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I think the clue to the disagreement here is at the bottom of the wikipedia article on 'licence-free' software. There it essentially says "you can use licence free software legally in the US, but not in many places, such as the UK, where copyright law is subtly different".

In the UK, you *can't* copy software to a PC's hard disk or memory without a licence allowing you to do so. This is actually the same as in many countries. In the UK you *can't* copy a copyrighted piece of material for personal use, that is illegal. (See here).

So, in the UK and many other countries, all software MUST have a licence with it, for it to be of any use whatsoever. This is true, even if the licence is a free licence saying 'you can do what you want with this software', that isn't implied, it has to be expressly stated.

Of course there's the European Digital Rights-EDRI (http://www.edri.org/) which is the joint organisation for digital rights in Europe. In the UK the
* Campaign for Digital Rights-CDR (http://ukcdr.org/)
* the Foundation for Information Policy Research-FIPR (http://www.fipr.org/) and
* Greennet (http://www.gn.apc.org/)
are members. I would suggest consulting them first.

This is in Britain where British law applies.

The EUCD [http://ukcdr.org] explicitly states:

(30) The rights referred to in this Directive may be transferred, assigned or subject to the granting of contractual licences, without prejudice to the relevant national legislation on copyright and related rights.

(33) The exclusive right of reproduction should be subject to an exception to allow certain acts of temporary reproduction, which are transient or incidental reproductions, forming an integral and essential part of a technological process and carried out for the sole purpose of enabling either efficient transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made. The acts of reproduction concerned should have no separate economic value on their own. To the extent that they meet these conditions, this exception should include acts which enable browsing as well as acts of caching to take place, including those which enable transmission systems to function efficiently, provided that the intermediary does not modify the information and does not interfere with the lawful use of technology, widely recognised and used by industry, to obtain data on the use of the information. A use should be considered lawful where it is authorised by the rightholder or not restricted by law.

This doesn't mean that the law sucks any less, but that this agreement is nothing unusual, and has nothing to do with "special rights" granted to a particular class of people/organisations. I haven't been able to find the actual text of the agreement, though. It could be that the National Library in Germany will be paying copy-fees, or similar, for their reproductions.

Unfortunately, we already have the Euro-DMCA - it's called the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and it has been ratified by several EU states, including the UK. It's maybe slightly less onerous than the DMCA but not much so. It goes back to what I was saying about US IP laws tending to be "exported"...

... is that in their attempts to create a CD that fits their aims, the record companies have tried many methods of corrupting the CD format, and then they have tested these by making secret releases into localized markets, sometimes of hundreds of thousands of CDs. Everyday people have then bought these sub-standard CDs, and have been unknowingly testing the record company's new CD protection schemes for them.

For instance, an early release made under Midbar's Cactus format in Germany reportedly had a 4% return rate. These were from people who found that these CDs didn't work on their normal CD players -- let alone in their computers. 4% is a huge return rate when you consider that many people might have found a problem with one CD player but not another, and who might have thought it was the player that was at fault rather than the CD.

Undeterred by these experiences of upsetting their customers, the record companies have continued to develop these formats and test them on an unsuspecting public, either unlabelled or with small or misleading labels. Along the way, problems with these CDs have been found on DVD players, car audio systems, older CD players, PlayStation machines, computers, laptops and several other types of devices.

To add injury to insult, several of these so-called 'copy-protection' formats actually interfere with the error-correction mechanism of the disk. This mechanism is designed to take care of scratches on the disk -- your CD player can fill in over a small number of scratches on the disk because the error correction codes tell it how to. The manufacturers found that by corrupting the error correction codes, they could make a CD that computers would reject, but that normal CD players would still manage to play. The cost of this, of course, is that your CDs are less resistant to scratches (and Philips have confirmed this). This is not too much inconvenience for the manufacturer -- but what about for you?

On May 1, Hungary will join the EU, which means they have to implement the European Copyright Directive. I think life could get very uncomfortable there for people who write code to circumvent DRM technologies. I am not sure what the situation is in Taiwan, but the general principle seems to be that any country that wants to do business with the US needs some local version of the DMCA.

It's called the European Union Copyright Directive and it was enacted into the national law of many member states last year. Imagine the fun if the worst provisions of this Directive get adopted into national law (they may not necessarily be so enacted) and the EU caves in over software patents - could a programmer's bank account be frozen and his house be raided at midnight for unkonwingly infringing a trivial and obvious patent? As has been remarked round these parts, George Orwell was right but out by 20 years...

It kills your right to make personal backups

Contact your local MEP (you have one, you know that?) explaining the problems with the US DMCA, and how the EU should avoid them in revising its own legislation . The subject is due to come up in the EU parliament again next month, so you'll be timely and on-topic.

I have just given up my mod points to state that for UK residents - the link in this guys sig is more relevant for us than perhaps anything else on this page.
How tired are you of always reading US copyright law, and US copyright campaigns, and not having the slightest clue what the equivalents in the UK are?
Anyway - this is a star link - I repeat it for the benefit of those with sigs turned off:
The UK Campaign For Digital Rights

The UKCDR is considering this.

Australia has a similar legal system, based on British common law. Their copyright law is likely similar in this regard too.

Australia has a similar legal system, based on British common law. Their copyright law is likely similar in this regard too.

Here's my nomination for the icon.

Well it seems that at least in some situations the record labels are in a very funny cycle of self-flagellation.

