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Sweden, what are you thinking???

According to this, Sweden is thinking about passing a law that would a) outlaw file sharing, and b) create a compulsory licensing scheme through a tax on blank media (like cdroms).

It's not that there aren't merits to compulsory licensing, but that arrangement is best intended as a means of compensating authors who *might* lose out on income to file sharing and thus remove the one possible objection to the technology. Instead this law puts excessive financial burdens on consumers of blank digital media, including for myriad indisputable fair use means, while at the same time overly criminalizes file sharing, which is insane. The consumption of ideas should NEVER be criminal. Doing so causes the same challenges to freedom as the criminalization of their expression.

My high esteem for Sweden will plummet significantly if this law passes.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 19, 2003 7:30 PM.

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