Crowdsourced Finnish Copyright Initiative Meets Signature Requirement 166
First time accepted submitter Koookiemonster writes "The Finnish citizens' initiative site (Finnish/Swedish only) has fulfilled the required amount of signatures for the third initiative since its founding. This means that the Parliament of Finland is required to take the Common Sense in Copyright initiative into processing. The initiative calls for removal of copyright infringement as a crime, reducing violations by private individuals to a misdemeanor."
Torrent Freak notes "This makes Finland the first country in the world in which legislators will vote on a copyright law that was drafted by citizens."
Nothing will happen (Score:4, Insightful)
There will be no "vote on copyright law that is drafted by citizens". Some committee will just say that there are legal reasons why this can't happen and that's it. All this stuff does is stir up public discourse, which is IMO a good thing though.
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:4, Insightful)
no one wants to control people who create things; nobody is trying to force the people who create things to do anything. they just want to remove the control over people who reproduce what other people have created.
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, like wedding photographers, jewelry artists, poets, screenwriters, game producers, web programmers, novelists, small film makers - nothing but control freaks!
Not that I agree with the previous post, but you seem to mistake the media industry with the media creators.
The relationship between the two is more or less the one between cows and Nestlé. They milk the cow, process the product and even draw a cow in the envelope picture, but I wouldn't equate attacking Nestlé with being against cows or milk.
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all, it's not the creators who have the control.
Secondly, it's the punishments that go overboard.
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe there are good reasons to give people control over intellectual property, but I don't get why anyone would think that's obvious or some inherent right or entitlement. Why should making something prevent other people from making the same thing with their own resources? When you introduce an idea into popular culture you are planting a seed on someone else's soil. Then, like Monsanto, you are saying "you aren't allowed to use this plant without my permission, or in ways I don't approve of". It clearly doesn't have the same strength as physical property, and I can't take it as obviously something a creator is entitled to.
Re:Lobbying lawyers are also citizens... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:4, Insightful)
But why should someone who creates something not be able to control how it's used? That seems pretty basic. It wouldn't exist at all if not for them.
Because no one - no one, not a single person on earth, ever - creates in a vacuum. Everyone steals from everyone, gets inspiration from everyone else, and so much content gets created that it is guaranteed that two people will create very similar art. As such, copyright is by definition an inhibition of the creative process. For a real-life example, see the lawsuits about red double-decker buses in front of a black-and-white Big Ben.
People do create less when they are unable to earn an income doing so.
Some of the most fun I had with music was attending house concerts a friend of mine was throwing. These people will keep singing with or without copyright. Some of the best pictures I've seen come from amateur photographers. They'll keep doing it with or without copyright. Same for painting, games and any other art form.
You're mistaking getting rich with making money, creating art with selling art, and that less is always worse. Even if 90% of all artists stopped creating, there'd still be more art around than you can ever consume.
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:4, Insightful)
"But why should someone who creates something not be able to control how it's used?"
Enforceability. Laws don't come free - it costs tax money to run even civil courts, and much of copyright is now a criminal matter so there is the cost of investigations. There's the social costs too - it's near-impossible to enforce copyright in the digital age, so the only way to be effective in doing so requires either an automated censorship system of some sort (youtube), or restrictions on the availability of technology that can be used for infringement (DMCA laws, the 'blank media tax'), or draconian punishments for the few who are caught in order to scare the rest straight. All very bad things. Then there's the classic issue of rights: They are often in conflict. If you grant a creator control over something they thought up, then you are also denying the use of that something to other people.
You can't just pass laws based on vague moral hunches. You need to consider if the costs (outlined above) are justified by the benefits (Increased production of creative works, created jobs, moral rights of creators).
Re:U.S., cough, international pressure much? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are alternative models. My favorite is the kickstarter approach:
1. Studio makes a trailer for their potential awesome movie (Movie in this example, it works for other media too).
2. Studio announces production cost.
3. People pledge their money towards production, considering how much they want to see the movie, how much they've liked things by the studio in the past, and so on.
4. If enough people pledge, the studio takes their money and makes the film. They have an incentive to do a good job, because if they churn out rubbish no-one is going to contribute to their next project.
The content gets made, the people get paid, and no copyright is required at all.