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The directive, which was approved last year, extends European copyright legislation so that it is even more restrictive than America's controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), critics argue. National governments have until December 22 to incorporate the directive in national legislation. If it goes through unmodified, the EUCD would make it a criminal offense to break or attempt to break the copy protection or Digital Rights Management systems on digital content such as music, software or eBooks. As it stands, the EUCD may lead to a rerun of Dmitri Sklyarov's prosecution, prevent teachers copying materials for their students or other legitimate uses of copyright material, opponents believe.

Now I know the British would like to consider themselves somehow above and beyond the rest of the EU but the fact is that your local version of the EUCD can only be more restrictive. As a matter of fact ANOTHER article (once again by the Register) points out that the british implementation may be worse.

Other than having pointed out that you suspect I may never have set foot outside of the States, you also were kind enough to have explained to me that the EU and open borders is nothing new. How right you are. I never mentioned any thing to the contrary. I DID suggest that the reason for the EUCD may have been a trade agreement. Oddly enough that seems to be something that Eurorights.org would agree with. They say:

The source of the law protection of 'technical protection measures', are the two WIPO treaties from December 1996. Note that the WIPO treaties require law protection for technical measures only when they deny copyright infringement The EU copyright directive is thus overbroad.

WIPO Copyright Treaty, Article 11 WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, Article 18

As far as the rest of your reply, the US is already aware of the threat renegade IP nations may pose, and already have a watchlist with 14 other economies (including the EU). An Asia Pacific Media Network story about it says:

Although Taiwan amended its copyright law in June 2003, several provisions remain deficient," the trade representative's report said, without giving examples. The report noted that a promise by the government in February to seek improvements in the copyright law has not yet been fulfilled. Taiwan has been on and off the piracy list since the early 1990s. In 2001, after a three year gap, the country was placed back on the list, where it has been ever since. The dispute between Washington and Taipei over piracy is the biggest irritant in bilateral economic relations, and has quashed hopes that Washington would sign a free trade agreement with Taiwan. The two countries also have disputes over telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and rice imports, but heavy pressure on the US government from the entertainment industry, which claims it loses several billions of dollars a year due to piracy in Taiwan, has kept the issue in the forefront. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday expressed regret and discontent over the US government's decision. "The US government ignored our efforts in passing the new Copyright Law, a

Does the U.K. have their own version of the DMCA? Anyone know?

No but we will do soon.

The EUCD (european union copyright directive) is even more restrictive than the DMCA, so there are less places to hack freely. good article and another. Makes me long for the days I did my hacking in deepest darkest Peru (ok, Lima wasn't deep and only dark in the wintertime)

Denmark was the first country to adopt the EUCD (DMCA++). Here's a good EUCD status page. It has the same broad anti-circumvention tool proscriptions as the DMCA.

If the dmca is appealed then the RIAA will bust you under the UUCD( Europe's dmca)

EUCD, also known as Infosoc or 2001/29/EC.

Dont believe me? Look at Jon Johnson. Through world internation commerce espionage laws he was tried by an American law.

I assume you're talking about Mr. Johansen? If so, he was tried by Norwegian law. Pre-EUCD Norwegian law.

I'm a UK citizen, and one of the "John Doe"s on the California deCSS case (#13, lucky for some) (cited for redistributing deCSS.) Congratulations to Jon, let's hope that this is the start of the Law waking up to, and acknowledging, fair use and common sense. My mirror's still up despite various nastygrams from the ISP prompted by bullying tactics by the MPAA (presumably, the complainant was anonymous but who else could it have been?) and the EUCD directive which is currently on hold for a month or two. Is it too much to hope for to wonder whether this case could lead to a rethink of the whole DMCA-like tenor that European law has been heading in of late?

I agree with you wholeheartedly. There are some organisations over here such as eurorights and there is someone claiming to be the eff-europe but there doesn't seem to be the same momentum as in the USA. Hopefully things will pick up here before the laws get passed, rather than after.

The project from what I see [sourceforge.net] is mostly (if not all) done by non-Americans. So the DMCA does not apply to these people, nor to more than 99% of the countries in the world.

I'd also say that this was a stacked audience. Let's see, you have a bunch of college students that use p2p on a regular basis, many of whom were spreading anti-RIAA propaganda

I followed the discussions and preparations in the CDR, although I didn't go myself. I have to say that we were not at all sure that the debate could be won. Oxford is a very strange place, and Oxford Union is stranger -- a private members-only debating society which perhaps could be described as a little bit elitist.

As to why Hilary Rosen chose to go to an debate with students -- it is because of the prestige of debating in one of the oldest debating societies in the world. You have to dress up (black tie for men), you go to a special dinner with weird and ancient customs (if you've never been to an Oxford college, you have no idea!), and so on and so on. Take a look around the Oxford Union site.

Also, with a place like Oxford Union, this isn't some shallow debate. Rather it prides itself on getting to the bottom of the issue, with lots of intelligent minds on the job. If the RIAA's case stood on logical grounds, she would likely have won the debate. That is why this is a significant result! The truth of the matter is that even with all the conservatism of Oxford, Hilary and friends couldn't make their arguments stick.

In case you don't know it, we will be getting something similar to the DMCA in Europe soon :(

You can read more here.

With enough money and promises however, the United States may very well talk nations like Denmark and Thailand into more restrictive and reasonable laws concerning their cyber-space.

I'm not sure I want to go to the McCarthy stuff because of the associations. It was shameful the way they walked all over the Constitution, and harmed so many good people, and so few that had the stature spoke out about it. The remnants of the Red-Scare crap are still around, and I'm certain that it is part of the motivations of some of the worst ideological enemies of RMS and Open/Free source in general. Strategically it is a lose, though, so I try to stay away from it. Free speech is a much better angle.

The "The Architectures of Control" isn't mine. Someone else posted that link under the article about the "RIAA vs James Boyle" debate this week. Definitely worth a read.

Drop me an Email if you're interested in a few more things I'd like to say, but not in public.

You need to understand that it is exactly this issue that causes a lot of the problems. It is really worth reading all of the talk transcript from the guy who is going to debate the RIAA VP next week. It is exactly because of the desire to extract every dime available under the utility curve that leads to the desire to create non-transferable licensing (restrict right of first sale) and a host of other evils that almost everyone objects to.

