14 DAY TRIAL // The Swiss are getting ready to bring their copyright laws up to speed with the new times and it seems like in the coming months, a draft will be presented to the public for consultation.
According to TorrentFreak, the new bill will include some key points referencing BitTorrent usage, copyright infringement and more.
It looks like the Swiss are taking a different approach from other countries around the world, choosing to allow people to download content for personal use, regardless of the type of content. However, uploading infringing content on BitTorrent sites will be deemed illegal, while “obviously illegal” sites will be blocked.
The international community, and more specifically the likes of MPAA and RIAA – groups trying to protect the copyright holders – have been putting pressure on Switzerland for a while now to take measures against online piracy.
The International Intellectual Property has even gone as far as to say that the country has become an attractive haven for services that engage in infringing activity and has said that it’s a major exporter of pirated content.
Of course, it’s not exactly uncommon for such organizations to complain about the legislation set in place by one country or another rather than spend their time finding ways to implement affordable methods for fans to get access to movies and music through legal channels.
Regardless, the Swiss Federal Council has been working on a draft bill that will be up for public consultation by the end of 2015. In it, they will try to make everyone happy. On one hand, they’ll have to improve things for the content creators, but also to stick up for consumers.
Therefore, when the new bill goes live, it’s quite likely to be legal to download content for personal use, but uploading specifically will be outlawed. It’s unclear whether seeding a torrent, for instance, qualifies as “uploading” or whether the term refers strictly to putting an illegal copy of a movie or album on a site.
Those who pirate content for commercial reasons are already covered by local laws, but regular users who often disregard the upload ban on a smaller, but constant, scale will be getting warning notices via their ISPs. If this doesn’t prove useful in the long run, then their contact information will be handed over to rights holders and they could be taken to court.
Switzerland seems to be adopting these new rules and, in particular, the idea to block websites more to appease rights holders since this has been proved to be an extremely ineffective solution to the problem, since there are so many tools that can be used to circumvent the blockade.