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Europe To Adopt Strict Internet Copyright Law
sydb writes: "The EU has adopted what looks like the equivalent of the US DMCA. Details are here. One effect of these laws is to make it illegal to break encryption on copyright material. Depressing news." The EU seems to have discovered not only the Information Society (their caps) but has provided "a detailed exhaustive list of exceptions to the reproduction right and right of communication to the public ... the list is exhaustive which means that no other exception may be applied."
All of these are legal (in terms of copyright) and ethical. All of these are important freedoms and rights. All are effectively prohibited due to anti-circumvention laws.
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writing comments on Slashdot complaining about it is definetly the right way to go to try and fix things.
I've written letters to my congressman (and yes, I realize this article is discussing Europe, but we have the DMCA to deal with here), but as expected all I got back was the standard blow off form letter.
Face it, we're screwed. If you don't like it.. get into politics and try and change it. Change isn't going to happen from the outside, because too many people are ignorant/don't care about the issue.
BilldaCat
- Technical copies on the net
So caching web proxies are exempt - now this is a only an EU directive, not a piece of legislation, so we will have to wait and see how this is drafted into law in individual countries, but there might be a nice big loophole for freenet hereThe Directive provides an obligatory exception for service providers, telecommunications operators and certain others in limited circumstances for particular acts of reproduction which are considered technical copies. A satisfactory balance has been found for what has been an extremely controversial issue. There are many conditions to be fulfilled before the exemption applies. In particular, those acts of reproduction have to form an essential part of a technological process and take place in the context of a transmission in a network. The Directive ensures therefore that there will be effective operation of the World Wide Web for those who place copyrighted material on the net and those who transmit or carry such material.
G.
However, I can't help but wonder if:
I might add that there is always the possibility of EU legislation, passed in the European Parliament, overturning this recommendation.
There is also the intriguing possibility that EU-wide protest will make the Commission change its mind pronto, a little bit like the recent protests in France against the proposed media tax...
Interesting times ahead. Can I still read Slashdot, Mr Commissioner? Pretty please? =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
THE PARENT POST IS NOT A TROLL. THE POSTER IS FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON.
The short answer is that copyright is not an unlimited right. For example, if I purchase a music CD, then I can legally copy it to tape to listen to in the car. Or I can make a copy for a friend, provided I don't do so commercially. As another example, the US Supreme Court has affirmed that I can record a television broadcast to watch it later.
Of course, large copyright holders would like to destroy such "fair use" rights so that they can double or triple charge for the same material. Since these fair use rights are so well established, their line of attack has been indirect: subvert these established rights by technological means.
A recent example concerns DVD movies. If you purchase a movie on DVD, you have a legal right to play it on your Linux machine. Except the movie studios try to absolutely prevent you from exercising this right by encrypting the movies.
Fair enough. But here's the problem: their encryption is a farce, and few believe that any form of encryption can ever succeed in this context. So they get laws like the DMCA passed that make trafficking in programs that subvert their encryption illegal. So you have the right to watch the movie, there are tools that let you watch the movie, but creating or distributing such a tool is illegal. Go figure.
Furthermore, banning trafficking in such programs has a chilling effect on free speech. For example, I can not post a certain decryption program that is shorter than this paragraph for you here without risking a lawsuit by the motion picture industry. Slashdot is full of people who communicate all day, every day in computer code. Now our essential mode of communication is curtailed so that wealthy execs in the recording and motion picture industry can illicitly rake in more cash. Furthermore, a recent court ruling limits my right even to post a *link* to such a program. We're not talking about pornography or atomic weapons secrets here (both of which I could post), but a little snippet of computer code (which I can not).
I work in the Theory of Computation Group at MIT. A central activity is the creation and cracking of cryptographic protocols as a scientific endeavor. If a protocol is used to protect any copyrighted material, then is our right to publish a crack in a research journal curtailed? This is not a theoretical problem: on advice of counsel, Edward Felton of Princeton University has refrained from publishing his cracks of several Secure Digitial Music Initiative watermarking systems. I personally know several researchers who have worked on watermarking. Since since the SDMI systems employ a whole spectrum of the techniques, must that entire field of academic research be abandoned? I hope not, but the ground is certainly shaky.
