New Finnish copyright law fails to stop on-line piracy
You’d have to be a fool to think that a silly law would change people’s attitudes…
New stricter copyright legislation has not changed the attitudes of young people in Finland concerning the downloading of copyrighted material from the Internet. According to the results of an upcoming National Youth Survey, 36 per cent of young people questioned hold a “positive” or “very positive” view of on-line piracy.
In the previous survey, in 2005, the figure was 39 per cent. According to 15/30 Research, the company that conducted the survey, a difference of three percent is not statistically significant; attitudes have remained unchanged for all practical purposes.
There’s a silver lining to everything and here we see that young Finns are basically telling their politicians, authorities, and the state…to go fuck themselves. I find this skepticism, distrust, and rejection towards the state to be very healthy for the citizens. And because these attitudes are starting with people at such a young age, later in life they’ll be more likely to ignore and reject other oppressive actions from the state. So maybe this law ain’t so bad after all!
Illegal downloading remains very common, with 52 percent of those aged 15 to 25 saying that they have downloaded films from the Internet, and with 45 per cent copying television programmes. No less than 70 per cent of men in the age group have downloaded films, and 60 per cent have downloaded TV programmes.
It can be assumed that all of them have acquired the material from an illegal source.
Err…with the massive success with “Star Wreck“, the free online film that became Finland’s most popular Finnish film in history, a lot of kids may have downloaded this legal film and have never downloaded any “illegal” films.
Err…with the massive success with “Star Wreck“, the free online film that became Finland’s most popular Finnish film in history, a lot of kids may have downloaded this legal film and have never downloaded any “illegal†films.
ROTFLMAO..!!!
Comment by FinnFreak — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
“There’s a silver lining to everything and here we see that young Finns are basically telling their politicians, authorities, and the state…to go fuck themselves.”
Actually the silver lining here is that young Finns (and young people everywhere) are natural born socialist who tell big corporations to go fuck themselves. You are aware, are you, what interests are pushing for stricter copyright legislation globally?
Comment by N. Siinistö — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 1:45 pm
“… They’ll be more likely to ignore and reject other oppressive actions of the state…”
Yup, they’ll end up drinking, shoplifting, urinating all over the place and making a mess of publick order and safety.
Comment by issi — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
You are aware, are you, what interests are pushing for stricter copyright legislation globally?
It takes two to tango. The big corporations join hands with the politicians. The corporations are worthless without the help of the politicians.
Comment by Phil — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
“There’s a silver lining to everything and here we see that young Finns are basically telling their politicians, authorities, and the state…to go fuck themselves.â€Â
Yes, lets all ignore those silly regulations like stop signs and red lights. And don’t worry about finding a trash can, just toss your garbage. Gravity will take care of it. And oh yeah, F Kyoto.
The process should be that if the law is stupid, like this one, then it should be repealed or better yet, not put into law in the first place. For the politicians who have done this stupid act, they should be voted out.
Why is it that in some cases there is such a strong demand to follow the rules and at the same time a call to ignore them. There is a root problem causing illegal downloading and that is the high price of the media. At least here in the US, if you are patient enough the DVDs will come down enough that it is worth spending the $10 just to have the disk and not deal with storing the media. And how is it that I can buy a movie for $10, but the CD costs $20. As for music downloads, there would be less illegal downloads if there was not so much DRM. iTunes is popular, but it would be even moreso if they had regular mp3s.
Comment by Fred Fry — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Yes, lets all ignore those silly regulations like stop signs and red lights. And don’t worry about finding a trash can, just toss your garbage. Gravity will take care of it.
People could ignore stop signs, red lights, and trash cans – but they choose not to, these laws make sense. It’s far from the draconian laws put in place by the Finnish government, with lots of help from big corporations.
Comment by Phil — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
…it’s a bit like the law that prohibits people to talk into a mobile phone while driving a car without the use of a hands-free system… the police themselves break this law all the time…
Comment by FinnFreak — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
“with the massive success with “Star Wreck“, the free online film that became Finland’s most popular Finnish film in history, a lot of kids may have downloaded this legal film and have never downloaded any “illegal†films.”
Haha. Good point, maybe we should blog about this as well
Comment by Rigi — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Illegal+software+and+film+downloads+exhaust+university+computer+networks/1101978960379
Note that some students were expelled from Tampere Univ. of Tech. for getting involved in P2P n/w):
Executive director Antti Kotilainen of the Anti-Piracy Centre in Finland, CIAPC, sees the decision by Tampere University of Technology to expel students suspected of piracy as an encouraging step in the right direction.
“There is no justification for the usage of networks, that were set up with tax-payers’ money, for the purpose of acquiring free entertainment for the students”
Comment by Karhu — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Okay, so I did some calculating of my own: http://blog.starwreck.com/?p=189 (in finnish)
So according to our website statistics we can assume that Finns have downloaded Star Wreck some 400,000 times. Most of our audience have been 15 to 25 year old men.
