Attention Finns! Your government is preparing to pass a copyright law that is insanely overreaching. They've been influenced by local record executives who believe that listening to music on a computer is a privilege, not a right, and the process is being overseen by a culture minister who says that people who send email to Parliament are terrorists. Finland has bootstrapped itself into a serious industrial power by embracing technology — this law proposes to make innovation and freedom subservient to the irrational prejudices and superstitions of clueless old technophobic record executives and their pet bureaucrats.
This Tuesday, Oct 4, Finns are taking to the streets of Helsinki in a rare and urgent copyright demonstration. This is your best chance to avert a disaster that will make the passage of the DMCA look like a visit to (ahem) Disneyland. This could be the most important thing you do on your lunch-break this century: if you don't stand up and be counted, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
On Tuesday 4th of October 2005 at 13:00 we shall organize a demonstration against the new copyright law in front of the Parliament Building. We invite members of parliament and representatives of the media to come to discuss the proposed copyright law and where our society should be directed in regard to immaterial rights…
Other fundamental problems with the new copyright law are as follows:
The forbiddance to disseminate information on how to deactivate copy protection measures, which goes against our freedom of speech.
The forbiddance to distribute information or computer programs that can deactivate copy protection measures.
The sales ban in Finland on articles that were originally published outside of the EEA.
The law will cause harm especially to Open Source software such as Linux.
(Thanks, Matias!)