How awful is it if you actually PAID MONEY for the software? Face it, if your boss doesn't have bucks, you don't have a job. Somebody's paying for the Linux kernel to be developed - if it costs 1% more, is that a big deal?

It isn't that simple. If a commercial tool is needed to participate, it limits the scope. Not everyone working on any given free source project is getting paid. Ok, so you can grab bitkeeper for free to work on the Linux kernel, that's sort of ok, but now they say you can't work on some projects if you do that. Sort of silly if you ask me, since it just gives them (BitMover) a black eye in the community and it won't slow down the development of the free alternative. It is, in fact, pretty easy to argue the opposite based on discussion of the issue here. Lots of people who were on the fence for this issue are going to move away from their product.

The transcript that I linked above makes the point that we don't actually know if BitMover is hurting or helping themselves. If they just GPLed their tool, and charged for support, commercial licenses, and other stuff, they might do better in the long run. It is a leap of faith, but you gotta ask how much the change of EULA language will hurt them in the long run. It will encourage more people to push the free alternative, and work to make that tool competetive. If it was GPLed, they would have the whole community behind them, and a lot of people would buy their books and support in gratitute for the gift of their software.

These issues are even more stark if you want to work on free hardware. The free tools are in a primitive state, so you are in a bind of choosing a less desirable tool vs something free. The producers of the commercial tools are afraid of their business drying up, so they won't do anything if it might help the free tools compete with them. You say, ok, so I'll find a tool I can use for free on free hardware even if it is closed source, but that slows down the free alternatives.

This is where you start to get just how important GPL is and why it is such an important innovation. One of the big problems in the sub-chip level hardware design is that the big tool makers have everything locked up and they don't talk to each other very well.

There are some open standards, but the whole mentality of closed intellectual property creates this situation where the best minds are all working to recreate the same tools and chip functions in each closed universe. This is even worse than it is for software because there aren't nearly as many people working in hardware as with software, and it is getting more complex just as fast.

My gut tells me that any company that makes the leap of faith and frees their intellectual property under GPL or similar terms will get back much more than they give up. It's hard, if not impossible to prove this, but instictively we know this when we look deeply at the issues.

On a side note, RMS doesn't think that the GPL is appropriate for hardware. It's bits all the way down until you start replicating the physical parts, and unlike software, it isn't possible to actually use it until you physically replicate it.

Nothing stops me from downloading the ISO images of RedHat's latest release cutting as many one-offs as I want on my CDR, or even making a run of CDs, and cutting them out of the loop completely. I can even offer my own support services to compete with RH. Doing this with chip or board level fabrication has considerably higher entry barriers, so potential "Red Hat Hardware" vendors would have less to worry about.

As long as I've come this far, I want to finish with a comment about the LGPL. From where I stand, RMS's stance on the LGPL is a take-back that is just as damaging, if not more so, as the EULA change being discussed. LGPL gives you a lot more choice in terms of integrating free and proprietary subsystems and components. Where free libraries have significantly extended functionality, he explicitly recomends GPL over LGPL. As an example if you want all the GNU goodies that make command line work so nice in bash, you have to either write your own or be ready to release your entire project under GPL. I might even agree with his goal of all software being free, but my choice is limited. What if I'm doing this work for an employer who is not ready to release the whole thing? I can't choose GPL, but I could choose LGPL.

This is the one case where I would claim that it goes beyond style, and the message itself actually hurts the movement.

Tensions between Free Software and Architectures of Control", which is very informative, as
well as quite funny in parts.

Now, if I remember correctly, we have the right to make backup copies of media, right?

Wholesale import of non-RC2 DVDs is forbidden by law in Germany and, since 1 August 2002, in Switzerland. I don't know about other countries, but the outlook for the EU is not good.

I can still legally import RC1 DVDs from the US as a private person here in Switzerland, but this takes time and is rather expensive because of overseas shipping and customs expenses. Stores such as MediaMarkt used to have a good assortment of RC1 DVDs at reasonable prices, but this is now illegal. Since the primary reason to switch to DVD for me was the possibility to see a movie in English with English subtitles, I have practically stopped buying DVDs locally (the RC2 versions are often missing features from the US releases, and the English language audio track has permanent German subtitles).

Bottom line: Thanks to the industry's ridiculous policies, the money they get from me is down to about 1/3 of what it used to be. Maybe I'm the only one, but if not, they'll sure find a way to blame the slump in sales to "piracy" instead of acknowledging that they're shooting themselves in the foot.

And, by the way: How is this compatible with the "free trade" idea so cherished by many politicians today? Does "free trade" really mean "free trade as long as we can profit from it"?

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights was established last year specifically to campaign against the European Copyright Directive's implementation in the UK. It has held a couple of mini-conferences on the topic already.

We are completing our analysis of the implementation paper at present. Those wishing to see significant change in the draft before enactment face two problems:

1. The EUCD will be implemented by statutory instrument, which means there will be no debate in the Houses of Parliament. Forcing a debate to be held requires the co-operation of a number of members of parliament.

2. The UK is permitted little lee-way in enacting the EUCD. Whilst the Directive itself allows for a certain degree of flexibility in some areas, the UK cannot stray from the path set for it by the EU without risking punishment from Brussels. To a significant extent, our hands are tied, therefore.

That said, the UK Campaign for Digital Rights aims to ensure that we apply sufficient pressure during the consultation period to obtain the least damaging legislation possible.

Any and all assistance (particularly from lawyers) is welcomed.

Julian Midgley

http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/.

This is the EU version of the DMCA. Last I heard it was due to come in Nov. 2002.

CBDTPA will reduce performance due to requiring a query to the DRM for every file access. How else is it possible for a DRM to decide whether or not the process calling the file has "legitimate" access to it?

While the EU will accept stupid experiments in government from the US, there has to be something for this for the EU politicians and/or bureaucrats at least.

More to the point, the EU and Asian government being able to derive a differential advantage for their electronics companies because the US Congress did something absymally stupid by simply refraining from passing a law... where is this a problem for the EU or any Asian government?

it's not the same thing. A US government mandated DRM would probably have to be burned in to the vendor chips before purchse to achieve CBDTPA or Broadcast Working Group compliance.

