-Your
Guide to the Cultural Impact of Emerging Technologies.
Eudoxa Comment April 2004
New Law on Intellectual Property is bad for Consumers and Innovation alike
By Marcus Sjöberg
The Swedish government recently proposed a new law on intellectual property. There are two main points in the law that should not go unchallenged. It bans software that circumvents copy protection measures and the continuance of the tape compensation taxes.
It will all of a sudden be prohibited to write, distribute and possess software that can be used to circumvent copy protection measures. But the law contains no legible definition of copy protection measures. This makes it possible for private enterprises to launch a "new copy protection measure" and make common software illegal overnight.
The law puts forth severe restrictions on cryptography that will affect the future of payment services. There are of course exceptions, but there are no clear guidelines for who would be eligible for these. If you create a web site that explains a certain technology, is this to be counted as spreading the information and thus breaching the law? The risk of prosecution might prevent individuals from pointing out security flaws.
Copying copyrighted material for private use is illegal, something that is legal today. Legislators have added an additional tax on recordable media like VHS-tapes, Compact Disks and blank tapes that was given to the owners of the copyrighted material. The current level of this tax is 2 öre per recordable minute, but no more than 6 kronor per unit.
The new proposal will increase the tax to 2,5 öre per recordable minute without a maximum fee if you buy media to copy analog material. Re-recordable digital media (CD-rw and DVD-rw) will get a tax of 7 öre per megabyte, while non-rewritable media (CR-r and DVD-r will get a tax of .25 öre. In reality this can result in a doubling of the price for recordable media in general.
The copying that this tax should compensate for will be forbidden by the new proposal, but the tax hike is considerable. Who will be the victims? -the regular consumer of course; but also small companies and emerging artists. The tax that is leveraged on this media is given to an "organization that represents creators or owners of copyrighted material". There is only one of these in Sweden, Copyswede.
Why should a consumer pay copyright taxes for sending a CD with her own photos to friends and family? Why should the government act as collector for large media corporations? Is taking back ups of the music you bought legal? When you buy a DVD, should you be permitted to show it on a computer with non-standardized hardware? The tax will transfer money from individuals that makes backup of their own data, photos or even demo music-CD's to established producers and distributors of media. Is this really fair?
The law weakens consumer's rights to reproduce and distribute their own work, while they are forced to pay musicians, photographers and journalists for the products needed to do so. Anybody can become a criminal if a new copy right measure is launched, regardless of how weak or strong the measure is. The new law on intellectual property weakens innovation, discourages development of safer services and galvanizes old property structures.