Hard cheese for content owners in the cantons

Torrentfreak reports that the Swiss Government has decided that downloading music and movies will stay legal. With an estimated one in three of the Swiss population admitting to downloading content without permission, Swiss policy will now be that downloading for personal use WILL be legal since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.

The Swiss government had been conducting the study into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings and the overall conclusion reached is that current Swiss copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.

The Report notes that whilst the photocopier, audio cassette tape and VCR were all excellent and efficient copying devices, the internet has an added ‘bonus’- the world wide web offers near instant and global distribution of copies at the click of a button. The Report, which favours the option of putting technology to good use instead of taking the “repressive” approach says “Every time a new media technology has been made available, it has always been “abused”. This is the price we pay for progress. Winners will be those who are able to use the new technology to their advantages and losers those who missed this development and continue to follow old business models,” the Report notes.

The Report further 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, 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”. Equally the Dutch study showed 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.

The Report also reviews some of the new digital regimes adopted in other countries, in particular the three-strikes law Hadopi now operating in neighbouring France. The Report points to the expense of such systems and questions whether a three-strikes law would be legal, with access to the internet having been deemed a human right by the UN Human Rights Council. Other measures such as filtering or blocking content and websites are also rejected, because these would impinge of the right to freedom of speech and violate privacy protection laws. The report notes that even if these measures were implemented, there would be several ways to circumvent them. In 2010 the Swiss Federal Supreme Court ruled that ISPs and content owners are not allowed to collect IP-addresses of file-sharers when Logistep AG was prohibited from collecting personal IP addresses of suspected pirates on behalf of music and film groups such as the RIAA and Motion Picture Association, making it impossible for rights holders to gather evidence. The case was brought by the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner

So the message to the content industries is this – adapt to changes in consumer behaviour - or die

http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/

Logistep AG : http://jumpcgi.bger.ch/cgi-bin/JumpCGI?id=08.09.2010_1C_285/2009 (8th September 2010) cf the decision of the German Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht (decision 5 W 126/10, 3 November 2010)

Swiss Stocks: The Last Haven?

With the US markets crashing, most European markets in turmoil, Japan stagnating, and other areas of the world suffering due to the worldwide recession, where is an investor to turn? The Swiss franc is skyrocketing, while the currency for the rest of Europe is tanking. Since Switzerland is known for its neutrality, stability, security, and bank secrecy, maybe it is time to take a closer look at companies from a country that has been independent since 1291.

Here are some Swiss securities worth looking into. All of the stocks pay dividends except one, and all the dividend payers pay annually.

One such stock is Swisscom AG (SCMWY.PK), the largest telephone company in Switzerland, which has a yield of about 5% based on its latest annual dividend payment. The stock trades at 11.6 times forward earnings, and is traded on the Pink Sheets.

Credit Suisse Group (CS), one of the famous Swiss banks and the second largest in Switzerland, has a very favorable forward P/E of 6 and a Price Earnings Growth ratio of 0.8. (Remember: the lower the PEG the better the buy.) The stock yields 4.4% and trades on the NYSE.

Like chocolate? Nestle SA (NSRGY.PK) is a multinational packaged food company especially known for chocolate. It has a forward P/E of 14.6 and a PEG on the high side of 3.61. The stock yields 3.1% and trades on the Pink Sheets.

Syngenta AG (SYT) is in the business of seeds and crop production. It sports a P/E ratio of 18. The stock yields 2.5% and trades on the NYSE.

UBS AG (UBS) is Switzerland's other big bank. It's the second largest bank in Europe and is the world's largest manager of private wealth assets. It has a forward P/E of 13.

Novartis AG (NVS) is a developer and marketer of pharmaceuticals and health care products; its divisions also include Animal Health, Gerber, and CIBA Vision. One of its subsidiaries is Sandoz, inventor of LSD and manufacturer of saccharin. It has a forward P/E of 18 and a PEG of 1.3. The stock yields 1.7% and trades on the NYSE.

Roche Hldg. (RHHBY.PK) is the large pharmaceuticals and diagnostics biotechnology company. It has a forward P/E of 3.8.

ABB (ABB) is in the power and automation technology industry. It has a P/E of 11.1 and trades on the NYSE.

Logitech International SA (LOGI) ia the famous manufacturer of mice and other peripheral and personal interface devices for personal computers. It has a forward P/E of 9.9. The stock does not pay a dividend and trades on NASDAQ.

For free lists of more European stocks, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, where the lists can be downloaded, sorted and updated.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Smoothstone’s Converged IP Cloud Expanding To Europe

Smoothstone IP Communications, an innovator in the new field of cloud-based unified communications, is expanding its service portfolio to include European locations. Could this be the start of a cloud that covers the Earth?

You bet it is. Thanks to international MPLS connectivity, it is now feasible to port any IP service to anywhere on Earth. That’s the beauty of MPLS networks. They take whatever you’ve got and transport it anywhere users can connect to the network.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. There’s a matter of scaling involved. Servers that easily handle the load for a limited universe of users in a regional area can become quickly overloaded when a tsunami of new users joins the network from a global footprint. Likewise, the core network has to have the bandwidth needed to handle the increased traffic without degrading latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics.

Smoothstone has addressed these issues, partially by expanding their cloud-based applications platform into several European data centers. That removes a potential bottleneck that could form if all packets needed to be processed through a single U.S. data center. It also makes call termination to off-net European phones easier and less costly.

One of the advantages that Smoothstone touts for moving enterprise voice services to their IP cloud is that internal phone calls stay on the network even when those calls are transatlantic to the UK, France, Germany or Switzerland. It’s only when calls need to be terminated to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that connection costs are incurred. The more local the call termination, the cheaper it is. That argues for geographically diverse data centers and central office equipment to support telephony in the cloud.

What is also significant is that Smoothstone is not merely another VoIP service provider. The heart of their competitive portfolio is unified IP communications services. That means converged voice and data services to gain the cost advantages that come from deploying one network among business locations rather that separate telephone and data networks. Convergence can be a tricky proposition for time sensitive applications like network voice. If not done properly, VoIP calls can degrade into clipped and garbled conversations. Calls can even be dropped in extreme cases.

MPLS networking is especially suited to supporting converged voice and data. Not only are multiple protocols supported, but these privately owned and operated networks are carefully managed to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) at all times. For companies that want to unify their communications among multiple locations, it’s hard to argue against a solid MPLS core network. Now smoothstone is taking a leadership position to expand the very same converged services to include European cities. By the end of 2010, they expect to be providing applications and services across Europe.

Is your company still suffering from last century’s networking solutions? Have you been stymied by the process of creating unified communications that delivers the quality of service you require? What you need is the right provider with assets and resources to deliver the right solution for your size of operation and be able to seamlessly scale up as your business level increases. See how Smoothstone and other cloud networking services can provide the connectivity you need at a cost that makes sense.