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Parliament likely to reject citizens' initiative on amending copyright laws

A citizens' initiative to amend laws regarding copyright violations was partly spurred on by the 2012 police raid on the home of a young girl who had illegally downloaded music onto her computer.

Image: Martti Kainulainen / Lehtikuva

The Parliament's Education and Culture Committee is proposing that a citizens' initiative on making copyright laws more lenient be rejected. The initiative proposes that individuals would be punished less severely, for example when downloading copyright-protected music or movies illegally from the internet.

However, the Committee believes that the Ministry of Education and Culture should consider drafting legislation based on the citizens' initiative regarding problematic points in the Copyright Act.

The citizens' initiative believes that illegal online downloading should be punished, at the most, as copyright infringement. In the proposal, the current penalty for copyright violation would hold only if the intent is large-scale illegal downloading and sharing for commercial gain. Current laws allow for home searches and large damages claims.

Though the initiative was already underway before the 2012 police raid on the home of a 10-year old girl who had illegally downloaded music to her computer (which was confiscated by police), the case did add momentum to the initiative.

The girl's computer contained illegal downloads of Finnish singer Chisu's music that had been shared with others. The police came to seize the computer because the girl's father initially refused to pay the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre's 600-euro fine for downloading and sharing music illegally in what became known as Chisugate. Later, father and Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre resolved the dispute and the fine was halved to 300 euros.

Fifty-two thousand people have signed the citizens' initiative.