Swiss DMCA coming down -- 50,000 signatures needed to unmake it

Dave sez wrote in a note to to boingboing, November 28.

On the 5th of October 2007, the Swiss law makers adopted a new law to comply with the WIPO treaties. Thanks to the entertainment lobbies, apart from criminalizing DRM circumvention devices, you can now win a one year visit in jail if you share a copyrighted file on a P2P network.

Did anybody hear about this new law ? No. Not even Swiss citizens. The media is quiet about this.

The thing is, Switzerland uses a direct democracy system, and this new law could be the subject to a federal vote if 50,000 people sign a request for it. That's called a Referendum request, and the deadline for its deposit is the 24th of January 2008. If there's no Referendum request by then, the law will become effective.

There's little doubt that if federal votes were to made today, the law would pass anyway. But at least a public debate could be created around the issue and people could react.

Now, 3 weeks later, here's the Referendeum. 50'000 signatures must be collected before January 24th 2008. They have to be checked by the municipality of the respective signatory. [via Lunch over IP]

emily | 7:37 AM | Copypright Issues |
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