heystoopid used our news submit to tell us that Finland's government has decided to pass a bill that makes it illegal even to copy media for personal use. The new copy law has already been criticised for both being badly written and for ignoring consumer rights. The legislation was passed with 121 votes to 35, with 40 MP's not present.
Finland had in the past always allowed people to make copies of their own digital products for personal use. Personal backups were allowed because of the extra tax put on blank media to compensate artists and copyright holders for such actions. The new bill makes it illegal to advertise, provide or possess tools that bypass DRM (Digital Rights Management).
P2Pnet has also pointed out that the bill also makes it illegal to discuss DRM breaking, tools or anything in organised groups that could disable DRM even for personal use.
The Finnish president has the authority to veto this new bill but this has rarely been exercised so is likely to pass into law unhindered. The bill was edited to ask the copyright holders to voluntarily not prosecute those that made personal backups.
 The Finnish government voted yesterday to make it illegal to copy media, even for personal use, if you have to subvert copy protection to do so. The legislation was passed by 121 votes to 34. Forty-four MPs were absent. The updated copyright protection laws have been criticised for ignoring consumers' rights, and the bill itself has been branded confusing and badly worded. Until now, Finland had allowed copying for personal use, and had a blank media levy in place to compensate authors. But under the new laws, not only will copying for personal use become illegal, so will possessing, distributing or advertising tools that break copy protection. P2PNet points out that the law prohibits even "organised discussion" of such things. The Finnish president does have the right to veto the new legislation, but this right is very rarely exercised. According to Finnish News Agency STT, the government appended a note to the legislation asking content producing industries to voluntarily agree not to prosecute individuals for making a few copies for their own use. |
I bet that levy (tax) on blank media will not be dropped anytime soon. Looks like another country has given into big business. No wonder there is such apathy in Europe when it comes to voting, you vote for your MP then they trample over you, the people that elected them, when it comes to laws like this.
It seems politicians just don't listen to what people want anymore, they just do what they want. I'm betting most normal people in the country wouldn't want this law passed, but then again, the politicians rarely care what public opinion is once they're elected, they have a few years before they have to worry what people think.
As for asking content providers not to sue voluntarily, in my opinion, I doubt this is going to work, but you are free to give your opinions.
Source: The Register
Discuss this article with your fellow community members! We appreciate your valuable input, but please keep the reaction policy in mind and make sure your reaction is constructive.
By
darwin03,
Thursday 13 October 2005 16:21
So much for Democracies where the majority of voters elect people (politicians to actually represent the majority) to actually represent the MAJORITY as they are suppossed to do, and actually listen to what the majority want.
Sounds more like the Adolf Hitler years where he started initially to take peoples rights away bit by bit, and we all know where that ended up after a few years don't we!
Unless people exercise their democratic rights and let there (alledgedly at least) elected representatives who are supposedly there to represent the majority know what they want (IE: ring,write,email them) they will contiinue to ignore those same people who elected them because they can (and besides the avearge person does not DONATE LARGE SUMS OF MONEY to them and there political parties like big businesses do.
Maybe we should let them know we want the laws changed to make it a criminal offense for them to take donations from businesses seeing how they are (alledgedly it would seem nowdays) PUBLIC SERVANTS (which means they SHOULD ACTUALLY serve the Public's interests, not BIG BUSINESS).
After all it is us the majority of voters who elect these people to reprsent us the majority, so let your politicians know they are there for US THE MAJORITY NOT THE SMALL MINORITY OF RICH BIG COMPANIES AS THEY SEEM TO BE THERE FOR NOWDAYS.
LET THEM KNOW THAT AT THE NEXT ELECTION THEY FACE YOU WILL NOT VOTE FOR ANY POLITICAL PARTY OR CANDIDATE THAT IGNORES THE ORDINARY PERSON WHO IS IN THE MAJORITY PURELY FOR THE SAKE OF THE MINORITY BIG BUSINESS PERSON (who Funnily enough probably donated large sums of money to their political party).
And do you still have to pay the levy on blank media.
Unfortunately the greed factor has blinded a lot of Politicians/Governments when the greedy money grubbing companies make large donations to political candidates/parties and common sense goes out the window.
Come on people that is what a democracy is about, and that is the people letting thier elected representatives know what they want.
Instead of saying what can I do about it, do something about it, complain to you local/state/and federal Politicians and KEEP COMPLAINING TILL THEY GIVE THE MAJORITY OF VOTERS WHAT THEY WANT AND ARE ENTITLED TO UNDER A DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT, liek they say if it is to be it is up to me the individual, and a lot of individuals can change the world!!!!
PEOPLE POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!
But check out the main 'Man' Behind this scheme, our Brainless "Minister of Culture", ex-lingerie model "Tanja Karpela". Still wondering how much local RIAA (Teosto) paid to her?
She has no brains, but what a figure...
(just search for "Tanja Karpela" in any P2P-network, and you understand what I'm talking about
Let's see how they will react for this new law. I think other finnish sites has to follow them. Well the war ain't over yet, we just have to wait and see... 
Happy Birthday to you 
