Finland

"There is already a regular shuttle of boats working for him between Saint-Malo, Sweden, Finland and even the Soviet Union. In less than four years, he has radically eliminated intermediaries from his import chain and modernized it to the extent of the revolution in communications that we are now beginning to see the first signs of. It is a global qualitative leap where François Pinault is no longer just attacking routine."

"Copyrights and patents aren't the only legal limitations impacting the digital knowledge loop. Privacy and confidentiality laws also loom large. I believe that someday all information should be public, including everyone's financial and health records. That may strike many readers as completely crazy, but countries like Sweden and Finland are already publishing everyone's tax return [113]. And some individuals have also published their entire medical history on the Internet, including the CIO and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School [114]. I come to my radical perspective here by comparing the costs and benefits to individuals and to humanity from keeping information private or confidential with the costs and benefits of making it public."

"I had found a way to recreate a product that had a history in Russia because it had been imported from Finland. It was not registered in Russia so we could copy it. And there was no copyright in Finland because of a strange arrangement whereby the archaic Finnish state monopoly had an alcopop formula which it gave to one of three breweries every other year. This arrangement, where each brewery could produce for two years before handing on the rights, had been going for decades."

"Alcopops – fruit-based long drinks infused with a shot of liquor – had been sold for some time in Finland and had recently taken off in London. A small quantity of Finnish gin and grapefruit was even being imported into Russia. I could see that alcopops would be a winner in the Russian market because there was no culture of mixing drinks; it was just shots of vodka for men and champagne for women. It was as simple and basic as…"