So NAFTA may be the weak spot in the Hollings law. Thanks.

Sweden is a member of the European Union, and the EU has issued a directive.

Those were the days.

Now CDs cost $19 or $20. The dot-com boom is, well, you know. Napster's gone. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has survived a legal challenge, which has only encouraged our fine Congress to pile on more onerous legislation.

Granted, none of this is as alarming as the apparent suspension of habeas corpus in the extended detention of more than 1,000 unnamed people in the U.S. since 9/11, but it's pretty darned ominous just the same.

Added to this heady mixture in recent weeks is a new generation of digital copy protection that's been showing up on music CDs distributed by Sony in Europe. Fast becoming known as the case of "Celine Dion Killed My iMac," initial reports indicate that these discs are not only unreadable by computers, but may actually crash them and prevent them from rebooting, necessitating a service call.

Aside from the immediate hardware questions--"Where the !@#$% is the iMac's manual CD eject hole and how the !@#$% do I get to it?!?"--several major questions about this situation have gripped the Mac universe. Here, without further ado, are the Curmudgeon's curmudgeonly answers to the top five. Some are techical, some are legal, some are political, some are a mix of all three.

Dayplanner note: if you already know exactly how CDs and copy protection work and you're pressed for time, feel free to skip right on down to Question #3. That's where things get, as they say in New England, wicked controversial.

QUESTION #1: Why do Macs and other computers choke on copy protected CDs?

When you look at the business side of a normal audio CD, you see one continuous semi-glossy surface that contains the audio information, or the "program". Bracketing the program are the lead-in and lead-out sections, which are the high-gloss rings at the inside and outside edges of the disc, respectively. The CD's audio tracks are not arranged in a particularly orderly fashion on the disc. As Robert Starret explains in an old but still definitive Emedia Professional article:

Red Book [i.e Audio CD] tracks are not files, per se. They are made up of a bunch of data that is meant to stream, and within the stream there is more than music. ... Data on an audio disc is organized into frames in order to ensure a constant read rate. Each frame consists of 24 bytes of user data, plus synchronization, error correction, and control and display bits. One of the first things that it is crucial to understand about CDs is that [their] data is not arranged in distinct physical units. Instead, the data in one frame is interleaved with the data in many other frames so that a scratch or defect in the disc will not destroy a single frame beyond correction.

Audio discs were designed to be read sequentially, in real time, with the digital data converted to an analog signal that would be played through a stereo's speakers. There was no need to have data on the disc to pinpoint the exact location of the beginning of a song. It is good enough just to get close. That extra data containing an exact starting address for each song takes up space that could otherwise be used for musical data.

So what a computer sees when it looks at an audio CD is not a foreign language, as when a Mac sees a DOS-formatted disc. Rather, it sees no language at all. There's no map, no file cabinet. Everything's just strewn out on the floor. This is why you can't just double-click an audio CD's icon in the Finder and drag one of the files to your hard drive. (If you do, the copied file will be zero k and contain no data.) Instead, you have to "rip" the file with a special digital audio extraction program or utility that manually searches out and extracts the tracks on the disc. That, by the way, is most likely why the term "ripping" came about. The kind of translation necessary for digital audio extraction no doubt struck many folks as analogous to the process of printing postscript-encoded fonts and images on a printer. Converting postscript to bitmap (so a printer can shoot ink droplets or laser-heated toner dots onto the paper) requires a Raster Image Processer, or RIP; hence "ripping."

Now, the key thing to understand here is that since audio CDs have no filesystem, and therefore no real data files, audio CD players do not need to be able to read data. Any data on an audio CD is ignored.

Computers, of course, come at CDs from the opposite perspective: data is their first order of business. So computers look for--and, if they find one, read--a data track on a CD before they look for, or read, an audio track. Data first, audio second, with each being treated separately.

You will be able to see this separate treatment in action if you have an "Enhanced CD" that contains bonus data material in addition to the audio program. Sara McLaughlin's 1999 release Mirrorball is one of the best-known Enhanced CDs. Stick it in your Mac and you'll see two separate CD icons, or volumes, show up on your desktop, one for the audio CD tracks and one for the data.

Look on the underside of the CD and you'll see that a very shiny band interrupts the normally continuous semi-gloss surface. This band is the lead-out for the audio disc, which is normally at the edge of the disc. But on an Enhanced CD, there's a second patch of program material after the lead-out. This is the data portion. Now look at a picture provided by German Magazine Chip of the underside of a disc that uses the Key2Audio copy protection technology Sony has employed most famously on the European release of Celine Dion's most recent album (ignore the disembodied hand holding the felt-tip marker for now).

Note the shiny band about 1/4 of the way in from the outside edge of the disc, just like you'd see on the underside of Mirrorball. The material from that band out to the disc's edge is a data track. Unlike a normal Enhanced CD, however, the data track on this CD is corrupt. I don't know exactly how it works, but it is formatted in such a way that a computer will initially recognize it as a valid data track but will not in fact be able to read it successfully. This situation will result in: the computer endlessly trying to read the disc; the computer giving up and ejecting the disc (or asking you to eject it); or the computer giving up with the disc sitting in the drawer, unmounted on the desktop and invisible to the OS. The second possibility is annoying; the first and third possibilities are potentially disastrous.

So computers choke on Sony's copy protected discs because (1) computers read data tracks first, and (2) Key2Audio data tracks are corrupt. Audio CD players, on the other hand, aren't capable of reading data tracks--remember, audio CD tracks lack a filesystem and there are no directories or headers to read. So audio CD players simply ignore the data track, just as they do for normal Enhanced CDs.

QUESTION #2: What's with this magic marker trick to defeat copy protection? Does it really work?

You betcha. Computers read data tracks first, but the data track has to be located at the end of the CD. Sounds confusing, but it has to be that way. In computer parlance, an Enhanced CD is a form of multisession CD. The CD is written to more than once; in the case of Enhanced CDs and Mac-PC hybrid CDs, this happens because you want to write two different types of data to the same CD. Audio CD players can only read the first session on a CD--again, no need or ability to know what multiple sessions are since an audio CD is expecting to see only audio CD tracks. So the audio content has to be the first thing on the disc, located on the inside of the disc surface. The data track is on the outside.

