Switzerland: music and movies can still be downloaded legally

Every third resident of Switzerland downloads unlicensed music, films and games from the Internet, and since last year the Swiss government has decided what to do with it. This week their report was published.

The general conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, according to which the downloading of copyrighted materials for personal use is allowed, should not change. The report begins with the fact that the Internet has fundamentally changed the approach to copying files. Xerox, audio cassettes and video recorders, although they allowed users to make good copies, but these devices lack a convenient way of distribution. With the development of the world wide web, everything has changed.

Media companies oppose all these technological inventions for fear that their business will be crushed. This is a wrong point of view, according to the Swiss government, which advocates the possibility of finding good use of technology instead of suppressing its development.

“Every time a new media technology becomes available, it is always attacked. This is the price we pay for progress. The winners are those who are able to use new technologies with their advantages, and the losers are those who missed these events and continue to follow the old business model, ”the report says.

The government report also concluded that even in the current situation where piracy is booming, media companies do not necessarily lose money. These conclusions are based on the results of a study conducted by the Dutch government last year, as the two countries are similar in many aspects.

About a third of Swiss citizens over the age of 15 download pirated music, films and games from the Internet. However, because of this, they do not spend less money, since their average entertainment budget is quite constant. According to a Dutch study, people who download music are more frequent visitors to concerts, and people who download games actually bought more games than those who didn't download anything. Also in the music industry, little-known bands are becoming more popular due to the free availability of their tracks.

The Swiss report then goes on to review some of the repressive anti-piracy laws and regulations that have been recently implemented in other countries. For example, the three-stage Hadopi law. 12 million was spent on Hadopi law in France this year, and the Swiss consider this figure too high. It is highly doubtful, the report says, that the law will come into full force, since the right to access the Internet is one of the fundamental human rights according to the decision of the UN Human Rights Council. The Council emphasized that the Hadopi law is a disproportionate law that should be repealed.

Other measures, such as filtering or blocking content and websites, were also rejected, as this would harm freedom of speech and violate privacy laws. The report notes: even if these measures were implemented, there are a large number of ways to get around them.

The general conclusion of the government is that the entertainment industry must adapt to changing consumer behavior. Swiss parliamentarians are not going to change laws for the reason that the bad influence of downloading content from the Internet on national culture has not been proven.

In addition to content downloaders, prosecuting every ordinary content distributor in Switzerland is nearly impossible for companies. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that torrent trackers are not allowed to collect the IP addresses of file distributors, which makes it impossible for copyright holders to gather evidence.

Original report in German: www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/ejpd/de/home/dokumentation/mi/2011/2011-11-30-30.html