levy on Media? (Score:5, Interesting)
This treats all spanish people as pirates, but says pirates are OK.
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The law is wholly unreasonable, and as minors are the people the will most l
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Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:4, Interesting)
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The penal law provisions are (and that's my strict out of the ass guess) reserved for commercial purveyors of verboten software and for commercial mass offenders and not evene they will go to jail for a first offense (nor w
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I don't care if the penalty is there, but rarely used. If it is only intended for commercial violators, then it needs to be written that way and you should never rely on what 'typically' would occur.
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What is that, you say? Yep, they're losing their GOLD (nationally) and their GUNS (likewise, nationally).
Here's how. Back in the year 2000, one of the last stable (popular) currency on the face of the planet, the Suisse Franc, was taken off its Gold backing, and as I understand it, is now a free floating paper currency, subject to inflation like the rest of them. In other words, expect to see the bank panics of the West, FINALLY a
Re:Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:5, Insightful)
1: "Suisse". If you're talking English, you meant "Swiss".
2: CHF Gold backing: It's true the Swiss franc lost some of it's gold backing in 2000, but (other than, for example, the US Dollar) it's value seems solid as a rock in a moving sea of global currencies. An inflation of some 1% (according to your(?) governmental factbook [cia.gov]) supports this as well as Yahoo! data on exchange rates [yahoo.com].
About that bank panics idea of yours: Remember the all-american Subprime Mortgage Crisis? Some swiss banks lost a few billion on it, some lower management positions will need to be restaffed, high management seems largely unchanged, the general public wasn't concerned at all. How well did british [wikipedia.org] and american [wikipedia.org] banks [wikipedia.org] cope with it?
3: Disarmament: As opposed to some nation in the far west, a majority of Swiss people seems to be slowly realizing the idiocy of maintaining an overproportional army while surrounded by allied and politically stable countries. With a very recent incident of an army recruit shooting some girl he didn't even know out of the blue, abolishing the forced armament seems nearer than ever. There's no debate about prohibiting guns completely, merely talks about safely storing army equipment outside of individuals' homes. By the way: just a few months ago, in what probably is a first step in the disarmament, soldiers are no longer equipped with any ammo to take home with 'em.
I realize that such events need to be put into perspective (during the writing of this post more people died of hunger than were killed by Swiss army weapons in the last decades), but if an action (forced armament) does not cause any good and very few deaths, it's still a stupid thing to do.
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Re:Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks. (Score:2)
To see your wisdom in action, I believe you may wish
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OK, but when has that happened? As recently at 1946 in Tennessee... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens [wikipedia.org]
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Please realize the idiocy for a nation of some 7 million people in having an army. Switzerland is neighbored by Germany (80m), France (65m people, nukes), Italy (60m) and Austria (some 8m). Except Austria, all of those nations are NATO members. Austria itself is surrounded by NATO members. Both Austria and Switzerland are politically stable, don't seem to have any conflicts whatsoever and are both considered neutral. Military aggression towards Switzerland by
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No, just the first 50,000.
Re:Can some Swiss citizens enlighten us (Score:5, Informative)
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Defective by design?
wth.... (Score:5, Funny)
quote:
Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50,000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote
how can america get one of these?
Re:wth.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop supporting the same old bullshit by not voting democrat or republican? That's my guess.
In all seriousness... (Score:2)
In all seriousness, what would it take to create a _third_ party in the US, if one wanted to run for office but did wanted to be associated with neither Democrats nor Republicans? Would that even be possible under US law? (Or why not?)
I mean, aside from the considerable cash required for any political campaign (under any system, in any country); assume one has enough cash to burn.
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It is certainly possible to create a third party under US law, for instance the Libertarian and Green parties are certainly le
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Sure, it can be done and it is done but not to the degree it would take to seriously compete with the large parties. We've had third party and independent candidates in probably every office in the US government aside from the president (and of course, vice president).
Gett
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Thank you all for your serious and enlightening answers. It's true that I'm not a USian, so I do lack a certain amount of understanding of the details, but even so I've learned a great deal, especially about the weaknesses of such a system. I had no idea there were independents and smaller parties, what a shame it seems to be so futile.
Thanks for explaining!
Mind you, proportional representation is not without its quirks, either:
In Denmark it
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To allow third parties to succeed, you either need to have proportional representation (seats are divided up among all the parties in proportion to the number of votes t
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In all seriousness, what would it take to create a _third_ party in the US [...] Would that even be possible under US law?
Sure, the law doesn't prevent other parties from existing. There's already the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, and plenty of smaller ones. They rarely win elections, though, especially at the federal level.
What stops the US from having viable third parties is our election method (plurality voting). If we had proportional representation, where getting 5% of the votes means your party automatically gets 5% of the seats in Congress, or if we used approval voting or ranked choice voting wit
People deserve the government they vote for. (Score:2)
The British House of Commons also uses first past the post.[1] [bbc.co.uk].
In 2005 in Britain, Labour won 356 seats and the Conservatives 198. The Liberal democrats, a "3rd" party, won 62. Nine other parties won seats.[2] [bbc.co.uk]
While first past the post is indeed a horrible system, the problem in the USA is more that the psychotic voters keep voting for the the Republicans and Democrats.
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I'm not sure what cash would be required from a candidate in a system where the government controls the elections and provides every candidate (with enough petition signatures) with a specific amount of funds, to be used as decided by the candidate (whether through speeches, debates, advertisements, etc), and prohibits the candidate from fundraising (and making anti-democratic promises to wealthy spec
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Slowly and painfully... (Score:1)
I'm not a citizen of the U.S. so I'm not sure, but I think that was one of the reasons you guys (and gals) collectively retain/fight to retain the right to bear arms, that you can effect a change of government or its policies.
Obviously I'd have to suggest that you first petition your senators and representatives (using letters, email or money; whichever you think best)but, ultimately, and this seems true of Britain too, it seems that the Government stopped listening quite
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Re:wth.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem becomes numbers of people that need to be involved.
though America's democracy is in need of overhaul. eliminating the electoral college is a start. term limits would be a solid second. Politicains shouldn't be a life time job, but a temp job, maybe a decade or so of service.
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Sounds like a comforting lie to me.
Re:wth.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The electoral college is irrelevant. The number of cases in which it changes anything is small, and many people agree with the reasoning behind it anyway.
What would really improve America's democracy is to make it smaller. That is, to shift whatever power the federal government doesn't absolutely need (per its constitutional duties and powers) to the states, and to encourage the states to shift as much power as makes sense to municipalities, where direct democracy works well. The first thing we should do is repeal the 16th and 17th amendments. Go back to requiring the federal government to get its funding from the states, and make the senate beholden to the state legislatures whose responsibility it is to raise the funds, and power will quickly shift back where it belongs.
Instead, we should amend the constitution to apportion the expenses of the federal government to the states proportionally to state GDP (rather than proportionally to population to avoid overburdening poor states), and requiring the states to pay the bill, regardless of the effect on their own budgets. That will shift the deficit spending to the state level and avoid disturbing the funding of current federal programs, unless and until the programs are changed, eliminated or moved through legislative action.
Of course, none of it will ever happen, but elimination of the electoral college won't either, and my suggestion would actually accomplish something.
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Direct Democracies tend to fall apart with large numbers of people. Switzerland has ~8 million people. New York city alone has 8 million people.
The problem becomes numbers of people that need to be involved.
I keep hearing this argument, but those that give it usually have no idea about how democracy works in Switzerland... Even Switzerland would come to a complete stop, if everyone had to vote whether to build a new townhall in a village of 300 people most Swiss hadn't heard about - that is why they have 3 'layers' where laws can be set (including taxation) --
...)
1. there are national referenda (e.g. do we want to allow abortion?, or the national income tax,
2. there are cantonal ('state') referenda, whic
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The economies of scale dictate the problem. For a nation wide referendum you need to be able to represent the minorities. The problems is the miniorities in the USA are significantly larger. Though It would likely work up to the state level.
As for the electoral college Bush never would have gotten elected if the popular vote actually counted for something, If Peoples votes in the presi
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When I try to get people active in American politics, there are two common arguments given not to get involved. The first is that things are more or less ok, the people in charge must know what they are doing, there isn't really a problem, things are as good as they can be, or some variant thereof. The second argument is "Yeah, but things are so fucked up a
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In Switzerland, 50.000 is a fairly significant number - it's more than 1 in 200 of their population signing up for something.
Obviously, in a country with 300.000.000 you might want to set this number proportionally higher.
Similarly, while someone might be able to force a debate, that does not mean those people would also be able to force through some measure or other -- for that they still need the majority
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I support term limits for various positions. But I think it would be very foolish to force someone out of politics all together after so long. The wisest and most competent people are usually the people with the most experience.
That's one of the reasons why, though I don't agree with everything Hillary Clinton stands for or did as Governor, I think that she is one of your better choices. She lived in the White House an
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The most corrupt also tend to be the most experianced. Obviously, balance needs to be found.
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The problem becomes numbers of people that need to be involved.
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That's correct. In order for citizens to violate the rights of others, a Constitutional Convention would have to be initiated under Article V [foavc.org] in order for the Constitution to be amended to allow a citizen-initiated referendum to violate someone's rights. Otherwise, an illegal law is just as illegal, whether Congress or a referen
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Even then, if there is inadequate participation from the general population you can get the same ki
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).
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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.
Dude, you pretty much nailed it. Maybe it's worthwhile adding that the threat of a referendum by pressure groups or a political party can have a substantial influence on the legislation process. Pessimists would call it watering a law down, while a more optimistic person interprets the process as compromising.
Overall it has (imo) a positive effect, since it prevents the executive of going bonanza (which they tried, when the executive shifted more to the right and got viciously whacked down in the next f
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The bad problems with direct democracy are when bad laws are introduced - this could mean that the majority persecute minorities, or as you say, a vocal minority gets to manipulate the laws whilst an apathetic majority lets them.
But if this as an additional way to block new laws coming through, then that seems a much better way of doing it - passing a referundum would be a nec
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> how can america get one of these?
According to Wikipedia, Switzerland has 7,500,000 inhabitants. If calc.exe serves correctly, 50,000 is less than 1% of the population - (assuming they all have the vote). How cool is that?.
Now, how do we get that without all the very suspicious gold, crazy women and high levels of gun-related domestic violence...
(America jokes i
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assuming they all have the vote
They don't.
Foreigners are usually not eligable to vote (a few exceptions on communal level) and Switzerland has ~ 20% foreigners.
In addition you must be 18 to vote on a federal level.
50000 sounds very low (it's 100'000 for a constitutional referendum) but in practice it's harder to get it going then it sounds.
Democracy is a serious business in Switzerland (with ~3 annual referendums) and people don't look kindly on joker-initiatives.
Nevertheless, a few interesting referendums actually where either a
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Offcourse the media has been quiet (Score:3, Interesting)
They are the beneficiaries of this new law. That has been the problem with the copyright laws from the beginning, those who form the public opinion (Not just news agencies, but media in general) are in mostly FOR these laws.
Take Futurama, it shows a future that is truly nasty where nobody has any morals whatsoever. What is the ONE thing they all seemed to get worked up about, the one time the show tried to send a morale message? The evils of napster and how the geeks enslaved those poor stars.
Expecting the media to report on this kinda stuff is like expecting a news story on "newsreaders make way to much money new study shows. Could be replaced by trained chimp".
What next, expect politicians to rant about their own pay increases?
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How could you possibly not see how tongue-in-cheek that episode was?
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Rats :( (Score:1)
Though people are doing good work here, trying to get those bums an inkling of the issues involved is like banging against a wall (in fact all the more better for it at least for 5 years or so
But this is very very ominous and does not bode
from the nothing-like-sleath-governing dept. (Score:2)
Maybe that's how they spell "you're screwed" in Switzerland.