So if you take a magic marker--or, more dangerously a piece of electrical tape or a Post-it note--and use it to cover over that shiny band that divides the audio program from the data track, your computer won't realize that there even is a data track as it scans from the beginning of the CD--the inner part where the audio stuff is--to the outside looking for data. What your computer will see is a final audio track that seems to go on and on until it reaches the edge of the disk. This will put a whole lot of silence at the end of the last track when you rip the CD (a problem you can rectify using the Quicktime Player as an audio editor), but otherwise you'll be good to go.

QUESTION #3: Is Apple liable for the damage caused to my iMac by these CDs?

The answer to this one as far as the Curmudgeon is concerned is a big fat hairy NO. Before I explain why, I must say that I find it disheartening that so many folks on Usenet and the Mac Web are complaining about Apple in regards to this issue. Yes, it sucks to have to take your iMac to a repair shop and pay something on the order of $250US just to get a stuck CD removed. Yes, it's annoying that modern Macs have manual-eject holes that are difficult to see and hidden behind decorative outer CD doors. But I think the root of folks' complaints is that some Apple machines seem to be damaged more seriously by these disks than most WinTel PCs (largely, from what I can tell, by the aforementioned difficulty in detecting and accessing Macs' manual eject holes). While I don't want to downplay the real expense and misery some folks have experienced, it seems to me that the knee-jerk blaming of Apple comes from a kind of Mac inferiority complex run amok: "Why do Apple machines have to react worse to this than WinTel machines?!? My PC friends are going to rake me over the coals on this one! I thought Macs were supposed to be easier to use and better-built, and yet my PC just let me eject the CD!" And so on.

These sentiments are understandable, but they don't form the basis for a proper understanding of whether or not Apple should pay to fix this problem. Putting aside the question of legal liability for the moment, it's just not right to expect Apple or any computer manufacturer--or any CD player manufacturer whose machines won't play these new CDs, for that matter--to anticipate technology that hadn't been invented when the machine was designed. Early CD players were confused by Enhanced CDs; many home and car CD players still can't play CD-RWs; many DVD players (which are always labeled "DVD/CD/VCD") can't handle CD-Rs. In fact, the different CD formats are covered by different technology standards: Red Book for normal audio CDs, Yellow Book for data CDs, Orange Book for CD-R and CD-RW, and Blue Book for Enhanced CDs. Incidentally, the fact that CD-R and CD-RW are grouped together under a single standard explains why manufacturers are hesitant to certify that their CD and DVD players will play home-brewed recordable CDs: unless a player can handle both CD-R and CD-RW discs, it's not Orange Book compliant.

Now the funny thing is that much of the debate over Apple's responsibility here has skipped over this simple, and to my mind obvious, fact. Instead, the debate has proceeded to another, related question:

QUESTION #4: Are these new Sony discs really CDs or not? Should Apple support them even if they're not CDs?

Here's where the Curmudgeon throws you a curve ball, because contrary to what you've read, it's entirely possible, even likely, that these copy protected discs are in fact CDs.

Of course, Apple's position, as stated in a now-infamous Knowledgebase article is that Key2Audio discs "are technically and legally not Compact Discs (CD format)" because they do not conform to the CD audio format, and so Apple is under no obligation to make Macs work with them.

Sony agrees, having removed the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" badge and logo from discs that use the Key2Audio system.

But I don't think that really settles the matter. Attentive readers of the Mac Web might recall that the first draft of Apple's knowledgebase article stated that inserting such a disc into a Mac constituted misapplication of the product (the Mac, not the disc) and therefore any resulting problems were not covered under warranty. Apple has since removed that portion of the article, no doubt on the advice of legal counsel.

I don't know why that paragraph got removed from the article, but I have a hunch it's because the question of whether or not a Key2Audio disc is a CD has not come close to being settled.

Consider this: while the Sony discs don't conform to the Red Book CD standard, they appear to conform to the Blue Book standard--the one that governs Enhanced CDs. It's not possible to look at the full specs for CD standards without paying Philips (co-creator of the CD format along with, ironically, Sony) quite a bit of money. But available summaries of the Blue Book standard indicate that the standard does not say what has to be on that data track. Philips presumes that data tracks on Enhanced CDs "will in general contain items like disc and track titles, lyrics, and background information on the music," (quoted from here), but the Blue Book spec doesn't actually prescribe specific uses for the data track. The only requirement, as far as I can see, is that the data track be formatted with a known filesystem, typically ISO-9660 (DOS), and/or HFS. Since the Key2Audio system works precisely by getting the computer to "take the bait" by first recognizing the data track, and then confuses it by messing up the actual structure or nature of the data, it's reasonable to assume that the Key2Audio system does in fact conform to the Blue Book standard. (In other words, if the data track was not formatted with a valid filesystem, the computer would ignore it or spit the disc out.) Aside from the obvious marketing nightmare ("Our Enhanced CDs are unique because they diminish the product!") The only difference between a Key2Audio disc and an Enhanced CD is that the Key2Audio CD's data track is used to implement copy protection rather than to provide song lyrics, videos and other more traditional Enhanced CD data content.

Now, you might think the Curmudgeon is splitting hairs here. Who cares if you call it (A) an out-of-spec disc that's not a real CD, or (B) an Enhanced CD with a screwy data track?

It seems to me that there's a huge difference. It might seem like Sony is shooting itself in the foot by omitting the official "CD Digital Audio" badge from its copy protected discs. But to my eyes it's the opposite: Sony is weaseling out of the truth, which is that its discs are in fact Blue Book-compliant CDs that are not out-of-spec but rather are defective, and have intentionally been made defective, using the Blue Book format as a trojan horse to disable the user's hardware when that hardware is a computer.

Insofar as these discs damage or disable computers, they operate like computer viruses, except that instead of working on the software side, they attack via hardware and firmware. Their method of copyright protection is less like MacroVision and CSS (the copy protection mechanisms used on VHS and DVD), and more like the "zapping" techniques used by cable companies to disable cable boxes in homes where cable service or premium channels are being received illegally. In those cases, however, there's a way of distinguishing between legal and illegal activity. Legal cable setups don't get their boxes zapped. With Key2Audio, the technology behaves as though inserting a CD in your computer makes you a criminal.