Agreed. To see just how far this can go, take a look at this article (yes, I edited it) illustrating the situation in Germany. The Germans are currently dealing with near 100% corrupt disc releases, and people really are not at all happy. Perhaps this is worth bearing in mind considering Arista's recent announcement re US corrupt disc releases. Does the record industry really want to create the same destructive downward spiral in the US as there is now in Germany? At least Sony appear to have seen the light and have given up with corrupt releases, but EMI still appear to be believing Midbar/Macrovision propaganda.

These so-called CDs are usually unmarked, so you might not even know you have bought one. You can check some lists, but they're certainly not complete. The distributors apparently don't even tell CD vendors which ones are broken.

In Europe? Get ready for the EUCD.

Since a lot of posts in this thread are about the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) I would like to give a brief summary:

The EUCD has been passed. This means that the member states must implement it in their national legislation. They should have done so by Dec 22 '02 but only Denmark and Greece made it. Status reports here. Norway's not a member of the EU.

The EUCD can be overturned in two ways:
1. In the European Court.
This means that somebody challenges the directive for being invalid under the EU treaty. It could be.
It's hard to get a case before the European Court, so this would probably need backing by one of the member states. This is being looked into, but it's not easy.

2. Through normal legislative process.
The EUCD article 12(1) states that "Not later than 22 December 2004" the Commission shall report on the application of the directive. Regarding article 6 (The bad one) "it shall examine in particular whether that Article confers a sufficient level of protection and whether acts which are permitted by law are being adversely affected by the use of effective technological measures [DRM]. Where necessary, in particular to ensure the functioning of the internal market ... it shall submit proposals for amendments to this Directive."

We definitely do intend to influence that report and have article 6 amended, but the entertainment industry is doing the same, so this isn't easy either.
On the other hand the directive was forged with very little public attention to article 6, so nearly all attention on the case would be in our favour.

Since a lot of posts in this thread are about the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) I would like to give a brief summary:

The EUCD has been passed. This means that the member states must implement it in their national legislation. They should have done so by Dec 22 '02 but only Denmark and Greece made it. Status reports here. Norway's not a member of the EU.

The EUCD can be overturned in two ways:
1. In the European Court.
This means that somebody challenges the directive for being invalid under the EU treaty. It could be.
It's hard to get a case before the European Court, so this would probably need backing by one of the member states. This is being looked into, but it's not easy.

2. Through normal legislative process.
The EUCD article 12(1) states that "Not later than 22 December 2004" the Commission shall report on the application of the directive. Regarding article 6 (The bad one) "it shall examine in particular whether that Article confers a sufficient level of protection and whether acts which are permitted by law are being adversely affected by the use of effective technological measures [DRM]. Where necessary, in particular to ensure the functioning of the internal market ... it shall submit proposals for amendments to this Directive."

We definitely do intend to influence that report and have article 6 amended, but the entertainment industry is doing the same, so this isn't easy either.
On the other hand the directive was forged with very little public attention to article 6, so nearly all attention on the case would be in our favour.

They've signed up to the same interantional treaty that the entertainment industry organised in order to subvert the US democratic system.

You're talking about the Wipo Copyright Treaty (WCT) If you look at article 11, the "technological measures" (DRM) need not be "protected" against circumvention if it restricts acts that are "permitted by law".

The main problem is still the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) I don't know how strongly Norway is bound by that. (Norways is not member of the EU, but is in the EEC)

Enjoy it while it lasts, Jon was found innocent because the laws in Norway haven't been updated to be in concert with the EUCD (Europe's DMCA), which Norway will have to be part of. Once the EUCD is implemented across Europe, his actions would be criminal and he would go to jail. FWIW, the American government is pushing hard for it to be implemented there. For more information on the EUCD, check out http://ukcdr.org/issues/eucd. For good examples of how the DMCA sucks, check out the EFF's unintended consequences list.

Peace,
Chuck

Also, for a list of UK Cd's, There is the UK campaign for digital rights, with their list of cd's at the Campaign for digital rights

Can someone please explain why the music labels feel that they deserve to get any cash for these ring tones ? I am not a copyright lawyer, but I have been connected with most of the arguments.

AFAIK this is a classic example of a (remotely) derived work, and lets face it a phone going dee-da-da-dee-da is not in really remotely related to or produced from the actual music that they phone melody makers are trying to reproduce.

The ring tones don't use any samples from the music and the music composition is totally different, both through different timing of the notes and through playing only one (or a couple) of notes at a time. Therefore the person who makes the phone ring tone is making a completely new piece of work and shouldn't need to give any cash for the permission to distribute it.

The only thing that you could even try and argue is under copyright is the songs name, which would/should get laughed out of any court.

So although it looks like a nice revenue stream for the music industry, why should they get any cash ?

I hope the USA gets into loads of trouble because of bad laws about (electronic) intellectual property. That's the only way the politicians here in Europa will have their eyes opened before we have similar laws.

(Nearly) too late for DMCA sec. 1201

Still time for Software Patents

Do your part! Join the European fight! Find your local partner.

I'm writing an open source DVD Player for my project at university (I'll post the code up somewhere sometime in the future)

Post it NOW!

- you really don't have much time before the EUCD does in Europe what the DMCA has done in USA (The cases you're referring to)

Try the UK Campaign for Digital Rights.

The MPAA recently filed a comment on the danish implementation of the European Copyright Directive. The directive demands that "circumvention of effective technological measures" be made illegal in a way similar to the US DMCA The interesting part says:
the legal protection in Section 75c should not be interpreted to the effect that a technological measure must be unhackable. All technological measures can be hacked. It is for this reason that the WIPO Copyright Treaties and the Copyright Directive have introduced legal protection for such measures. (Emphasis mine)

The comment was submitted, because MPAA fears that only truly "effective" technological measures would be legally protected.

http://ukcdr.org/