Swiss copyright law: reform but no criminalisation of the general public
This week, the National Council of Switzerland passed amendments that make Swiss copyright law fit in with the digital age. The bottom line: pirated copies remain in the legal grey area.
This week, the right to download copyrighted material for personal use has been reaffirmed by the National Council of Switzerland. On top of this, Swiss Internet providers are still not required to prevent their customers from accessing pirate sites.
Changes with the new law
Some changes don't directly affect the general public but are also important: with this the reform, local hosting providers can be forced to remove illegal content from their servers. However, a law was rejected that would have made it possible to force online platforms to check if uploaded content is copyrighted. In other words, there will be no upload filter. Details regarding the technical implementation of the new law remain to be defined.
Copyright protection for artists has also been improved: video, music and photography works will be protected for 70 instead of 50 years.
Pathing the way
By adopting the reform, the Swiss parliament paves the way for Switzerland to ratify international treaties on intellectual property rights. Parliament considers the forthcoming adjustments to be a good compromise between the interests of artists and consumers.
The entertainment industry, US companies in particular, is likely to be disappointed to see that the new laws don’t criminalise the general public. As recently as in 2017, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) made complaints and proposals for adjustments. Without success.
The decision to combat piracy at the hosting level also means downloading pirated content remains legal. Reprisals are not to be feared as long as you use DDL by providers such as Share-Online.biz and similar to download content. As a resident of Switzerland, you only have to be careful when uploading pirated content or when using P2P networks such as Torrent or ED2K.
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