Now, if a court were to agree with my argument that Key2Audio discs are in fact really CDs, then Sony (and Key2Audio) could be liable to lawsuits from computer users who lost time, money and perhaps data as a result of damage done to their computers by these discs. Conceivably, Sony could also be liable to suits brought by computer manufacturers for sabotaging their machines or interfering with their business practices. By saying these discs aren't CDs, Sony hopes to extricate itself from such liability. One can only hope that Sony gets its ass handed to it by the European Union courts--which are routinely more consumer-friendly than their U.S. cousins--before this situation gets out of hand.

This brings us to the second part of this question: Should Apple support these discs even if they're not really CDs? To which the Curmudgeon replies: Heck No! Key2Audio discs do not represent a new technology or a new CD spec. They are a malicious corruption of an existing spec. Without manual intervention by the user on a disc-by-disc basis, it's impossible to design drive firmware or CD driver software that can differentiate between an Enhanced CD and a Key2Audio CD.

That said, it would be nice if drives used in Macs had their firmware updated so that insertion of a Key2Audio disc would generate a normal "This disc is unreadable" message from the OS, allowing for a smooth and uneventful eject procedure.

Even better would be a user-selectable option to "ignore data volumes on multisession CDs" via a CD Preference Pane (OS X) or Control Panel (OS 9). You could select that option and use Key2Audio discs to your heart's content. If you needed to use an Enhanced CD, you could uncheck the option. It would be a bit of a kludge, but that's the best that can be done given the insidious nature of the Key2Audio technology.

QUESTION #5: What about Fair Use?

The much-ballyhooed concept of "fair use" is much more complicated than it seems, and much too complicated to cover fully here. Its value in helping us fight the good fight against Sony is significant but limited.

It is of course true that it's not a violation of fair use to rip a CD and load its songs onto your hard drive or mp3 player, or onto a mix CD-R. The essence of the famous, then obscure, now famous again "Betamax" case (in which Sony was the defendant, ironically, and which was decided by the Supreme Court exactly one week before the release of the first Macintosh) is that it is permissible for you to record or copy copyrighted material so long as it does not deprive the copyright holder of revenue it could obtain if your copy did not exist. So in that sense we all do have a legal "right" to rip CDs.

At the same time, fair use does not obligate Sony to make its music CDs technologically compatible with your Mac, particularly if Sony gets away with claiming that these things aren't really CDs. Technological compatibility is a matter for the market, not the courts: if enough people refuse to buy such discs, Sony will stop making them. If folks buy them, then they'll keep on making them.

The tragedy here is that the market doesn't work like a democracy. Consumers will never have the ability to choose between copy protected and non-copy protected versions of the same CD. You won't see Virgin Records marketing their non-copy protected version of the Celine Dion CD against Sony's copy protected version. It's that old problem of copyright.

So if we leave the fantasy world of economics textbooks and travel to the real world, in which demand is not merely met but created, shaped and channeled, we see that relatively few people--especially children and teens--want or "demand" a non-copy protected CD. What they desire is the music that happens to be on the CD (or the persona, or fame, or body, of the person who makes the music). So the kid hears Britney on the radio or sees her in a video on MTV, or sees her in that Pepsi commercial on broadcast TV, and then goes to the store to buy the music. Upon arrival, our young consumer is presented with a CD. The fact that it costs $18.99 even though it cost Sony about 99 cents to manufacture isn't really relevant. The fact that it's copy protected probably isn't relevant either. The $19 copy protected CD is the product, end of story. There's no other legal way to get the music. Thus, there's no way to gauge the consumer's preference for copy protection, because the consumer isn't choosing or rejecting a content-delivery medium; rather, the consumer is choosing (or rejecting) the music.

So fair use gets lost in the muddle of the market. But we can try to find it again if we take a gander at the reason Key2Audio exists in the first place: online music swapping.

The record industry says that CD ripping and music piracy go hand-in-hand; hence the need for digital copy protection. Yet a moment of reflection yields the following observations:

(A) Most noncommercial piracy these days (i.e. mp3 sharing) does indeed involve ripping CDs onto computers.

(B) At the same time, most ripping does not lead to piracy.

(C) Virtually no commercial, for-profit piracy involves ripping CDs onto someone's computer and distributing them via file sharing. Instead, it is likely that commercial, high-volume piracy involves mass copying of audio CDs via standalone CD duplicators that can copy any kind of copy protected disc as easily as they copy Playstation CDs (which use a similar copy protection mechanism). To stop this sort of pirating, the record companies will have to continue to rely on the same law enforcement agencies and tactics as clothing manufacturers and electronics manufacturers do in their efforts to shut down counterfeit designer jeans plants and "Sorny" or "Sonee" Walkman manufacturing operations.

(D) No more than one successful rip of a song from a CD is necessary in order for it to be disseminated all across the internet. In order to accomplish such a successful rip, a person can spend less than $300 for a standalone CD duplicator or less than $3 for a Sharpie felt-tip marker.

These observations all point to one undeniable conclusion: digital copy protection schemes like Key2Audio will not stop illegal music copying. So not only will Key2Audio infringe on fair use, but that's all it will do.

The "casual" illegal copyer, who rips a CD, makes a mix CD for his or her car, puts another copy on an mp3 player, and gives three CD-R copies of the original CD to three friends, may in fact be prevented by Key2Audio technology from using his original CD to engage in this mixture of legal and illegal uses. But as long as someone, somewhere, has managed to rip the CD, this person will still be able to download the album and make that mix CD, copy that file onto an mp3 player, and make those CD-R dubs for friends. The source material, being in mp3 format, will be of slightly inferior quality, but it will hardly be noticeable, let alone objectionable, to most people listening with most audio equipment.

With all this in mind, a new picture emerges. We no longer see a push-pull between fair use and copyright, or between consumer desire and intellectual property. Instead, we see piracy continuing more or less undisturbed, with fair use being seriously disrupted.

It would be paranoid and silly to think that Sony and other record companies would want to destroy fair use just for the heck of it. There has to be a method to their madness, yes?

