Piracy is Just Fine, Swiss Government Says

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,400
The Swiss government is taking a pragmatic approach to the piracy issue within their country. A Swiss government report finds that about one third of the Swiss regularly pirate from the Internet and spend the money they save on other forms of entertainment, many times from the same companies they pirate from. So basically the Swiss are calling it all a wash and keeping the laws concerning piracy at a very low level. The logic here has a far less amount of holes in it than their cheese. :D

Switzerland already has very lax piracy laws, and that's not going to change any time soon. Perhaps studios and record labels aren't losing quite as much as they would have us believe; they're just not making as much as they would like.
 
clearly, the entertainment industry hasn't gotten to swiss government yet.
 
If you're resorting to lawsuits and arrests to get your fans to pay you money that they don't want to pay you... YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
 
So basically they actually look at the data and make laws based on that instead of listening to lobbyists unlike most governments including the US.
 
The Swiss have a very closer to real democratic system vs the huff and fluff the people in N America are led to believe they have, and every day N America finds their Democracy crumbling to the unelected entities.. The Swiss practice what they preach.
 
I didn't need another reason to move to Switzerland..

But here it is.
 
If you're resorting to lawsuits and arrests to get your fans to pay you money that they don't want to pay you... YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Yes, they are doing it wrong. And it seems they will never get that. It's an infinite loop of stupidity.
 
Good for it a country with a tiny entertainment industry if there is any but probably huge on entertain export says it okay, they must be right.
 
Good for it a country with a tiny entertainment industry if there is any but probably huge on entertain export says it okay, they must be right.

They are actually huge when talking about real democracy, so there you go :D
 
If this is true, which I think it is, I don't know why the ent. industry is spending so much money going after pirate's. I mean its sort of funny when you see an average or even not so well to do person getting sued and they can't even pay anything close to what they get sued for.

I mean piratebay, and other sites of then like are still up, aren't they?

Strange how the USA and other 1st world nations are no way near this pragmatic.

If you sue a tax payer then guess what happens.....they can't pay their taxes either as well as loosing the customer. If these guys were real business people they would figure out a real way to get their money in the end.

I mean some video game companies seem to realize this.....I mean there are free to play MMO's out there (even though you pay for premium items) and others of the like.

I really wouldn't be suprised if some video game companies would even use things like torrents as a distribution mechanism (i think WoW used some form of torrent client to distribute updates don't they?) would save them of ton of money in printing DVD's and packaging.
 
Unfortunately we don't have hulu or netflix or onlive over here.
guess alot would use and pay for such stuff if it was available.
Some days ago spotify finally launched and is officially available in switzerland and its an instant huge success and people are willing to pay.
But as we lack some possibilities, we find other reasons to max out our 80bucks 100mbit home lanes... ;)
 
What they're really saying is: People will spend the same amount of money no matter what. Since we're not getting additional income, we're not spending any government funds on copyright infringement.
 
I mean its sort of funny when you see an average or even not so well to do person getting sued and they can't even pay anything close to what they get sued for.

Fear. If an average, poor person sees another average, poor person get sued into oblivion due to piracy, the entertainment industry hopes they'll think twice before doing it themselves.
 
Just one more reason why the United States isn't the United States it use to be. There are more democratic countries than us these days. With the laws passed these days we have less freedoms than some other countries out there now.
 
I find the law to fight piracy too hard. After so many decades battling piracy and never really made much stride, wouldn't it makes sense to go back to the drawing board? I think the guy's right, people need to adapt to piracy so that consumers are more likely to buy the original stuff. Don't fully stop the pirated content, but make it a worse experience for the pirate.
 
It's not about the actual losses due to individual acts of piracy. It is about having control so they can sell you the same thing multiple times for every device you have. Piracy destroys the control required to do this. This is where the actual loss of income comes from. But they don't want to admit to that.

Screw the media companies.
 
Unfortunately we don't have hulu or netflix or onlive over here.
guess alot would use and pay for such stuff if it was available.
Some days ago spotify finally launched and is officially available in switzerland and its an instant huge success and people are willing to pay.
But as we lack some possibilities, we find other reasons to max out our 80bucks 100mbit home lanes... ;)
Rent a proxy in the USA for 5 bucks a month, (not the freebies,no bandwidth) and you can have it all.
 
Just one more reason why the United States isn't the United States it use to be. There are more democratic countries than us these days. With the laws passed these days we have less freedoms than some other countries out there now.

Most first world countries have more freedom than the US these days. It's been a downward spiral ever since 9/11.
 
The Swiss have a very closer to real democratic system vs the huff and fluff the people in N America are led to believe they have, and every day N America finds their Democracy crumbling to the unelected entities.. The Swiss practice what they preach.

They also have the best armed citizens.
 
Huh? Decades you say?

