referendum against swiss copyright law needed1 min read

it’s humbling and a little bit embarassing, when you have to read something like this on an american blog. and yes, we must start a referendum against the new copyright laws, that will otherwise become effective in january of 2008. is anybody up for this?

Who cares about about Swiss copyright laws? Nobody it seems, not even Swiss citizens.

On the 5th of October 2007, the Swiss law makers adopted a new law to comply with the WIPO treaties. Thanks to the entertainment lobbies, apart from criminalizing DRM circumvention devices, you can now win a one year visit in jail if you share a copyrighted file on a P2P network.

Did anybody hear about this new law ? No. Not even Swiss citizens. The media is quiet about this.

The thing is, Switzerland uses a direct democracy system, and this new law could be the subject to a federal vote if 50,000 people sign a request for it. That’s called a Referendum request, and the deadline for its deposit is the 24th of January 2008. If there’s no Referendum request by then, the law will become effective.

There’s little doubt that if federal votes were to made today, the law would pass anyway. But at least a public debate could be created around the issue and people could react.

I’m sending you this news item because I just read your news post about Canada. It seems that in Canada some people are fighting because they’re aware of the situation. Please somebody stand up and start a debate in Switzerland. Please.

here is the information issued by the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property. warning: legalese.