Let's return to the Betamax case. There was an equally important, but lesser known, second prong to that case. As detailed on this helpful web page, Sony was sued by two movie studios, not two television networks. One of the studios' major complaints was that Sony's Betamax allowed for the creation of a video rental market, which allowed video stores to buy one copy of a movie on tape and rent it out hundreds, even thousands, of times until the tape wore out, without ever paying an additional dime to the movie studios. The Supreme Court ruled that this kind of video rental business was covered under fair use by what's known as First Sale Doctrine, which in essense means that when you buy something you can do whatever you want with it (as long as it's the original, not a copy). That's right--it's legal for you to rent your music CDs to your friends for fun and profit, as long as you're not renting them CD-R copies or keeping a copy for yourself while you rent the original. First Sale Doctrine, it turns out, is what propelled the Betamax case to the Supreme Court: it was the part of the original District Court Decision that was overturned at the Appelate level, enabling Supreme Court review of the entire case. First Sale Doctrine, by the way, is also why you can "license" as much software as your bank account will allow, but you cannot actually buy any.

It is First Sale Doctrine, rather than the more well-known "personal copy" rule, that is ultimately under attack by the record industry. For what reason could there be to prevent you from ripping your own CDs, except to offer you the "opportunity" to purchase multiple versions of the same music so you can listen to that music in ways that currently are defined as fair use: a CD for your stereo; an mp3 for your hard drive, and a "secure digital" copy for your record-industry approved portable digital music player? With a CD priced at $19, an mp3 at $5 (which would include a royalty to counteract the inevitable hard drive-to-hard drive copying), and a secure digital version priced at $2.50, that'd be $26.50 for one music album. No doubt you'd be able to buy all three togeter in a package deal for "only" $25. Or maybe you could license all three formats for the low, low price of $9.95 a year, for the rest...of...your...life--remember DivX DVDs?

Key2Audio is the first step in a dreadful double perversion of Fair Use. The first perversion is the idea that by making a copy of music for yourself, you are depriving the copyright holder of the ability to obtain revenue from selling you additional copies of the same music. The second, linked, perversion is that by destroying your ability to exercise fair use, the record company extends its copyright power beyond the content (the music) to the delivery medium (the CD).

There's no doubt this will all be fought out in the courts. And a recent New York Times article indicates that tech companies might finally be waking up to the threat posed by Hollywood and the RIAA.

But more than that, this requires grassroots action by all of us. As I wrote at the beginning of this column, Key2Audio isn't the worst threat we face by a long shot. But it's ominous as one more little indication of the broad threat to notions of freedom and privacy that are crucial to the quality of life in our country as we know it.

For more information, or to get involved, try The Campaign for Digital Rights at http://uk.eurorights.org/, the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://www.eff.org/, or the ACLU at http://www.aclu.org/.

We have nothing to lose but most of our rights.

... perhaps it's this. I don't own any of the CDs on this list though. Perish the thought.

Actually, I think there's a DVD still stuck in there, but it could possibly be a CD. I can't tell till i crack the bastard open.

Actually, it's possible the wife got the David Grey album and didn't tell me when the machine wiped ot....

go to:http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/bad/
and read:
* "druqks" by Aphex Twin: Reported protected by key2audio in Germany by several people. Can't be played on a computer or laptop, nor copied to MiniDisc or a hi-fi CD recorder. UK release appears to be unprotected. Also reported unprotected in Belgium and the US
near the bottom of the page,

I think that should disquallify him for atleast some of this great praise of "adding value, not copy protection"

Looking at the compiled list of "protected" CDs that create problems with Macs/PCs there is one reason to breathe a sigh of relief. All are Mass Market crap from "musicians" like Destiny's Child, Jennifer Lopez and Celine Dion. In my opinion people who promote that kind of crap deserve to have their eggs scrambled...

For the record, it was a joke/troll
Well, duh! Still, I couldn't resist following up. Maybe I shouldn't have drunk quite so much tonight..... Still, it doesn't come close to some of the trolls I heard over dinner tonight, there were some class ones there. Anyway, I diverge so far off topic I risk getting on topic again...

If you're in the EU, then the EUCD creates many of the same issues. It's been passed by the European parliament, so member states are now obligied to implement it in the near future.

DMCA = US only

Not if the EUCD passes.

http://uk.eurorights.org/

We have about 6 months before the EUCD becomes law in this country to try and mitigate it as miuch as possible, and try and stop all the massive loopholes that the media industry is going to exploit in it. Any help we can get is alway appreciated!

Check http://uk.eurorights.org they have an updated list of known proteced cd's and their labels. It covers mostly European releases. For info on US a good site is http://www.fatchucks.com/corruptcds/index.html.

You mean the EUCD. This is, after all, a European case. I don't know if this directive has been passed into law by the participant countries yet.

If theres slashdotters in the UK / Europe who haven't already seen this, and want to do something about the EU Copyright Directive (our DMCA) and now this, have a look at The Campaign For Digital Rights (in the UK) and The Eurorights Movement There may be something we can do about this one, but we have to get reasonably organised to do it. Sign up to the mailing lists, and join in - before they take all our rights

If theres slashdotters in the UK / Europe who haven't already seen this, and want to do something about the EU Copyright Directive (our DMCA) and now this, have a look at The Campaign For Digital Rights (in the UK) and The Eurorights Movement There may be something we can do about this one, but we have to get reasonably organised to do it. Sign up to the mailing lists, and join in - before they take all our rights

Perhaps you can join us !

The Campaign for Digital Rights is a consumer group that is campaigning against this type of legislation being implemented in the UK, as well as trying to give support to

We formed during last summer and the Free Sklyarov campaign, holding two demonstrations outside the US embassy, one of which was covered on Newsnight (The only nightly news review program).

We have also been campaigning against copy-protected CDs in the UK, in fact we think it's us that Phillips were referring to when they mentioned 'large scale' protests in their press release denouncing copy-protected CDs.

At the moment we are concentrating on making the UK implementation of the EUCD (the European version of the DMCA) being as sensible as possible, with as many exceptions and consumer rights as possible.

You can find us on the web at UK.Eurorights.org, where we have mailing list discussing action to take.

