Makes sense coming from such a rich, arrogant, and boring country.

 

You're half right.  This may make perfect sense for the Switzerland micro-economy because its people have so much money, therefore they may actually be spending according to the findings of the study.  I always get weary though when you take a country the size of Kentucky and try to extend that to the world (as we see with Sweden in the case of Spotify).

Kentucky is actually way bigger -- Switzerland is actually smaller than West Virginia.

Thanks Switzerland. Hey while you're at it, why not excuse ticket counterfeiting as long as it's for 'personal use' - if your friend prints out a fake ticket for you and doesn't charge, hey no one gets hurt right? And why stop at music, let's make an Occupy Barnes and Noble law too - walk into any bookstore, make exact copies of entire books "as long as it's for your personal use" and then, no charge! Yay! I heard somewhere that creative types and businesses live on magic and pixie dust anyway, those greedy greedy people, not even needing real money to eat, how dare they attempt to charge a "personal user" for something that should be FREEEEEEEE. (even though said creative types and businesses invest large amounts of capital, effort, and innovation to bring a high quality product to the market). It's IP Communism - we all remember how well that worked out back in the day. You know what I always say, when it comes to great successes in history, Viva Mao…… ah, that explains why the Swiss flag is red!

Switzerland wants to play nice with the IT companies, in order to attract their banking to the country. They did this with the Nazis, why are you surprised now? Switzerland is Switzerland, everybody knows that.

And America is America:  the people who elect Georges W. Bush... twice !

The Swiss government wants to legalize theft.

Exactly.

The Swiss government wants to legalize theft.

We could block imports from Switzerland to make them understand the value of other people's work who don't tour or sell other merchandise in Switzerland.

Sheer Zed 

Blue Yodel No.1 or a Swiss miss?

Ivan Spell 

Switzerland stands for piracy legalization!

charly prevost 

Legalize it, too good to be true?

 Andrew Robinson

Funny, that's what the Pirate Party has been saying all along.

Lets not confuse the issue. irrespective of what switzerland does or not, the amount paid to artists is a fraction of what the record companies and their add-on's make (lawyers, publicist's etc..etc.). There is no way to stop the trend which always existed, sharing in one form or the other - basic human nature. so, the argument of Barnes and Nobles or a counterfeit concert tickets are more of a " thinking based on liver" rather than " thinking based on grey matter". if there is a form of paying the artists directly for the downloads (flattr for example), and remove the middlemen out, would that still be an issue? I think it would be for the record companies (as they pay on average less than 2% to the artists).

so, lets puts thing in perspective....this is like a war on drugs , or what it was before with Alcohol. There is no sense going against human nature, the way out is to seek avenues to have users compensate artists directly - which is already happening on a small scale.

There is no rational way to stop, so making it illegal is the answer?? I beg to differ.

what about artists who are their own labels? that is a sizeable group that grows larger daily. and who said you were in charge of choosing which groups are ok to steal from? if the artist signed a shite rate, that's their problem; they didn't have to sign anything, especially not in today's enviroment. 

The establishment that runs the entertainment industries and writes the world's copyright laws has been trying to veto these kinds of experiments with alternative approaches to digital copyright.  But what the world needs is a lot of countries trying deregulation of copying, and/or alternative methods of paying artists. 

 

We need these kinds of real-world experiments in order to know whether copyright law is really still a good thing for musicians and other creators, and whether other method of remuneration are practical and competitive.

"We need these kinds of real-world experiments in order to know whether copyright law is really still a good thing for musicians and other creators, and whether other method of remuneration are practical and competitive."

 You've got to be joking. Letting people download whatever they want for free appears to you to be a "method of remuneration"? How exactly does letting people download whatever they want help determine whether or not "copyright law is really still a good thing for musicians and other creators"? What is the purpose of this experiment, if not just to let Swiss citizens steal the work of "foreign production companies?

 Is there any way that you are not as stupid as your post, and that you are not as dishonest of the policy you support? (Hint: the answer is "no".)

Hey everybody. Theft is theft. Legalizing theft does not justify theft.

If someone steals your identity online, I guess that's ok too, according to your theory.

Well, calling it "theft" is making an analogy to depriving someone of physical property.  But the analogy isn't necessarily an accurate one.

If I steal your sandwich, you can't eat your sandwich anymore.

If I copy a song you recorded without your permission, you still have your song.  It's not as though you are prevented from listening to it, or deprived of fair credit (as perhaps George Harisson accidentally stole /He's So Fine/ from George Mack).  So it certainly isn't accurate to call it theft of the /song/.

There is a more plausible argument that it's theft of /royalties/ that I might have paid you if copying hadn't been possible.  Sometimes, then, pirates are stealing royalties from musicians (or much more commonly, record labels, because most acts don't recoup).  The complication is that, according to the best studies of music sales displacement we have (Waldfogel's work at UPenn), only around 20% of unlicensed downloads prevent a sale.  So about 20% of unlicensed downloading is theft of royalties, and other 80% is theft of something the record label would never have possessed under any circumstances.

The Swiss are right to be thinking about these economic phenomena in more detail rather than pouring more resources into the War on Copying.

And to be clear: I do think the question of how to ensure that creators are well- and fairly-paid in the Internet era is an important one.  But calling copying "theft" is tiresome propaganda for a model (excusive rights) that is not necessarily doing creators or publishers much good at this point.

Totally agree. All this talk of theft is just giving potential customers a head ache...most don't give a shit what the industry thinks about their downloading activities, they just want to listen to the music. 

Also, there is a difference between "stealing" and "infringing" copyright. Feel free to look up both definitions.

