Last week, the Finnish parliament returned the national copyright law proposal back to the ministry that originally drafted it. Electronic Frontier Finland heavily criticized the anti-circumvention provisions and other controversial issues of the proposal. After a parliamentary hearing on the 31st of January, the chair of the hearing committee announced it was impossible to continue with the proposal.

Mr Jyrki Katainen, member of the parliament committee and vice chairman of the Conservative Party, confirmed to EFFI that the main reason for this very rare dismissal was the extreme unclearness of the law. The possibility of a 2 years jail sentence for the circumvention of copy protection for example, would have posed a serious risk to unwitting citizens.

Mr. Katainen was also worried the law would have harmed the Finnish competitiveness as an information society. "The proposal was simply overreaching", he said.

EFFI press-release (31.01.2003)
http://www.effi.org/julkaisut/tiedotteet/pressrelease-2003-01-31.html

Slashdot article (31.01.2003)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/31/213251&mode=thread...

(Contribution by Ville Oksanen, EDRI-member EFFI)