Thursday, December 15, 2005

"Dear fellow citizens. I've been very, very bad."

Helsingin Sanomat reported yesterday that there is a plan for a new law that would permit the winners of copyright cases to make the person who broke the copyright put an announcement in a paper about it and pay for it.

"Lakiin sisältyvä pykälä antaisi riita-asioissa jutun voittaneelle osapuolelle mahdollisuuden tuomiosta ilmoittamiseen tiedotusvälineissä tekijänoikeuksia loukanneen kustannuksella."

To me this sounds like a clear assumption as to who would in fact win such a case, but big boys told me that this is written that way only because this punishment will only apply when a copyright holder wins the case, and not the other way around. Copyright holders will not be made to put up a announcement "oops, I accused an innocent person, sorry".

The idea is strange, and is fairly far out from the point of view of Finnish legal practices.

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