Policy Observatory
The Finnish parliament decided to continue the expert hearings for the citizens’ initiative on an update to the copyright legislation. The initiative is called “Common Sense For Copyright” and its goal is to correct exaggerated interpretations of the current copyright laws, especially regarding network monitoring and compensation.
It was reported in a number of news outlets last week that the Finnish Parliament is close to rejecting the country's first crowdsourced copyright reform initiative. Titled Common Sense For Copyright (“Initiative”), the Initiative called for the expansion of copyright fair use exceptions under Finland’s Copyright Act (404/1961; "Copyright Act") including parody and satire, private copying, network storage, as well as others. The Initiative was reported to have arisen out of an incident in December 2012 when Finnish police raided the home of a nine-year-old girl who had illegally downloaded music on to her computer. Backed by Finnish crowdsourcing NGO Open Ministry (Avoin ministeriö), the Initiative received over 50,000 signatures within six months of its creation, qualifying it for legislative consideration by the Finnish Parliament under a 2012 reform to the Finnish Constitution.
The Internet of Things was one of the hottest sectors at the 2014 Slush conference. Three Finnish companies went to Slush to show off their know-how in the growing sector.
In Finland, new innovative internet services, like Uber and Airbnb have to comply with a tightly knit web of laws and regulations since Finnish authorities and traditional industry players have a more reserved approached towards digital services.
This blog post describes the legal hurdles such services are facing in Finland.
The Finnish Supreme Court has recently given a decision on unauthorized copying of databases and files (KKO:2015:42). A former employee of a company had, during the notice period just before termination of the employment, copied databases and hundreds of other files in breach of the Copyright Act (404/1961, as amended) from the employer's information systems with the intention to make profit.
The Supreme Court held that the said copying violated the former employer's exclusive rights in the catalogues, tables, programs and databases, in which a large number of information was compiled and the compilation of which had required substantial investment.
On 12 June, the Finnish Market Court ruled in a case Copyright Management Services Ltd vs. DNA Oyj that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not obliged to hand out the personal data of their clients based only on the suspicion of limited use of peer-to-peer networks. Stronger proof of significant copyright infringements need to be presented in order to obtain the data.