According to the Swiss Anti Piracy Federation (SAFE), music sales have fallen 15% in Switzerland back in 2003, which it blames on file sharing services and websites freely offering copyrighted music. Up until recently, they relied on sending out threatening complaints to offenders, however with such a little effect on file sharing, the Swiss branch of the IFPI is willing to prosecute offenders without hesitation. As a result, SAFE is getting inspectors to trace those sharing copyrighted music as well as offending websites. Those found guilty can faces fines of several thousand Francs (1 Dollar = ~1.27 Francs) and possibly even Jail time.
Fighting piracy is not that straight forward for the Swiss authorities as their current legislation allows the downloading of any file for private purposes and the Swiss authorities cannot prosecute those who live outside of Switzerland who unlawfully share content, even though users within Switzerland can download this content. So, for now the authorities are working to fight those sharing out copyrighted music, either by P2P or on a Website. Another issue will be dealing with students in schools & universities that share out music, since it is much more difficult to track the individuals involved.
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It takes just a few mouse clicks upload or download music to and from the internet and there are many websites offering these services. But although the practice is proving popular among music fans, the music industry maintains that it is contributing to declining music sales. A 15 per cent drop in music sales in Switzerland was recorded in 2003, according to the Swiss Anti-Piracy Federation (SAFE). And last year the global music industry announced a 7.6 per cent fall in sales in 2003 to $32 billion (SFr41 billion) ? the steepest decline since the arrival of the compact disc. SAFE has now appointed inspectors to track down websites or users who are breaking Swiss copyright law. |
As most file sharing software automatically shares out content that is downloaded or even require users to share content in order to get improved throughput, it seems the authorities will rely on this to find its victims. It is interesting to see how they have difficulty with students, especially since the RIAA in the US are steadily going after students that use file sharing services for copyrighted music.
As they only give the sales declination figures for 2003, I wonder just
how much did music sales fall for 2004 or 2005. 2003 seemed to be a
pretty bad year for record labels across the glboe and not just the Swiss.
Feel free to discuss about file sharing and its legal issues along with legal
alternatives on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues
forum.
Source: NZZ Online
