The Suisa stuff really is quite a paradox,... but that's Swiss Law at it's finest.

Apparently the law differentiates between downloading and uploading. Down is OK, up isn't. Of course, when you share, you do both.

I remember reading about the new law when it was passed, though I can't remember where exactly. And I have no clue about the media coverage in the french or italian parts of Switzerland as I don't speak either language.

A search for "referendum" and "urheberrecht" (german for "copyright) on the Swiss governments website www.admin.ch doesn't find anything, and as far as I know, all referendums have to be published there, so I guess still no referendum...

I also live in Switzerland, all year round that is :-)

I too read about the laws that are to be changed and I also read the detailed "laws" themselves, but I have to admit, that I don't understand "legalese" that well :-)

I did a little searching on the net for any details of a possible referendum against the laws, alas with no success. But I did find articles on various swiss news sites that reported the parliaments decision.
For example:

http://www.news.ch/Urheberrecht+wird+ans+Internetzeitalter+angepasst/288315/detail.htm?ref=rss

or

http://www.20min.ch/tools/suchen/story/23698299

or a bit more serious source

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/schweiz/aktuell/urheberrecht_fuer_das_internetzeitalter_1.561418.html

According to the news outlets the main points of the changes are:

- it will be prohibited to circumvent any copy protection mechanisms on any media (CD, DVD etc)
- but downloading will remain permitted

Interestingly though, as of september 1st of this year, consumers pay up to 80 CHF more for digital media players (for example MP3 players and harddisc recorders). This money goes to the Suisa, the "The Swiss Society for the Rights of Authors of Musical Works" (http://www.suisa.ch/home_e.htm), which then distributes this money (minus their administration fees and so on) to registered swiss artists.

This means that if you bought for example an iPod in Switzerland in the last month, you paid up to 80 CHF more, because you potentially might be copying or downloading music (we've been paying such fees on recordable CDs for years).

Go figure!