Al gore only invented the internet in 1993. And torrents haven't been around 10 years you may want to check your math :p

... What? *checks* Ahh fuck it. I'm never posting on 6 A.M. Ever again. Now... Zzzz... Mah point 'bout piracy... Zzzz... Still stands...
 
Huh? Decades you say?

Al gore only invented the internet in 1993. And torrents haven't been around 10 years you may want to check your math :p
yes decades or long as long as people have been copying and trading copyrighted material. It just got more attention when things went pretty much all digital. All of a sudden a digital download means inifinite losses. Lets not make this out to be some internet born issue. Same problem new way to do it.
 
yes decades or long as long as people have been copying and trading copyrighted material. It just got more attention when things went pretty much all digital. All of a sudden a digital download means inifinite losses. Lets not make this out to be some internet born issue. Same problem new way to do it.

Seriously. Remember mix tapes, or when everyone used to copy VHS tapes? Piracy is nothing new.
 
yes decades or long as long as people have been copying and trading copyrighted material. It just got more attention when things went pretty much all digital. All of a sudden a digital download means inifinite losses. Lets not make this out to be some internet born issue. Same problem new way to do it.

Don't copy that floppy?

VCRs are killing the movie industry?

Its funny how people think piracy is limited to digital downloads. My neighbor is against music piracy, yet she can't afford cable tv and sees nothing wrong with having our other neighbor record movies and tv shows on to a tape for her. She also buys recorded movies at yard sales. Her pirated movie/tv show collection is probably around 200 individual tapes, yet people are getting fined $2.5 million for downloading 10 shows.
 
So, since everyone is for some reason thinking that piracy started with the internet, can we blame Al Gore for that as well?!?!
 
Seriously. Remember mix tapes, or when everyone used to copy VHS tapes? Piracy is nothing new.

Remember the printing press. It ushered in a whole new era of piracy. It's a good thing groups like the RIAA weren't around back then, or they would have had the technology banned.
 
looking at how fubar here has become has become
i say going in the opposite direction is actually quite smart
 
Remember the printing press. It ushered in a whole new era of piracy. It's a good thing groups like the RIAA weren't around back then, or they would have had the technology banned.

Aah, but the printing press is the work of the devil since it would be depriving monks in monasteries of their livelihood of handwritten manuscripts (books). LOL
 
The Swiss have a very closer to real democratic system vs the huff and fluff the people in N America are led to believe they have, and every day N America finds their Democracy crumbling to the unelected entities.. The Swiss practice what they preach.

Sighs... US doesn't have a Democracy, US is a Federal Republic.
 
Rent a proxy in the USA for 5 bucks a month, (not the freebies,no bandwidth) and you can have it all.

Except in the eyes of the MAFIAA event that counts as a piracy, or at least not paying for the content as intended. How is that possible ? The content on Hulu, Netflix etc is licenced for USA only if you are using an USA proxy. And in that case, you don't pay the fees for the local MAFIAA representatives (i mean IFPI etc). So you are pirating - even if you pay for your Netflix or Hulu subscription.

Makes no sense, right ? But this is the real world unfortunately, where the same organizations (IFPI members, which in pretty much every state have same members - the big labels, plus few local ones in every country) makes different rules in every country, so in the end you can't even have a global European music store - every country has it's own licencing fee collecting agency, with it's own rules etc. That is why Slovakia got iTunes music store just few months ago, while other parts of EU and Eurozone had the iTunes music store for years.
 
Switzerland: The new Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. ;)
Meanwhile we in America go to prison or a lifetime of debt for listening to songs without a license. We're also brave enough to grope children at airports because we are afraid of brown people.

I'm going to start learning Swiss. Would be nice to see a civilized country rather than a fear-mongering oligarchy.
 
Huh? Decades you say?

Al gore only invented the internet in 1993. And torrents haven't been around 10 years you may want to check your math :p

Guess you've never heard of making mix tapes by recording songs off the radio, and dual VHS recording of movies... or other forms of piracy.... :rolleyes:
 
If I spend my money on PC equipment and video equipment but pirate all the music, games and movies, I don't see how any of the media providers are making any money.

But hey, if the Swiss government thinks it does and all the pirate sympathizers in this thread also do, I guess we can forget common sense. I think everyone should pirate all media because the Swiss government says it doesn't hurt anyone. I mean, zero chance of the entertainment industry ceasing to exist :rolleyes:
 
If I spend my money on PC equipment and video equipment but pirate all the music, games and movies, I don't see how any of the media providers are making any money.

But hey, if the Swiss government thinks it does and all the pirate sympathizers in this thread also do, I guess we can forget common sense. I think everyone should pirate all media because the Swiss government says it doesn't hurt anyone. I mean, zero chance of the entertainment industry ceasing to exist :rolleyes:

You should try reading the article, I hear it helps you comprehend facts.

We can't tell you why you're wrong, you need to learn for yourself.
 
Back
Top