There's this big monster called the European Commission that's been specially bred to bypass the democratic process, and it's got Britain in its grip. Sorry.
More explanations

The UK branch seems to be more active than the others at present - http://uk.eurorights.org/

try here

Stolen from http://www.uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/overview.sh tml:

The most recent format that's come to light is the Cactus Data Shield from Midbar. The earlier German tests also came under the name of Cactus, but it appears that Midbar's protection technology has developed since then. Like SafeAudio, this new method corrupts the audio signal on the CD. However, the method used is different. In this case blocks of audio are replaced with blocks of control data. A normal CD player ignores the control data and fabricates the sound of that block using its error recovery circuitry. Once again, the blocks must have been carefully chosen so that the sound is not disrupted significantly. Again, reliability of the CD will be affected. When the CD is copied using a computer or CD-to-CD copier, the control blocks are interpreted as audio, which means that the manufacturer can insert whatever sounds they wish into a copied recording, even sounds designed to damage speakers.

If you are in the UK, check out Foundation for Information Policy Research
and Campaign for Digital Rights

Other than that, small groups are scattered here and there around Europe. If a group doesn't exist in your country - do something about it. :)

Indeed we (members of the UK Campaign for Digital Rights) have, in some depth. Unfortunately, all the exclusions you refer to are optional, and need not be implemented by the various member states. It is to be expected that the EU governments will come under the same lobbying pressure from the Recording and publishing industries that the US Government did with the DMCA (which also contains what look like exclusions for academic research, etc, which are rendered almost entirely ineffective in practise by means of some cunning legal tricks).

There is evidence for the same legal trickery already in the EU directive - the exemptions allow you to make use of a circumvention mechanism for the non-infringing purposes you'd expect, but do not exempt anyone from prosecution/lawsuits should they create one.

Alan Cox is indeed extremely concerned about the EUCD, and you should not be at all surprised if you find him, in the not too distance future, speaking about the EUCD in terms far from glowing, at conferences aimed at the European software industry. I would recommend you read some of the resources at: www.eurorights.org (our parent site) before leaping to your own conclusions about how inoffensive the EUCD might be.

(See the summary of one of our recent IRC meetings - unexpurgated transcripts are linked therefrom - for further evidence that Alan Cox is taking the threat of the EUCD very seriously indeed).

See also the articles linked from the CDR's EUCD links page (apologies for getting this link wrong in my earlier post to this thread).

Expect also to see a lot more from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (www.fipr.org) on European Copyright Legislation over the next month or two.

If implemented with some revisions, and all the exemptions in full force, the EUCD would be considerably less threatening to musicians, the Free Software Movement, academics, and others than the DMCA. However, at present, we could very easily find ourselves (in Europe) faced with cases similar to Sklyarov's, Felten's, and the DeCSS case if the EUCD is allowed to be pushed through without substantial lobbying to counter that of the Recording and Publishing Industries. I see no evidence whatever (DMCA, SSSCA, FTAA's DMCA-alike - see www.eff.org) that the recording and publishing industries are to be trusted not to seek to turn the EUCD into a carbon-copy of the DMCA when it comes before the legislature of the EU member states.

Julian T. J. Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

Indeed we (members of the UK Campaign for Digital Rights) have, in some depth. Unfortunately, all the exclusions you refer to are optional, and need not be implemented by the various member states. It is to be expected that the EU governments will come under the same lobbying pressure from the Recording and publishing industries that the US Government did with the DMCA (which also contains what look like exclusions for academic research, etc, which are rendered almost entirely ineffective in practise by means of some cunning legal tricks).

There is evidence for the same legal trickery already in the EU directive - the exemptions allow you to make use of a circumvention mechanism for the non-infringing purposes you'd expect, but do not exempt anyone from prosecution/lawsuits should they create one.

Alan Cox is indeed extremely concerned about the EUCD, and you should not be at all surprised if you find him, in the not too distance future, speaking about the EUCD in terms far from glowing, at conferences aimed at the European software industry. I would recommend you read some of the resources at: www.eurorights.org (our parent site) before leaping to your own conclusions about how inoffensive the EUCD might be.

(See the summary of one of our recent IRC meetings - unexpurgated transcripts are linked therefrom - for further evidence that Alan Cox is taking the threat of the EUCD very seriously indeed).

See also the articles linked from the CDR's EUCD links page (apologies for getting this link wrong in my earlier post to this thread).

Expect also to see a lot more from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (www.fipr.org) on European Copyright Legislation over the next month or two.

If implemented with some revisions, and all the exemptions in full force, the EUCD would be considerably less threatening to musicians, the Free Software Movement, academics, and others than the DMCA. However, at present, we could very easily find ourselves (in Europe) faced with cases similar to Sklyarov's, Felten's, and the DeCSS case if the EUCD is allowed to be pushed through without substantial lobbying to counter that of the Recording and Publishing Industries. I see no evidence whatever (DMCA, SSSCA, FTAA's DMCA-alike - see www.eff.org) that the recording and publishing industries are to be trusted not to seek to turn the EUCD into a carbon-copy of the DMCA when it comes before the legislature of the EU member states.

Julian T. J. Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

Indeed we (members of the UK Campaign for Digital Rights) have, in some depth. Unfortunately, all the exclusions you refer to are optional, and need not be implemented by the various member states. It is to be expected that the EU governments will come under the same lobbying pressure from the Recording and publishing industries that the US Government did with the DMCA (which also contains what look like exclusions for academic research, etc, which are rendered almost entirely ineffective in practise by means of some cunning legal tricks).

There is evidence for the same legal trickery already in the EU directive - the exemptions allow you to make use of a circumvention mechanism for the non-infringing purposes you'd expect, but do not exempt anyone from prosecution/lawsuits should they create one.

Alan Cox is indeed extremely concerned about the EUCD, and you should not be at all surprised if you find him, in the not too distance future, speaking about the EUCD in terms far from glowing, at conferences aimed at the European software industry. I would recommend you read some of the resources at: www.eurorights.org (our parent site) before leaping to your own conclusions about how inoffensive the EUCD might be.

(See the summary of one of our recent IRC meetings - unexpurgated transcripts are linked therefrom - for further evidence that Alan Cox is taking the threat of the EUCD very seriously indeed).

See also the articles linked from the CDR's EUCD links page (apologies for getting this link wrong in my earlier post to this thread).