The labels are really talking about people infringing their content but somehow managed to get so many people to belive infringing is stealing....don't get me wrong, im NOT saying it's cool to infringe. But lets call a spade a spade....

Disagree totally. When someone steals a music CD, are they stealing a CD or a CD filled with music?

There is no difference between a music CD and a music File. A CD or File is simply packaging.

Yes there is an opportunity cost(lost sale due to theft) to the record label/artist when someone steals(illegaly downloads) a music file or steals a music CD.

Let's not blur the lines. When Copyright legislation came into law for the first time it in effect de-criminalized theft of content.

Regarding the study you quoted, it may be somewhat flawed in the sense that if online piracy was under much better control and consumers felt much more secure buying online with ample song preview streams, there would be more purchases.

It is often quoted that 95% of downloads is done illegaly.
As per your study, if piracy is controlled effectively, which can be done with reasonable penalties and enforcement, the legitimate market for music would be 24% versus the current 5%. This is a nearly five fold increase.

Anyways, I don't have a problem with copying for personal use, but when someone takes a copy of music without copyright owners directly and financially benefitting from it, it is called shoplifting/theft (depriving copyright owners of livelihood and to pay suppliers/creditors). Your sandwich analogy to describe all thefts is wrong; it does not work in the case of shoplifting.

I don't believe the Swiss government has the right to allow Swiss citizens to obtain my music without my self financially benefitting from my work/music. As stated at my artist website, I don't perform live and my only merchandise is my music sold on iTunes. How does the study sponsered by the Swiss government allowing the Swiss to illegally download my music benefit me? It is theft of the fruits of my livelihood/labor..."they are stealing my work".

 Mike Wells 

They are feeling some pressure, but it's just plain weird.

Randy Rockett

Like we needed another reason why Switzerland is better than everyone else.

Perhaps forming a big group of artists willing to boycott playing any live shows in Switzerland would get their attention.

You mean all I have to do is fly to Zurich with a few terrabyte drives and it's on???

Siiiiick. 

Wait,

Maybe I'll make it Montreux.

Yes, Lake Geneva is lovely this time of year. 

 

I am shocked !!!

I seem to recall that the copyright and IP conventions stipulate that, should a country fail to respect copyrights and other forms of IP, then that country forfeits the right to have their copyrights and IP protected. I would *love* to see all Swiss IP de-protected as a result of this.

they believe it helps selling tickets, merch etc but where does that benefit songwriters who do not perform.

Here's one very pernicious effect of the Swiss position:

While they claim that the total amount of money spent on entertainment remains the same (and who really knows what "study" they used, or how accurate it is) it is nonetheless certain that the pattern of spending changes. If less money is spent of DVD's or CD or legal downloads but more money spent on live concerts, then that money is, obviously and by definition, *not* going to artists who can not afford to tour; rather it will be going to groups and performers that *can* afford to tour in the first place - and these are rarely independent artists, considering the cost of touring. How far wrong would it be to say that this Swiss policy deprives 99.999% of all recording artists the opportunity and the *right* to earn money from their work? Money saved by illegally downloading an independent film made by a director who went into debt to finance it and who can not get "big league" distribution, is spent on expensive film-industry productions.

The ultimate effect is that new voices in the arts and the entertainment industry are starved of funding, while the most popular performers and productions get richer. Rather like the Swiss banking industry, the idea seems to be to expropriate the poor for the sake of the wealthy. (While not as bad as, for example, having $5bn in Kim Il-Jong's Swiss bank accounts while North Koreans starve to death, or are used as slave labour, it would seem to be part of the same mindset.)

It is not the case that any dollar spent on any given item of entertainment has the same effect as if it were spent on any other item: it can matter greatly; especially when that money is being channeled from the low-income to the high-income class.

Is there anyone here so stupid as to be unable to understand the effects that this will have on culture and the arts?

 

"This mostly affects foreign production companies," the report conclusion"continues.  "But they need to adapt to shifting consumer behaviors.""

Charming attitude. Translation: It doesn't hurt anyone we know, so we don't care.

Remember that next time you pay for any imported Swiss product. Go ahead, take that Gruyère from the supermarket without paying. No need for guilt or shame. It doesn't affect our country, and the Swiss just "need to adapt to shifting consumer behaviors".

- Versus

 

Switzerland, the country that made a deal with Hilter, so that the Nazis could use the Swiss banks for money laundering and cache creating, in exchange for, well, basically leaving the country alone...

If they didn't find it unethical to make a deal with the Nazis, it doesn't surprise me that they are looking for deals with pirate websites.

 

To me this is about as stupid as logic gets!  So...if we legalize the theft of houses (since everyone really likes taking other people's hard earned commodities for free, even though the owner who paid for that stuff never invited them in nor wanted it to be "shared"...screw them!), then these theives would generally have more money after burglarizing one line of goods, which leads to the possibility that the economy grows stronger for them to buy more...cars?  Wait - car sales look healthy...this might work!   Yeah...great - lets legalize the theft of one product because that'll give people more money to buy other products, which kind of seem similar in category to some lame brained, uninvolved lawmakers...but actually aren't the same product at all.... In fact, most often were not even created, financed or offered by the same people... So...if people want to take an ABBA record, ok but someone else buys buy a Daft Punk concert ticket... Tit for tat - screw whoever paid for, marketed and made ABBA a commodity... It all worked out.    Bravo, Switerland.  Genius.

By the way, the US is against the thinking world use of the net. The companies should change, not the net

Stop fighting like roosters. First you legalize and then you monetize. This way everyone is happy.