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I live in the Netherlands and we don't have the DMCA.

But come Dec 2002, you will have the EUCD instead.

They harrassed an Norwegian,

Somewhat. The MPAA sent a complaint to the norwegian 'economic crime unit', which acted as a "useful idiot" and put him under investigation.

A good reason for the rest of the world to take notice...

The rest of the world should take notice because the US is applying a lot of pressure.

There are two issues, really:

Jursdiction - that is, when can a court in country A convict a citizen in country B. This is what makes the 'Hague' treaty so scary.

Similar laws - all EU countries will have an anticircumvention law similar to 1201 in the DMCA before Dec. 2002. EUCD background information

Australia has a similar law. Sorry, I don't have a link at the moment.

Canada is considering an anticircumvention law.

USA is trying to push 1201 on other countries through the FTAA.

Non-US citizens should be aware that this isn't a purely US problem.

In the UK a group of people have formed the Campaing for Digital Rights (CDR ;), and our web site can be found at http://uk.eurorights.org/

At the moment we are campainging for three things: Consumer Digital Rights,with regard to use-restricted cd's, to free Dmitry Sklyarov and to prevent dumb laws like the EUCD (Europes version of the DMCA) from being passed.

We have held a couple of protests outside the US embassy, to ask for Dmitry to be released, the first of which had a ten minute report on NewsNight, the BBC news review program.

On October the 6th we are going to start our leafletting campaign to raise awareness of the new brain-damaged cd's being released. A copy of the leaflet can be downloaded from http://uazu.net/cd/index.html

Any people looking to take part in the campaign, should join the (now incorrectly named) Free Dmitry UK mailing list, which can be found at http://mailman.xenoclast.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listi nfo/free-sklyarov-uk

you might wanne check this out
its about the introduction of DMCA kinde f^Hlaws

Hi, I also live in .be and was wondering what the current state is on DMCA kinde laws here
Do you have any idee ? or know where to find the information ?


We're having a DCMA sooner or later as per European Directive 2001/29/EC. Never a directive was so much lobbied in Brussels and so little talked over outside the EU parliament. You got to love the free press in Europe, which prefered to talk about either the English royals or some food scare of the month... If we are lucky we can help to limit somewhat the damages of its transcription to the national legislations, check the EuroRights site.

I wouldn't sit back happily if I were you. Everything bad that happens in the US also happens in Europe with a few years delay.

Anyway, the European Council has accepted a new DMCA-style copyright directive back in April. It states: "Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective." (Article 6.1) So, forget DeCSS. Member states now have until December 2002 to implement it in local law.

There is a UK specific part of the Eurorights group which can be found at uk.eurorights.org.

It may (and should) outrage all Europeans, but within a year, Dmitry's actions are going to be made illegal in Europe too. Yes, that's right - they've put together a DMCA in Europe called the European Union Copyright Directive. It bans circumventing encryption in the same way. In a year's time, all governments in Europe are obliged to enact it as law.

We can still stop this! Check out here and if you're in Britain, write a letter to your MP. You can and should make a difference.

Now, the EU is issuing a Directive to other European states to pass laws similar to the DMCA

It received the final approval on April 9. The final version, with official translations was published on May 22.

The timeframe for the implementation of the directive in all EU countries, is 18 months. In other words, 22nd December 2002.

For background information check eurorights.org

www.anti-dmca.org
eurorights.org

See http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/. The directive articles themselves are at the end of http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/CopyrightDirectiv e.html and it really looks like that bad things are coming our way. Especially bad looks the part "(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or ". Also, the recitals say that "In particular, this protection should not hinder research into cryptography. " but nothing like this is ever mentioned in the articles. The page mentioned above also links to Wiki site with some discussion on this.

See http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/. The directive articles themselves are at the end of http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/CopyrightDirectiv e.html and it really looks like that bad things are coming our way. Especially bad looks the part "(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or ". Also, the recitals say that "In particular, this protection should not hinder research into cryptography. " but nothing like this is ever mentioned in the articles. The page mentioned above also links to Wiki site with some discussion on this.

2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:

(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or

(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or

(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.

So, the directive specifically prohibits free software such as DeCSS but might allow writing unlicensed commercial software to perform the same task.

(See http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/ for the directive.)

In reality, he (or any other European programmer) is no safer at home than they are traveling to the U.S., although I do suppose that being in jail closer to your home is somewhat comforting...

If the EU would follow the Australian example (which is not unthinkable)

The EU Directorate General for Competition is currently examining this issue. I don't have high hopes, though, since they are only examining price differences. i.e., they won't bother with first sale, fair use or the difference between private and commercial conduct.

See here and here

"In this regard, I should inform you that the Directorate-General for Competition is currently examining the issue of DVD regional coding, and in particular whether this causes significant price differences to occur between DVDs from different regions. If any price differences cannot be explained by differing tax régimes, production costs etc., but are instead facilitated by the regional coding system, it would be our intention to examine whether such a system was a violation of EC competition rules."

If the EU would follow the Australian example (which is not unthinkable)

The EU Directorate General for Competition is currently examining this issue. I don't have high hopes, though, since they are only examining price differences. i.e., they won't bother with first sale, fair use or the difference between private and commercial conduct.

See here and here

"In this regard, I should inform you that the Directorate-General for Competition is currently examining the issue of DVD regional coding, and in particular whether this causes significant price differences to occur between DVDs from different regions. If any price differences cannot be explained by differing tax régimes, production costs etc., but are instead facilitated by the regional coding system, it would be our intention to examine whether such a system was a violation of EC competition rules."

The various member nations haven't yet signed them into law, but in theory they have to at some point.

The directive has to be implemented within 18 months.

For those interested, an unofficial version of the final EU directive is available here

the MPAA should have the ability to enforce the CSS licenses and prevent the sale of region-free machines ("circumvention devices").

Not exactly. You could make an argument that the DVDCCA license is overbroad, since it bundles piracy protection with region coding and macrovision.

Both the DMCA and the EU copyright directive go above and beyond the requirements set forth in the WIPO treaties. The WCT and WPPT are actually quite sensible.

The companies didn't buy the WIPO treaty. They bought the Green and White paper on the NII.

Buy Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright" for the whole story.

European? Join Eurorights.org to fight the EU copyright directive.