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AfterDawn Ltd is a privately owned company located in Finland

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Finland makes illegal to make backups and talk about DRM
Posted by Quakester2000 on 12 October 2005 - 21:05 - Source: The Register


heystoopid used our news submit to tell us that Finland?s government has decided to pass a bill that makes it illegal even to copy media for personal use. The new copy law has already been criticised for both being badly written and for ignoring consumer rights. The legislation was passed with 121 votes to 35, with 40 MP's not present.

Finland had in the past always allowed people to make copies of their own digital products for personal use. Personal backups were allowed because of the extra tax put on blank media to compensate artists and copyright holders for such actions. The new bill makes it illegal to advertise, provide or possess tools that bypass DRM (Digital Rights Management).

P2Pnet has also pointed out that the bill also makes it illegal to discuss DRM breaking, tools or anything in organised groups that could disable DRM even for personal use.

The Finnish president has the authority to veto this new bill but this has rarely been exercised so is likely to pass into law unhindered. Th the bill was edited to ask the copyright holders to voluntarily not prosecute those that made personal backups.

The Finnish government voted yesterday to make it illegal to copy media, even for personal use, if you have to subvert copy protection to do so. The legislation was passed by 121 votes to 34. Forty-four MPs were absent. The updated copyright protection laws have been criticised for ignoring consumers' rights, and the bill itself has been branded confusing and badly worded.
Until now, Finland had allowed copying for personal use, and had a blank media levy in place to compensate authors. But under the new laws, not only will copying for personal use become illegal, so will possessing, distributing or advertising tools that break copy protection. P2PNet points out that the law prohibits even "organised discussion" of such things.

The Finnish president does have the right to veto the new legislation, but this right is very rarely exercised. According to Finnish News Agency STT, the government appended a note to the legislation asking content producing industries to voluntarily agree not to prosecute individuals for making a few copies for their own use.

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