Control Freaks

One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won't suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.

In Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the entertainment industries have been complaining about dramatic losses in revenue due to online piracy. In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings were presented.

The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn't have to change.

The government report concludes that even in the current situation where piracy is rampant, the entertainment industries are not necessarily losing money. To reach this conclusion, the researchers extrapolated the findings of a study conducted by the Dutch government last year, since the countries are considered to be similar in many aspects.

The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don't spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary.

The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn't. And in the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from the sampling effect of file-sharing.

London's approaching Erotica sex fair has backed down from using a 'Strictly' theme after the BBC threatened to take legal action.

The show had been billed as Strictly Erotica and promotional material featured two former professional dancers from Strictly Come Dancing posing under a glitter ball, which is famously used in the BBC1 show.

Amendments to the website suggest that the theme will now be 'Striply Erotica'. But it seems that the theme will called Dance Seduction .

Erotica spokesman Dan Kirkby said:

We are now changing the name, our publicity material and our TV advertising campaign but our plans to make it a dance-themed show will continue.

A BBC spokesman said:

The BBC takes the protection of its brands extremely seriously and we believe that the association of our well-established family programme with such an event is clearly damaging.

The pub landlady Karen Murphy has won the latest stage of her fight to air Premier League games using a properly paid up foreign satellite TV service.

Karen Murphy previously had to pay nearly £ 8,000 in fines and costs for using the cheaper Greek Nova TV service in her Portsmouth pub rather than the expensive service provided by the Premier League and Sky.

But she took her case to the European Court of Justice who now say that national laws which prohibit the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards are contrary to the Treaty of Rome and the freedom to provide services across EU borders.

The decision could trigger a major shake-up for the Premier League and its current exclusive agreements with Sky Sports and ESPN.

However, whereas the decision opens up opportunities for individuals to watch overseas broadcasts at home, it remains unclear whether games can be shown in pubs using foreign services, as the ruling also threw up a number of copyright issues.

It seems to be a situation somewhat analogous to playing copyright music at home or at a business premises. CDs can be freely bought and sold from shops across the EU, but businesses still need a licence to play that music in their premises to a wider audience.

However the judgement be very helfpful to private individuals, especially expats, wanting to subscribe to foreign services.

The ECJ said national legislation, which banned the use of foreign EU TV services, could not be justified either in light of the objective of protecting intellectual property rights or by the objective of encouraging the public to attend football stadiums .

However the court has ruled that although there is no copyright in the matches themselves, there is copyright in the branding around the football - the Premier League graphics, music and highlights. If those are there, pubs will still need the League's permission to show its matches.

It's now up to the UK High Court to interpret today's ruling, and that is not likely to happen for several months.