DRM dead and direct democracy in Switzerland too?

While the signs are increasing that digital rights management (DRM) will no longer play a major role in 2008, at least for music, laws are being passed clandestinely in Switzerland that are not even reported in the otherwise sensation-hungry media. But first about DRM:

It's circulating The rumor, that Pepsi will announce a marketing campaign in cooperation with Amazon MP3 during the Superbowl. A billion songs are supposed to be given away for free (there was also a similar campaign with iTunes in 2004, at that time still strictly DRM-afflicted. How times change). A another rumor states that WalMart allegedly requires labels to deliver their songs in MP3 format, otherwise they risk being taken out of the program.

Amazon MP3 and EMI sales appear to be doing quite well, and there are more rumors of Sony BMG getting into DRM-free downloads. At first, of course, only as an experiment, like at the beginning with Universal. There the experiment seems to have established itself as a permanent state. CD sales are obviously falling more than expected. And with that, the to shrink Available retail space. A vicious circle.

For a while, Switzerland was still one of the European countries with a somewhat realistic copyright law. Oddly enough, without a referendum, some laws have now been «adjusted», as with Gulli can be read. For the sake of WIPO, file sharing was further criminalized here in Switzerland and the cracking of copy protection technology was prohibited. Watermarks may no longer be removed either. The relevant laws are already in place Adopted quietly on October 5th and thus the situation in Switzerland has become a lot more risky ...

And who is interested in the Swiss Copyright Act? Nobody seems, at least not a Swiss citizen. No politician, no representative. No consumer protection. No cash drop. No user group. No Big Brother Awards. No newspaper or magazines, and certainly not the Swiss internet media. Not a pig in German! After all, you have to consent to the WIPO treaties. Where are the votes now, like when joining the EU ?! The bilateral negotiations? And other special sausages that Switzerland sizzles so often? Thanks to the music lobby one is now committing a criminal act if one bypasses DRM devices and this can degenerate into a main prize of 1 (!) Year in prison if, for example, a copyrighted work is placed in a P2P network.

Hello-o, did anyone hear that? No. Not a single Swiss citizen. Even the otherwise greedy grimaces of the media, disfigured by drool threads, keep quiet.

Somehow I find the whole thing a bit strange. Why is no one in Switzerland reporting on this new law? Can the influence - or as Blocher likes to say, the felt - of the lobbyists be so great that one has all the mass media, organizations and reporters "in the bag"? We have direct democracy here in Switzerland and could send this new law off the creek regardless of a federal resolution if 50.000 people sign a referendum motion. The deadline for this referendum is January 24, 2008. If there is no referendum request by then, the law will come into force.

Obviously one has no doubts on the part of the lobby that it can have the law approved by today's representatives of the people. But a general debate among the people about this matter would trigger something and the people could react. As in Canada, the situation there is similar at the moment, but it seems that in Canada some people are fighting because they find such a legislation and situation for their country is and would be untenable. Doesn't anyone really want to get up and start a general debate?