A new survey, conducted by the The National Research Institute of Legal Policy, looked into the unlawful behavior of Finnish 9th grade youngsters, including their illicit downloading habits. Among other things, the results show that 6% of the 15 year olds smoke marijuana or hash, 11% has participated in a fight and 15% admits they have stolen something from their school.

Unsurprisingly, the most common type of illegal behavior among the group is (illegal) downloading. An overwhelming majority of the surveyed kids (69%) admitted that they have downloaded copyrighted material in the past year. Even more so, 29% reported that they use filesharing applications to download music and movies illegally, every day. However, it is worth pointing out that while bullying, stealing and vandalism might be considered a crime and therefore warrant the attention of the police, personal-use file-sharing is a civil infringement, and does not.

The Finnish news article which reported on the survey resulted in an massive response from readers. A spokesperson from the Finnish pro-piracy group Piraattiliitto told TorrentFreak: “There is an almost unanimous call from the readers to legalize private filesharing. The overwhelming change in the national opinion from anti-piracy to pro-piracy is somewhat surprising, even for us at Piraattiliitto.”

The Finnish copyright lobby on the other hand, says it is ‘alarmed’ at the outcome of the survey. It wants to see new laws that would allow copyright holders to force ISPs to pass their threatening emails to the alleged filesharing customers. The consensus among the readers, however, seems to be that, instead of turning millions of people (including 69% of 15 year-old kids in Finland) into law-breakers, copyright laws should be changed to allow casual piracy.

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According to a Piraattiliitto report, the Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (CIAPC) in Finland has used a copyright law which came into force January 1st 2006, to have a file-sharer disconnected from the Internet. However, this drastic action – which is thought to be the first anti-piracy related disconnection in Europe – comes with additional controversy. This wasn’t some kid sharing files from his bedroom on a residential connection, this was a government employee using a government internet connection to share music videos.

In true disproportionate anti-piracy style, this fact didn’t stop CIAPC from getting the government connection severed via the Ahvenanmaan District Court. According to CIAPC the connection, operated by the ISP Ã…lands Datakommunikation, was being used by the Provincial Government of Ã…land. It is unclear if this action caused any disruption to legitimate government business but it’s probably safe to say that it didn’t help it in any way.

Ã…land Executive Niklas Karlman said of the incident: “As an employer, we must ensure that employees do not engage in illegal activities. We are taking steps to raise awareness among our employees. We are aware of this threat to our security.”

According to the report, the Finnish copyright lobby ’sneaked’ the disconnection sanction into copyright law without the legislators hearing the opinions of any independent legal or technical experts. The process has been harshly criticized by Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI). EFFI vice chairman Ville Oksanen characterizes the legislation process “one of the dirtiest he has ever seen”.

The action also goes directly against the European Parliament who, this April, condemned state plans to authorize the disconnection of suspected file-sharers from the Internet. European Parliament said that disconnecting petty file-sharers would be “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness”.

It seems that even government activity can be disrupted these days in the name of copyright enforcement.

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The ‘Social Center Elimäenkatu 15′ isn’t an official social gathering place – it’s a squat, a disused building into which the organizers wish to breathe new life by showing the latest blockbuster movies, free of charge to all who attend. August 8 2007 saw the screening of ‘Transformers’ at 19:00 followed by ‘The Simpsons Movie’.

At the Elimäenkatu 15 social center they aren’t just showing movies – in the last week there has been a silkscreen printing workshop, a presentation on Korean Left-Wing movements, their own ‘Fight Club’ which teaches self defense skills and even a full beach party – minus the beach of course.

Around 20 people squeezed into the ‘Pirate Cinema’ (or Occupied Autonomous Center as the organizers refer to it) on August 15 when they were offered the chance to watch more free movies, specifically Planet Terror and the latest Die Hard movie. However after what was presumably a good night, the viewers left the social center only to be confronted by police.

Finland’s Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (CIAPC) had prompted the police to investigate the ‘Pirate Cinema’. As the organizers tried to leave, their car was prevented from doing so by three police cars. Officers handcuffed and detained two people from the car and arrested one of the organizers along with a laptop computer used to play the movies. According to reports, although the viewers aren’t in any trouble, the organizers are facing charges of breaking copyright law. The driver of the car was later released.

When speaking with Helsingin Sanomat an organizer said: “It is ridiculous that under the new copyright law, a large number of people are criminals”, adding that copyright legislation only benefits large companies and big stars: “Copyrights do not solve the livelihood of culture workers, and the enforcement of piracy laws will not promote it”

A statement on the organizers site said: “The idea of Pirate Cinema has been to show movies for free for everybody. Everybody don’t afford to go see movies in the movie theatres. At the same time Pirate Cinema has been a statement for the right to share files. P2P filesharing is a mass movement: millions of people are sharing files everyday in P2P networks, and no kind of repression will ever stop this.”

Antti Kotilainen, Executive Director of anti-piracy group CIAPC commented: “We are pleased that officials have taken action. They say that they are anarchists, fighting against big movie moguls. Then the only recreation that they have is to show movies produced by the companies that they despise so much.”

The people at Projekti Sosiaalikeskus (the organizers) are in defiant mood, as is clear from a posting to their site: “True pirates never die! Despite recent repression Pirate Cinema will continue, just wait a bit for updates. We won’t back off or give up. Stay tuned!”

According to the site, the next movie screening is set for August 22.

Thanks to Xtacy for the translation

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