Yes, opposition to such laws may benefit people who like to swap free music. But these laws also trample on fundamental rights at the same time. When there's a clash between the rights of all citizens and the rights of the oh-so-seedy recording industry, there is no question which ought to prevail. That is why organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are fighting to overturn such laws. And that is why Slashdot is so up in arms. Jealously guarding our basic freedoms is the duty of all citizens in a democracy.
Reasons to break encryption on copyrighted materials :
To convert it to another format to use on a different playback media
[e.g. to decrypt audio to allow me to burn a CD to play in my discman]
[e.g. to covert a DVD to VHS to allow me to watch it on the upstairs TV]
[e.g. to view an e-book on my palm pilot]
To generate an archive
[e.g. to convert all my e-books to plain text so I can search them automatically]
[e.g. to extract the lyrics from my online music collection to allow me to search them]
To write my own viewer
[e.g. to write a DVD decoder that allows me to fastforward through the adverts]
[e.g. to rewrite an audio player to do soundprocessing on the way to my soundcard to fake surround sound / EQ the frequency response for my speakers]
To allow me to quote from a work
[e.g. To produce a comparison of two e-books by quoting the relevant passages]
To allow me to view a work as I choose
[e.g. To allow me to snapshot individual frames of a cartoon to find out how it was drawn.]
To make a security copy of the media
[e.g. to copy a CD incase of theft of the original]
To copy off a friend to replace a destroyed copy
[e.g. to replace a CD with a CDR burnt from a friend who owns the same album after the dog ate mine]
The story is
EU makes it legal for copyright holders to enforce arbitrary restrictions on what you are allowed to do with media you paid for.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
>I can't think of any reason why you would want to break the encryption on copyrighted materials.
I can. Consider these future devices (most already designed), currently "in the works":
- Cars that drive themselves
- Telephones you can talk to (literally) to phone people
- Quarter sized audio discs for cheap audio players
And these, already manufactured and "consumerized", devices:
- Digital LCD monitors
- Digital speaker systems
- Colour photocopiers
- Digital GPS receivers
- DBS receivers and Digital VCRs / TVs
Now, why do these matter? Because I think I should be able to:
- Drive where I want, when I want, and as safe as I want. To do that, I would like uninvolved, unsponsored, third party reviews on the car controlling computer software, which can't happen under this law.
- I want to phone who I want, when I want, without others eavesdropping. How can I trust the telephone company's digital encryption when I can't even try to break it myself?
- I want to play my audio on a high end system, and have it sound GOOD. Those players will be likely be crap for sure, and since no third party can manufacture a competing player, none will ever be made.
- I want to watch anything I want, and create any art I want. With encrypted digital monitor technology, the company owning the encryption could literally tell you they won't license you to use your computer to do these things should they disagree with you or your morals.
- I want to listen to my music where and when I want, and I want to be able to design good sounding speaker systems. Can't do that with encrypted signals, as a private user I'll never be licensed to decrypt the signals.
- I want to be able to take the part of the code out of my colour photocopier that puts a green square over currency so I can photocopy a $1 bill (with a black mark covering "This Note Is Legal Tender"). If I can't do that I can't create the $1 bill collage I wanted to do for my old art class.
- I want independent third party review of any GPS receiver I use before I can feel secure about it. Can't happen if the device is encrypted.
- I want to be able to record a show to watch later. I have been given this right under the 1984 BetaMax ruling. I can't exercise my given rights with this law in place, should the path be fully encrypted, as with new HDTV.
- I want to learn how all the above devices work so I can compete in the free market, which is what the EU and the US are supposed to be about, right? Can't do that legally with encrypted devices.
Are those enough reasons?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC