
Swiss Government: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal  - Uncle_Sam
http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/
======
VonLipwig
Wait.. what is this? A Government talking sense! Wow!

Most of my friends 'acquire' digital content. All spend money on cinema,
entertainment events, video games and legit DVD's and box sets of things they
really like.

In all cases the decision to go pirate is convenience + cost. A DVD at £14 is
seen as too expensive. Similarly 79p for a single audio track file which you
only need to play on your iPod seems a little pricy. Since Spotify came about
everyone I know has cut back on music downloaded. Apart from iPod tracks there
is no reason to get the actual file.

If pirated content disappeared overnight I personally would mostly live
without. If I did buy a DVD for a silly price, that would mean I wouldn't be
visiting the cinema that week. I think the majority of my friends would do the
same.

The trouble with law makers is the influence the music and film industry have
on them. The facts are there to be seen. Someone who goes out of their way to
get a pirate copy of something will typically spend more on entertainment than
those who don't.

The music industry likes to believe that every track downloaded is 79p they
could have had. That isn't the case at all. If you took away all pirated
material you would restrict discovery of new entertainment. Film / Music
people may get slightly more money from certain people but the majority of
this money would come at the expensive of other things.

I am not saying piracy is good but it certainly isn't the devil which many law
and policy makers make out it is and its nice to see this acknowledged by an
EU state.

~~~
paulhauggis
"The trouble with law makers is the influence the music and film industry have
on them. The facts are there to be seen. Someone who goes out of their way to
get a pirate copy of something will typically spend more on entertainment than
those who don't."

I have yet to see any concrete evidence of this.

"The music industry likes to believe that every track downloaded is 79p they
could have had. That isn't the case at all. "

It's funny. The excuses as to why people download pirated content changes
every couple of years. Maybe it has to do with different age groups.

Remember when albums where $20 and everyone complained that the reason they
were downloading rather than buying was because it was too expensive and they
couldn't buy an individual song?

It put many stores out of business and many people lost their jobs. Nobody
seem to talk about this though.

It's ridiculous to me that with so many legal services and songs at .99,
people still pirate music. But it does show that it was all just an excuse.
People that pirate just want free stuff.

"certainly isn't the devil which many law and policy makers make out it is"

Piracy isn't 1-to-1 theft. However, if companies don't do anything about it,
people will just expect their content to be free and in the future, they won't
be able to charge anything for it.

"If pirated content disappeared overnight I personally would mostly live
without. If I did buy a DVD for a silly price, that would mean I wouldn't be
visiting the cinema that week. I think the majority of my friends would do the
same."

You think the price is silly, yet you still download it. You are getting
enjoyment out of listening or watching the content and you aren't compensating
the artists and many people that went into creating it.

How is this in any way honest?

~~~
niels_olson
> How is this in any way honest?

Through a paradigm shift, which is long overdue.

Should the public have free access to scholarly papers and pay to see the
doctor, lawyer, and geneticist?

Should the public have free access to musical recordings and pay to see the
artists live?

Seems to me in both cases the net effect, the consequence, would be a higher
quality of public discourse and appreciation. And that would be in the
public's interest.

By comparison, implicit in your argument is an endorsement of the current
system, wherein 77 years of copyright is just fine. From a deontological
perspective, perhaps. Certainly lawyers make their money perpetuating a purely
deontological view of the world, claiming they're the only ones who can parse
the ontology of duties.

This divide between the deontological position to a consequentalist position
is exactly the bridge Lessig believes the Supreme Court wanted him to cross,
and he failed to realize it. Free Culture was his mea culpa.

I'm not sure how old you are, but my personal observation at 35 is that the
quality of public discourse has improved since the advent of the internet. It
would be a tough sell to claim that more information is better, but more
access to high quality information is worse. Fundamentally, it's not about
honoring the terms of scams corporate lobbyists perpetrated as we awoke from a
50-year TV-induced coma. It's about the public interest. In that paradigm, a
consequentalist paradigm focused on the public interest, more access to high
quality information is better.

Building the quantitative body of evidence to examine the consequentalist
position is exactly what scholars have been laboring at for the last decade.
And arguably the most advanced, sophisticated, educated society on the planet
has examined the evidence and found it sufficient to directly, explicitly,
reject in whole and in part, the deontological arguments of the old business
model.

I will stretch this a bit further: if you look at history, I think you will
find progress is often a story that starts with a deontology, a
consequentalist argument forms, which is then backed up with evidence,
adopted, and then forms the foundation of a new, hopefully less misguided
deontology. If you can identify a deontology, look for consequentalist
arguments that oppose it.

edit in reply to geoffschmidt: How to implement? I think we have seen that
grandfathering current stakeholders has historically been an effective path to
progress in the long term. As the new rules apply to more people, the old
rules enjoy progressively fewer supporters, and eventually the new rules
prevail. In terms of defining their copyright as "property", we're getting
into the merits of the term "intellectual property", which is a red herring.
There is no such thing under the law, but it is a very useful conflation of
ideas for patent lawyers who need to pay off their Maseratis. The facts will
set you free.

~~~
paulhauggis
"Through a paradigm shift, which is long overdue."

As long as that paradigm shift includes open source software. I should be able
to use open source software in any proprietary software application without
having to release the source code.

Any time the GNU license is violated, many people here on HN talk about
"theft" and "stealing". It's exactly the same thing as pirating software: the
original piece of open source is never really taken. Bits are just shifted.

Also, people that pirate may think they are helping the software community.
However, it will only push software companies and developers like me to
release Software as services.

You now have to pay a monthly fee rather than a one-time price.

~~~
niels_olson
So, just to offer a particular example to test my understanding, you think
that I'm saying that if Google runs their service on top of Linux, they should
be able to hold their own source code in reserve, but any changes they make to
the kernel should be returned to the kernel, but if they fail to do that, then
the the Linux project should not have standing to hold Google liable in civil
court?

No. I'm saying the legal regime that supports 77 years of copyright is
profoundly flawed and a little civil disobedience is a reasonable way to keep
the conversation moving forward. There is no law that those with enough
resources cannot obey. It's those with limited resources who agitate for
change.

~~~
paulhauggis
"So, just to offer a particular example to test my understanding, you think
that I'm saying that if Google runs their service on top of Linux, they should
be able to hold their own source code in reserve, but any changes they make to
the kernel should be returned to the kernel, but if they fail to do that, then
the the Linux project should not have standing to hold Google liable in civil
court?" If they can go after Google, I should be able to after someone in
court for distributing my proprietary software without my consent. Both are
license violations, but in different ways. You seem to be pushing for
legalized piracy (or the inability for anyone to protect their intellectual
property). Except in the case of open source software. This is the hypocrisy
I've seen time and time again from people that are against copyright laws.

~~~
niels_olson
> hypocrisy ... from people that are against copyright laws

I'm arguing that 77 years of copyright is too long. Maybe 6 months or a year.
That's the timeframe some scientific journals are moving toward for making
their archives available. I would also argue the fair use exception should be
made far broader, especially for education. Are you arguing that 77 years of
copyright is acceptable? Do fully endorse the current system without
reservation?

~~~
paulhauggis
I hope that when this happens, I have lots of money stocked away.

I will wait until a smaller, successful company's copyright expires after a
year and I will replicate it exactly. Because I have more resources, I will be
able to easily compete and most likely put that company out of business.

After a big block-buster movie comes out, which costs a million+, I could make
t-shirts and all sorts of things to make money..and I didn't have to put any
of the work into creating it.

------
tomlin
> ...the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact
> downloading has on society, and this week their findings were presented.

This is where I stopped and took a moment. The _government_ did research.
Proactively. For the good of its people.

To the Swiss government, the people of the country (or, the impact _to_ the
people of the country) are/is considered before an external interest. That
isn't to say the external interest isn't important, just not as important as
the people.

That's the difference. In North America, we concern ourselves with jobs so
much that it actually makes them go away. If you sympathize with the industry,
the industry takes advantage and cements itself to a position of necessity.

Artists will continue making movies and music because that's what artists do –
with or without the entertainment industry.

The entertainment industry needs us, we don't need them.

~~~
jordan0day
_"To the Swiss government, the people of the country (or, the impact to the
people of the country) are/is considered before an external interest."_

How would you consider the American music industry an "external interest" in
the USA? While the RIAA and the labels aren't citizens, they're generally
_comprised_ of citizens. That is, when a music label gets special treatment,
that means those citizens who work for that label get special treatment.

I'm not advocating the craziness that is current copyright law in the USA by
any means, and while the above statement might sound like justification for
all the evil the RIAA and the like have done over the years, the issue is
hardly black-and-white.

 _"Artists will continue making movies and music because that's what artists
do – with or without the entertainment industry."_

I think this is a very broad, gross generalization. Sure, musically-inclined
folks will probably still continue to play instruments or write songs as a
hobby, even if there weren't a financial incentive -- but I hardly think the
thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of people currently involved in
the entertainment industry would all be starving
artists/producers/technicians/special effects artists/movie theater
operators/etc. purely out of some all-overriding drive to
_create/produce/engineer/operate_.

Let's say we flipped the law and made it _illegal_ to sell music & movies. On
the plus side, we'd probably have relatively little low-quality "pop" music &
remakes of remakes in the theaters. On the negatives, we'd almost certainly
never have, say, the Beatles White album, 2001: A Space Odyssey, WALL-E, etc..
It's not because without a financial incentive the Beatles wouldn't have made
music, they just wouldn't have been able to devote the time and resources that
they did. Kubrick might have still made a film _like_ 2001, but how possible
is it he would have been able to make it of the same quality?

Again, I'm not saying I agree with our current system of basically
entertainment industry-by-fiat, but it's not nearly as simple as "we'll always
have art regardless of if there's an industry to support it!"

~~~
tomlin
> How would you consider the American music industry an "external interest" in
> the USA?

The American music industry isn't _American_. It's international. When a
corporation gets to be the size of, say, Universal, their interests are not
bound to a specific country. To me, that makes their interests external to
America's interests.

> I think this is a very broad, gross generalization. Sure, musically-inclined
> folks will probably still continue to play instruments or write songs as a
> hobby, even if there weren't a financial incentive.

It is a broad generalization to say that artists are fuelled by financial
gain. I love designing and developing digital products and if I didn't work
9-5, I'd be doing it more often and probably with less restrictions, less
overhead and less BS. We can't fathom this because it doesn't exist. The
method provided is thought to be the only true way to _"make it"_. And that's
wrong.

> Let's say we flipped the law and made it illegal to sell music & movies.

You don't need to flip it. All you have to do is align with your peers and
create communities that encourage artistic expression. Nothing wrong with
_people_ being the distribution network. There are thousands of years of
cultural evidence that distribution of art & ideas is abundant when necessary.

> but it's not nearly as simple as "we'll always have art regardless of if
> there's an industry to support it!"

And yet art existed before the entertainment industry. Really, if
Switzerland/Sweden's laws are such a threat to their profits, why haven't they
pulled out?

------
CaptainZapp
Well, yes. It always was.

Using services like allofmp3.com in Switzerland was and is perfectly legal (if
you can find a way to pay for it).

There's a reason for that: Swiss legislators believe that it can not be up to
the user of a download site to judge if this site is legit and is licensed to
sell downloads to Swiss customers.

This doesn't mean that uploading is allowed. As soon you upload files or even
fragments of files you crossed the line into illegality.

The whole "It is very terribly illegal what you're doing here, downloader!"
hokum was basically pushed by IFPI and the content industry.

It's a lie (at least in Switzerland).

~~~
huhtenberg
> _This doesn't mean that uploading is allowed._

Wouldn't this effectively make swarm/torrent downloading illegal?

~~~
simonair
Of course; any kind of peer-to-peer service that actually uploads data you
don't have a license to distribute is illegal. But fear not --- the Swiss have
a solution for that, too: <http://bitthief.ethz.ch/> "BitThief is a free
riding BitTorrent client, that is, it downloads from BitTorrent swarms without
contributing any resources itself."

------
Kesty
It's worth mentioning that in Switzerland only downloading copyrighted
material for personal use is Legal, not uploading.

So P2P and file sharing is still illegal since you are uploading while
downloading.

~~~
icebraining
Some people have actually turned leeching to a whole new level by creating
torrent clients which only download. As long as you're not using private
trackers with ratio limits, you're able to download all you want without ever
committing copyright infringement, at least in countries where downloading
isn't illegal.

~~~
Kesty
I think that will defeat the purpose of file sharing. The fact is that
Switzerland is treating piracy like drugs.

It's not that bad if you use them, it's definitely bad if you are selling
them.

------
dbrannan
Here is my experience:

• I took my family to see the Incredibles - cost $7.50 x $5.00 = $37.50

• I like it so much we purchased the DVD - cost $19.50

• Somehow the DVD broke, so in a fit I purchased it through iTunes - $14.95

• Lost that hard drive and had no back up - torrents save the day.

My philosophy is pixar has already made their mint on me. This one movie cost
my family $71.95, and I'm not about to pay for it again.

------
Archio
What is it about European countries that make them so reasonable and open to
progress? This is great news, because for once there's actually a law on
pirating that's based on research, unlike US laws centered around "job
creators" losing money.

~~~
larrik
Because in Europe you have lots of very different countries that your mind
cherry-picks the best parts out of when you hear these stories. Actually
_living_ in Europe requires that you pick one country, and involves
compromising on _something._ (Germany doesn't really have freedom of speech.
UK has big brother issues and crazy libel laws. France hates the internet.
Sweden wants everyone to think they hate men. Etc.)

Of course, I don't hear a lot of negatives about Switzerland. Except from the
IRS, of course :)

~~~
mhd
Lately Switzerland seems to have a small right-wing problem, first banning the
construction of minarets and then voting to deport criminal foreigners. A few
of my Swiss friends found this quite embarrassing and attributed it to the
vagaries of direct democratic processes and voter turnout.

But as you say, each place has its crazy idiosyncrasies, and in the grand
total, Switzerland scores pretty highly in the list of countries to live in.
Unless you hate mountains and/or chocolate, of course. (Or they won't let you
in, which might be an issue)

~~~
danssig
Why would it be a problem to deport criminal foreigners? And if you think
Switzerland is hard to get into, try to get into Denmark.

~~~
mhd
Do you still have to properly pronounce "rødgrød med fløde"?

The problem isn't deportation per se (which lots of states have), but the
specific bill. First of all, it made it automatic deportation, is likely to
conflict with international and EU law and references a few crimes by names
that aren't the proper legal terms. IANAL and this is from memory, but it went
a bit over the top for most people not on the far right. And the campaign for
the referendum was quite on the fear-mongering side, if not a outright racist.

I think right now it's still in a state of flux. It passed, but the legal
bodies now have to properly determine for which crimes it really applies.
Might take a few years yet.

People aren't used to GOP-candidate-level craziness from the Swiss… (It barely
passed, and was generally rejected by the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
I blame the German grammar, it seems to create some kind of envy against every
nationality who don't have to learn that many cases, genders etc.)

~~~
danssig
>Do you still have to properly pronounce "rødgrød med fløde"?

I've never been to Denmark myself, I just have several friends from there who
complained about how hard it was to get in. Apparently even marrying a Dane
isn't enough to stay there if you're not from the EU.

>And the campaign for the referendum was quite on the fear-mongering side, if
not a outright racist.

Oh for sure. The SVP posters have been really awful for a while but I think
it's starting to backfire with the public, so hopefully that will stop.

>People aren't used to GOP-candidate-level craziness from the Swiss…

That's a bit of an exaggeration. The SVP gets pretty dirty from time to time
but the GOP is a caricature of a right-wing fringe group.

>I blame the German grammar, it seems to create some kind of envy against
every nationality who don't have to learn that many cases, genders etc.

Keep in mind that Switzerland has the highest "auslander" percentage of any
western European country. That's going to create a big of backlash.

------
hammock
"I buy the music of bands I really like. I buy their albums as a conscious
choice to support them."

This argument is made a lot, but it's weird. Music isn't CHARITY! It's a
manufactured good. I don't give KitchenAid $150 for a stand mixer to "support
them and the great things they create." I do it to buy their stand mixer.

Just to be clear, I'm not a copyright advocate. Just think it's a twisted
frame of mind to think about music as above.

~~~
cbs
_Just think it's a twisted frame of mind to think about music as above._

Most people who are serious about music buy merch at shows for the explicit
purpose of supporting the artist. It is a pure form of voting with your
wallet, "I want you to exist, sell me unrelated goods I have no need for".

I gave MC Lars $X for two t-shrits, not because I wanted T-shirts but because
I wanted to support him and the great things that he creates. Hell, I even
bought a floppy disk full of animiated .gifs from Math The Band. I don't even
have a floppy drive, I just had a good time at their show.

 _It's a manufactured good_

A good that, unlike a mixer, has no utility and the only reason for purchase
is that you like it.

~~~
billybob
If people really _only_ want to support musicians, it would make more sense to
just hand them a nice note with some cash and walk away.

I mean, isn't it weird that they want to make music, and you want to hear
music, but it doesn't pay unless they make and you buy a t-shirt that you
don't want? It's like, you make software that I want, but I won't buy
software. I require you to make and sell me a lawn ornament, which I will
throw away.

------
fla
It's also worth mentioning that entertainment is quiet expensive in
Switzerland. For example watching a 3d movie at the local theater will cost
you around 21CHF (~17€ or ~$23). Wich is really expensive IMO.

~~~
lowglow
I think it's about the same in San Francisco if you're watching a 3D Imax
flick. I'd love to move to switzerland, but I've heard it is difficult to get
a visa.

~~~
JSGraef
Getting a visa in Switzerland is extremely difficult (for non-EU nationals).
The employer needs to first prove that they cannot find an adequate candidate
in Switzerland, then they must prove that no adequate candidate can be found
in EU countries. Once that's proven, they're free to choose from the "rest of
the world".

That's step one. Then there are (naturally) plenty of other factors that go
into the acceptance process, but those are generally easy.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I've heard that Swiss Google takes people in without much problems. Obviously
they've figured it out.

~~~
waqf
I just assumed that Swiss Google primarily recruited EEA citizens. Do you know
otherwise?

~~~
guard-of-terra
I know about (not personally) a couple of Russian who are currently employed
there.

------
killnine
Wait... what is this? A Government doing research? Weighing solutions?

We should all print this article and mail it to our government

------
jgeralnik
I would argue that what copyrights should do is give rights holders the
exclusive right to make a profit off of them - other people should not be able
to simply steal your ideas and sell them. That said, copyright does not mean
that you must be paid for your work. If you can offer a service that people
want to pay for, by all means go ahead. If people are not willing to pay for
your work, find another job.

Back when distribution cost money, it was a reasonable service that was
provided. Specifically, rights holders allow corporations to use and
distribute their intellectual property and then people would pay for the
service of distribution.

With distribution free in today's world, there is no longer profit to be made
by controlling distribution. However, those corporations want to create
artificial scarcity so that they can continue to use their old business model.
We do not have any responsibility to sustain obsolete business models.

With no money to be made in simple distribution, content creators must focus
on different services if they wish to make a profit. There are many different
ways to do this. One option is to reform digital distribution - make it more
convenient to purchase than it is to pirate (Netflix, Spotify). Another option
presented earlier in this thread is live performances, but obviously that does
not work in every industry. Yet another option presented is to monetize
creation - appeal directly to fans, run kickstarter campaigns, etc. Find
people willing to pay money for you to create more content.

Because at the end of the day, people focusing on the old model of
distribution are offering me a service I don't need. I can obtain information
for free - the costs of digital distribution are zero. Profits must be found
elsewhere.

The exclusive right to make a profit should continue to belong to the content
creator, so you still cannot sell copies. However, since distribution is free,
I see no problem with giving away copies.

------
mattee
Easy for them to say. But are they also ok with people creating counterfeit
Swiss watches?

~~~
cbs
That is a very different aspect of intellectual property. While related in the
broad scope, as far as the constraints of this report and the subject of
downloading copy-written materiel go it is irrelevant.

~~~
mattee
I don't think you understood my point. If Switzerland's economy financed
movies and depended on the revenue from those movies to employ people, their
government would have a different view of people downloading free movies and
music. It is a different aspect of intellectual property rights, but the
argument is the same in both cases.

~~~
wccrawford
It's still illegal to upload.

In other words, it's not illegal to buy a counterfeit watch, but it's illegal
to make one. (Yes, the analogy still doesn't hold well.)

~~~
tonfa
Mattee is still right that part of the decision from the Swiss gov comes from
the fact that file sharing does not hurt the Swiss local economy (they
explicitly say it).

I don't think there's anything wrong with it, they exploit their status of
being a small country. The Swiss have always been ignoring other countries
problems and only do what benefits them most (hence the fiscal situation and
the protection of the bank industry).

If you can afford doing it, why not do it?

------
MichaelGagnon
New business idea: Setup proxies in Switzerland. Customers pay a subscription
to download pirated content from their Swiss account. From there, you can
transfer the customer's data to their home account in the US (or wherever).
Seem perfectly legal to me. For extra value added you can do AV and other
quality control to make help customers find and safely download pirated
content.

I wonder if Switzerland foresaw such businesses...

------
edanm
"The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that downloaders are
reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts, and game downloaders
actually bought more games than those who didn’t. And in the music industry,
lesser-know bands profit most from the sampling effect of file-sharing."

Hate to burst the bubble, but this is a pretty stupid conclusion if you're
trying to advocate for piracy. People who download more tend to buy more. Why
is this surprising? Obviously, the people who download more are the same
people who _care_ more about entertainment, so of course these are also the
people who'll pay more.

That is absolutely irrelevant to the discussion of whether piracy is a net
benefit. It's mixing up causation with correlation. Download more pirate
content is _not_ causing people to go to more concerts - the people who would
"naturally" go to more concerts are the same people who would "naturally" buy
more music, but are now simply downloading more music.

Note: Or at least, that's another theory, which is also the correct one in my
opinion. My point is that this fact doesn't prove in any way that piracy is
good.

------
rglover
I can't help but think of this scene from _Cool Runnings_ after reading this
article: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVrcnyn5ZZ4>

------
tux1968
Time to get a Swiss proxy account. ;o)

------
michaelfeathers
The MPAA and RIAA could declare war on Switzerland, but there are all of those
mountains.

