Did you know that you're now looking at 1 year in jail if you are p2p filesharing in Switzerland?

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/28...coming-do.html

On the 5th of October 2007, the Swiss law makers adopted a new law to comply with the WIPO treaties. Thanks to the entertainment lobbies, apart from criminalizing DRM circumvention devices, you can now win a one year visit in jail if you share a copyrighted file on a P2P network.
Did anybody hear about this new law ? No. Not even Swiss citizens. The media is quiet about this.

The thing is, Switzerland uses a direct democracy system, and this new law could be the subject to a federal vote if 50,000 people sign a request for it. That's called a Referendum request, and the deadline for its deposit is the 24th of January 2008. If there's no Referendum request by then, the law will become effective.

There's little doubt that if federal votes were to made today, the law would pass anyway. But at least a public debate could be created around the issue and people could react.

Cheers Gav, I've changed the title a little - maybe we need to get those amongst us who have a voice that counts to consider a movement about this?

Cheers for that Gav, excuse my ignorance but this is regarding file sharing programs such as Limewire?

How about streaming of copyrighted video from places such as stage6 and veoh etc?

ta.

Does it affect uploading, or seeding? Perhaps they don't specify it in this much detail? It would make a big difference as seeding is preventable, uploading isn't, as far as I know.

But the law doesn't change the current status very much, does it? It will still be allowed to download for private use. And this is something I respect the Swiss for. At least that is what I could find out. I also remember clearly having read about this law change in many papers when it was being proposed.

Yay for newsgroups (With packet encryption)

Yay for megaupload and rapidshare. No uploads, just downloads... I don't believe there's a law against downloading copyrighted material, only against uploading.

I did an investigation for FACT in the UK and was told that this was the case, which surprised me!

They were more concerned with distribution of material which is what happens with P2P software by default. There are changes on the horizon for the protection of copyrighted material which will target individual users

Not that I would do anything like that.............................................. ..because it's wrong............................and naughty

Does anyone have an official Swiss source for this information?

Preferably a German version so that those here who are able to grasp the finer points of the legal system can explain it to those who can put it into the words necessary for those who have a voice to speak.

we should get more information before my mate gets locked-up
Actually, there are a significant number of lawyers in the building.....let me see if I can get the ball rolling....

At this point it is my understanding that it is not illegal (yet) to download music and movies in CH. Downloading software however is. Piratebay and other such sites are looking into moving away from torrents since those can be 'watched' by third parties, they are in the middle of developing a new way to share files which will make it harder fro Governments to track..

But thats just what I heard of course I would never download anything, having so many musician friends etc....

www.torproject.org
not that I advocate such things but if I was a blogger in Italy, I'd be using this....

Yes, I believe that using this type of solutions will become more and more commonplace. Of course the governments want to track and control whatever they can but the fact that they want to doesn't make it right or good for mankind as a whole. Civilian disobediance in the internet era :-)

it's not an official source but one of the Konsumentenschutz:
Handlungshilfe Musikdownloads

IMHO the OP is not quite correct on some accounts. While DRM circumvention devices are indeed illegal now, using them for personal use is not illegal (unlike in the EU). Furthermore, downloading Music remains legal (the thing that's illegal is uploading).

Furthermore, it's not true that this was not in the media. I remember reading several articles on it (IIRC in the BaZ and 20Minuten).

I sure don't like this revision of the law, but if we take a look at our neighbours or the US we're still rather well off...

Message from my friend as I obviously never download anything -

" Megaupload type of places you have to pay to be able to download properly. Paying means that there is a greater chance of a trail leading back to you. Rapidshare is based in Switzerland so if they reveal their info to the relevant govt authorities then all naughty Rapidshare members might end up in hot water.

The safest thing to do is not download any content that you did not pay for or does not belong to you. Complaining is equivalent to thieves asking for the right to steal."

Somebody started a petition today at no-dmca.ch. 50'000 will be very hard with no party and organisational support and little time left.

Contrary to the DMCA, downloading for noncommercial purposes will still be legal. Also the use of DRM circumvention tools for rights you have anyway stays legal. But the development and advertising for these programs will become illegal. This affects pretty much every DVD player software at least for Linux, because it has to break the CSS "encryption attempt".

Does this mean I have to tell the missus to stop 'E-mule'-ing soon ? Where is she is going to get her latest episodes of Prison Break so that she can watch them while I watch the football on the weekend ? This is a disaster !!

this will certainly color many sheep a deeper shade of gray. and i thought by paying my billag i could access the media i wanted...maybe they could audit and bump the rates to account for network acquired content?

As mentioned in the Handlungshilfe Musikdownloads document, on page 4 -sorry, very basic translation from Google language tools :

In practice, it is more complicated: Some exchanges are familiar settings, where you have some of the download automatically and simultaneously have already downloaded music tracks upload again. On the other hand, you can sometimes to protect two types:

• Move the pieces downloaded immediately after download to a folder on your hard disk. Often, however, the upload begins during the downloads. So you move in a legal gray zone.

• In a few cases, you can use the default setting of the Market Change: Specify that you would not upload. So, the upload blocked. While this is not the sense of barter exchanges. On the other hand, you are legally in the safe area. Unfortunately, this possibility of the exchange of programmers often deliberately impossible.

In other words, if you're using P2P it's legal to download pretty much anything as long as you are not uploading it during or after the download takes place, This can be set in most P2P applications.

I often wonder how this whole upload grey area works with Torrents. As soon as you start downloading a torrent, you start sharing the bits of the torrent you have, does this count as uploading? Or is it only if you seed the file?