Expect also to see a lot more from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (www.fipr.org) on European Copyright Legislation over the next month or two.

If implemented with some revisions, and all the exemptions in full force, the EUCD would be considerably less threatening to musicians, the Free Software Movement, academics, and others than the DMCA. However, at present, we could very easily find ourselves (in Europe) faced with cases similar to Sklyarov's, Felten's, and the DeCSS case if the EUCD is allowed to be pushed through without substantial lobbying to counter that of the Recording and Publishing Industries. I see no evidence whatever (DMCA, SSSCA, FTAA's DMCA-alike - see www.eff.org) that the recording and publishing industries are to be trusted not to seek to turn the EUCD into a carbon-copy of the DMCA when it comes before the legislature of the EU member states.

Julian T. J. Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

Instead of www.eurorights.org you can better look at uk.eurorights.org. The site of the UK branch is much more developped as the central site.

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights was established back in August to bring the small matter of 2001/29/EU (or the European Copyright Directive(EUCD))to the attention of the general public, after people started discussing it at "Free Sklyarov" protests in London.

Our mailing lists (archives available from contain the meat of the discussion to date. We are currently part way through a campaign against copy protected CDs, designed to get the public thinking about the copy-protection mechanisms and legislation before we hit them with the full details of the EUCD.

For more information about 2001/29/EU, see our EUCD issues pages.

Come and join the party... ;-)

Julian Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights was established back in August to bring the small matter of 2001/29/EU (or the European Copyright Directive(EUCD))to the attention of the general public, after people started discussing it at "Free Sklyarov" protests in London.

Our mailing lists (archives available from contain the meat of the discussion to date. We are currently part way through a campaign against copy protected CDs, designed to get the public thinking about the copy-protection mechanisms and legislation before we hit them with the full details of the EUCD.

For more information about 2001/29/EU, see our EUCD issues pages.

Come and join the party... ;-)

Julian Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights was established back in August to bring the small matter of 2001/29/EU (or the European Copyright Directive(EUCD))to the attention of the general public, after people started discussing it at "Free Sklyarov" protests in London.

Our mailing lists (archives available from contain the meat of the discussion to date. We are currently part way through a campaign against copy protected CDs, designed to get the public thinking about the copy-protection mechanisms and legislation before we hit them with the full details of the EUCD.

For more information about 2001/29/EU, see our EUCD issues pages.

Come and join the party... ;-)

Julian Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights was established back in August to bring the small matter of 2001/29/EU (or the European Copyright Directive(EUCD))to the attention of the general public, after people started discussing it at "Free Sklyarov" protests in London.

Our mailing lists (archives available from contain the meat of the discussion to date. We are currently part way through a campaign against copy protected CDs, designed to get the public thinking about the copy-protection mechanisms and legislation before we hit them with the full details of the EUCD.

For more information about 2001/29/EU, see our EUCD issues pages.

Come and join the party... ;-)

Julian Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights was established back in August to bring the small matter of 2001/29/EU (or the European Copyright Directive(EUCD))to the attention of the general public, after people started discussing it at "Free Sklyarov" protests in London.

Our mailing lists (archives available from contain the meat of the discussion to date. We are currently part way through a campaign against copy protected CDs, designed to get the public thinking about the copy-protection mechanisms and legislation before we hit them with the full details of the EUCD.

For more information about 2001/29/EU, see our EUCD issues pages.

Come and join the party... ;-)

Julian Midgley
Campaign Co-ordinator
UK Campaign for Digital Rights

It's a pity this story was somehow left off the front page, because eurorights could certainly do with some publicity.

large corporations don't have as much influence on Dutch law as they do have in the US.
Nope, but between internal and external corporate forces, US pressure, world treaties, and the EU, you've already lost. You didn't even notice. Exactly like in the USA 2 years ago.

I live in the Netherlands and we don't have the DMCA.
Nope, but you have the EUCD (aka EUMCD). The effects just haven't worked their way down yet. "Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive before 22 December 2002."

I can legally view DVD's on my Linux computer.
"Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures"

I can legally download DECCS.
"Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the ... distribution ... of devices, products or components or the provision of services which: (b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent"
(Note playing your DVD on your Linux probaby has zero comercial signifigance.)

I can legally buy a DVD player which is regioncode free
" a technical protection measure is protected by law even if it contains other restrictions in addition to preventing copyright infringement. This means that technical measures that enforce DVD region locks or deny the act of giving or lending a book is protected by law. "

Oh, and by the way - it's open hunting season on ISP's and on file share services like Napster:
"Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right."

ROT13 is protected:
"the expression 'technological measures' means any technology, device or component that ... is designed to prevent or restrict acts ... not authorised by the rightholder. Technological measures shall be deemed 'effective' ... which achieves the protection objective"

And third, we don't give a fuck about the US
In that case, fuck you too. Once we manage get this crap overturned in the US we'll just let YOU keep it.

large corporations don't have as much influence on Dutch law as they do have in the US.
Nope, but between internal and external corporate forces, US pressure, world treaties, and the EU, you've already lost. You didn't even notice. Exactly like in the USA 2 years ago.

I live in the Netherlands and we don't have the DMCA.
Nope, but you have the EUCD (aka EUMCD). The effects just haven't worked their way down yet. "Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive before 22 December 2002."

I can legally view DVD's on my Linux computer.
"Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures"

I can legally download DECCS.
"Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the ... distribution ... of devices, products or components or the provision of services which: (b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent"
(Note playing your DVD on your Linux probaby has zero comercial signifigance.)

I can legally buy a DVD player which is regioncode free
" a technical protection measure is protected by law even if it contains other restrictions in addition to preventing copyright infringement. This means that technical measures that enforce DVD region locks or deny the act of giving or lending a book is protected by law. "

Oh, and by the way - it's open hunting season on ISP's and on file share services like Napster:
"Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right."

ROT13 is protected:
"the expression 'technological measures' means any technology, device or component that ... is designed to prevent or restrict acts ... not authorised by the rightholder. Technological measures shall be deemed 'effective' ... which achieves the protection objective"

And third, we don't give a fuck about the US
In that case, fuck you too. Once we manage get this crap overturned in the US we'll just let YOU keep it.