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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

Well I'm slightly proud to know there's at least one first world country with dumber copyright laws than my own.

Being second from the bottom probably is nothing to crow about though...

Well, it seems stupidity abounds in a lot of countries when it comes to copyright. The supreme court of Sweden just ruled that taking a photo of a piece of public art (as in art in an open and public space, not even a gallery or museum mind you) and posting online infringes on the artist's copyright.

Oh, at least thirds. Spain is even in worst situation; Google News closed Spain service[1] since they considered unacceptable to pay for providing links.

Spain has had a bunch of "interesting" laws for copyright protection. Like having to pay a tax for any HD, DVD (whatever thing you use to store stuff and per MB) as a preemptive pirate protection. And I think that other European countries shared this strategy[2].

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/enrique-dans/google-news-leavi... [2] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/digital-tax-opposed-sp...

Oh, yeah, Sweden got that too. A "nice" organization called copyswede that tries to claim that all digital media is used for storing music, so we must pay a tax, per MB, for all storage media. The irony of it all, since Spotify, a Swedish company, we're not even storing music anymore.

There are various countries with that kind of tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy .Somehow Austria is missing on this List but I'am pretty sure they already have it ( http://futurezone.at/english/there-is-no-right-to-private-co... ).

Lots of countries, including the US, have a similar tax on certain blank media The tax collected by the govt, and distributed to content producers. What a racket.

New Zealand banned Software Patents

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