Piracy Pays for Itself, Swiss Government Says
ARTICLE DATE : December 2, 2011
The Swiss government has decided that it will not implement an additional legislative solution to copyright infringement, arguing that the money consumers save via piracy is spent later on other entertainment expenses.
In a statement released on Nov. 30, the government's department of intellectual property said that it had completed a report originally commissioned by the Swiss senate in March 2010, to address the question of whether or not additional measures were needed to counter the spread of copyright infringement.
Content creators had previously complained to the government about a drop in revenues due to piracy, the government said, but an associated report indicated that "a clear statement about the impact of the illicit proliferation of works in digital form is not possible." While some content creators pointed to a decline in revenues over time, the report found that others acknowledged that revenues remained stable.
The government also noted that transmission of copyrighted works regularly takes place across Swiss borders, making the solution an international one. Switzerland does have a copyright ordinance that it amended in 2008, using the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as a model. But the Swiss government agency also said its priority was to avoid limiting access to information through copyright regulations.
In the United States and elsewhere, existing copyright laws have not only been used to prosecute infringing consumers, but also shut down services like LimeWire.
The Swiss government acknowledged that many of its citizens downloaded movies; based on a Dutch study, the Swiss government extrapolated that over 15 years, 2.61 million Swiss citizens downloaded files, but 4.99 million also purchased movies, music, and games. In 2010, the Swiss population was estimated at 7.8 million people, meaning that about a third of the Swiss population has downloaded copyrighted content.
The government's argument was this: intervening through additional copyright legislation would make sense if it preserved the economic benefit of content like music and movies. But intervening would bring with it its own economic costs. The government then looked at 22 studies analyzing the effects of piracy on the music industry, with five showing a positive impact on sales and three showing no correlation. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, sales of movie tickets remained constant between 1999 and 2007. Since it could show that Swiss citizens had continued to spend money in the entertainment sector, the government felt that it could not impose additional regulations.
The department's conclusion therefore favored the consumer: instead of forcing Swiss citizens to change their behavior, copyright holders would have to adjust to the new market realities.
Large foreign production companies are likely to be most affected, the government said. "You have to adapt to the changing consumer behavior," according to a statement translated by Google Translate. "Fears that the development could have an adverse impact on the national cultural production remain unfounded because of the shifts outlined."
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