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Funny (or really not) .... (Score:2, Interesting)
Also does this affect (/directly attack) The Pirate Bay?
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The pirate party in Switzerland is run by master criminal Heidi.
She is well known for having a huge media stash up in the highlands at her Grandfathers shack.
Her internet connection runs on the immensely popular (in Switzerland) and fast IP over Yodel protocol.
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You should attend some geography classes again.
Hmmmm. Good morning there how many finger am I ... (Score:2)
Switzerland != Sweden. TPB is in Sweden not Switzerland. So it doesn't affect them at all. But on a related note does the Swiss have a party similar to the Pirate Party?
I'm not surprised (Score:1)
It is on my list of nations where I never want to live (right below the US if you're interested).
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I've seen some swiss prisons (Score:4, Funny)
if these kind of things go into action we'll have geek prisons. Where you'd have no contact with outside world, and you have to play games, and dnd whole day....it'd be like in your room...only your mom wouldn't nag on you all the time to go out and play in the sun.
I am tempted to say 'sign me up'....
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 treadi
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BUT of those 280, 260 are cases of suicide!
And this is extremely low; of all 1500 homicide and suicide-cases only this many? And moreover, there are an estimated 535'000 army-weapons (mostly assault guns, some pistols) in the homes of the population.
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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 pre
swiss slashdot readers (Score:1, Insightful)
Shit hitting the fan? (Score:1)
Thank you (Score:1)
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The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be. ~Lao-tzu
Sharing and media levy... (Score:1, Interesting)
AFAIK (and IANAL), the new Swiss law also stipulates that there is no crime in downloading or possessing copyright material.
The levy on blank media applies to those who would download and store media, who are not committing any crime in doing so.
Actually not THAT bad... (Score:1)
The only problem is that under the new law nobody is allowed to distribute the tools for breaking the DRM/copy protection.
Jail for p2p? Not according the the reports. (Score:2)
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This is strictly my interpretation, but: Since protocols like Bittorrent depend on the fact that downloaders also upload, so you're, at the very minimum, in a grey area, legally speaking.
The good news is that downloads from ,for example, a slightly sinister Czech FTP server, or from services like allofmp3 are still perfectly legal.
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Negative. Bypassing protection seems to be unchangedly legal as long as it's done to consume the work in a legal manner. Clearly speaking: Using DeCSS to watch or back up DVDs is perfectly legal; commercially copying copyrighted DVDs isn't.
Unfortunately, creation and advertising of products to circumvent protections appear to be outlawed. Effectively private copies are thus limited to
Re:Jail for p2p? Not according to the reports. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm living in Switzerland and I can assure you that the Swiss public isn't likely to forget about the existence of these tools.
The reason why we got a relatively liberal version of the anti-circumvention law is that the politicians were afraid that otherwise there'd be a successful referendum.
As long as we don't do something stupid like e.g. joini
Boing-Boing gets it all wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
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The reasoning for that is that the burden of figuring out if a service is legal or not can not be put on the consumer. I.e. a consumer doesn't necessarily know the legal difference between the Itunes store and a service like allofmp3 (which, alas, is perfectly legal in Switzerland.
How liberal the law actually is is very easy to detect: Just observe the foaming and frothing of the resident IFPI dudes...
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mod parent up (Score:1)
rapidshare (Score:1)
and if so they are soo screwed as everyone knows 99.9% of files they host are illegal
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Yes, actually. The cat does "got my tongue." (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I'd call this a victory! (Score:3, Interesting)
I would call this a victory, considering that all of the DMCA-like provisions that had been proposed have been stripped out in the end.
Here's the originally proposed diff, in French [www.ige.ch] and German [www.ige.ch], against the existing Swiss Copyright Law [admin.ch] of 1992. Some of the notable changes would have been:
Compare that with the enacted diff, in French [admin.ch] and German [admin.ch]. None of the provisions above remains. Some of the notable features of the new law are:
From my cursory reading of the law, I would say that it's all upside and no downside for content consumers.