There are 360,000 of them in Finland and according to the study 70% of them have downloaded a movie, that makes 252,000 people.
So even if this is theoretical and all 15 to 25 yearl old men have not downloaded Star Wreck, it’s absolutely impossible that all of the people in this study would have downloaded only illegal movies.
Comment by Rigi — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
…it’s a bit like the law that prohibits people to talk into a mobile phone while driving a car without the use of a hands-free system…
I never understood that rule, it’s far more dangerous for me to frantically fish around for my hands-free device, plug it in, stick it in my ear etc…
Comment by Phil — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
“There is no justification for the usage of networks, that were set up with tax-payers’ money, for the purpose of acquiring free entertainment for the studentsâ€Â
LOL!!! “You can suck up bandwidth, but only if it’s for PAID content!!”
Comment by Phil — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
I’m usually a pretty law-abiding citizen, but with this one I just pretend it doesn’t exist. I don’t download films or music that much, but I do download episodes of two TV-series every week. Regular Calamity Jane, I am.
Comment by Anzi — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
Phil: “I find this skepticism, distrust, and rejection towards the state to be very healthy for the citizens.”
I agree with the premise and wish it would have happened sooner…..in the general sense.
Insofar as piracy laws go, I think there are corporate interests controlling the implementation of international treaties. The Finnish government probably needs to comply with international treaties by creating its own national laws to mirror them.
The grey area is in how vigorously the laws are enforced. A good example is the status of recreational drugs in Holland. Officially, Dutch law states that they are illegal. As far as I know, the law needs to be in-place to conform with a particular UN treaty.
But if Holland’s local governments don’t want to waste their time chasing after pot smokers, then there’s really nothing the UN can do.
Technically speaking, the Finnish government might be able to take the same approach regarding piracy. But apparently, the difference is that corporations might be willing to fund the prosecution of downloaders as a civil matter.
Comment by Kristian (in Espoo) — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
Additionally, I wonder if the Finnish government can be held accountable for not enforcing piracy laws. For example, maybe corporations could catalyze (i.e. fund) legal proceedings against the Finnish government for non-compliance.
For example, it could be a matter that is prosecuted by the European Commission or (possibly) the UN.
I’m not really sure which is the case, but it’s not automatically a law of Finnish design. There’s an international perspective to consider.
Comment by Kristian (in Espoo) — Wed, Jan 17th, 2007 @ 10:03 pm
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070115-8616.html
To all those still parading the whole piracy doctrine, don’t you feel sorta stupid that you ate up the dupe that was used to push trough the current laws? Isn’t it going a bit overboard when government – who in essence should be serving YOU – is in fact serving the movie studios and record labels? I understand something needs to be done but everyone who has half a wit I think should realize that the actions shouldn’t transcend the needs of the greater public. When the movie studios are asking that the anti-terrorism laws should be used to track down people who download songs off the internet there really should be some kind of reaction other than “well, they are downloading them illegally”.
Comment by Juho — Thu, Jan 18th, 2007 @ 12:15 am
I reckon this law is a prime example of how the demographic transition is having its impact not only on economics but on politics too. There are no young people in politics so the legislation starts to obey merely the will of babyboomers -themselves they don’t download anything so there’s no reason for them not to give in the music media.
Bigger generations will entrench their interests -was it then about unfair taxation, pensions or protecting the permanent contracts- and let the next ones to pick up the tab.
Don’t be too surprised if there won’t be too many under-30 candidates in the March elections. It’s not because our generation is not interested, but because we don’t make any difference.
It’s a very common pattern in European politics, yet something that completely escapes the traditional left/right and conservative/liberal spectras.
Comment by Aapo — Thu, Jan 18th, 2007 @ 12:50 am
Technically speaking, the Finnish government might be able to take the same approach regarding piracy. But apparently, the difference is that corporations might be willing to fund the prosecution of downloaders as a civil matter.
Look how the Finnish authorities pounced on Finnreactor. Why Finnreactor? Because they tracking Finnish movies, possibly harming the Finnish film industry, which much of it funded by Finnish taxpayers. These other trackers are hosting “Hollywood” content, the Finnish film industry’s biggest competitor, I doubt they care as much if people are ripping off stuff produced by evil Americans.
Comment by Phil — Thu, Jan 18th, 2007 @ 11:22 am
#18 So I guess the law is just used for the usual protectionism. Unfortunately, it also opens Finnish residents to the possibility of being sued by foreign entities. I guess they’d be somewhat protected by virtue that they’d be tried in Finnish courts….
Comment by Kristian (in Espoo) — Wed, Jan 24th, 2007 @ 10:00 am