A new draft law being submitted for public consultation in Switzerland will allow personal downloading to remain legal but uploading infringing content via BitTorrent will be made illegal. This means anyone using peer to peer file sharing protocols with illegal or copyrighted material will automatically be breaking the law due to the seeding aspect of Torrent services. Switzerland will also get infringement warnings for internet subscribers who repeatedly download illegal or copyrighted material. Once an infringing home user gets a certain number of notifications from their ISP, the rightsholders to content being infringed will be allowed to pursue civil proceedings against that infringing individual. The new draft law could also give authorities the ability to block “obviously illegal content or sources” such as torrent websites. The obligations to enforce such new rules will be placed on ISPs but this will be balanced out by exempting them from any liability. The proposed new changes in Swiss law pretty much bring it on par with most Western countries, currently in Switzerland internet users can more or less download and share anything with total impunity.
Source: TorrentFreak
Image courtesy of BitTorrent
