The EU's Answer To The DMCA

blowdart writes: "You thought the DCMA was bad? Well EU Directive 2001/29/EU is due to be passed into individual country law next year. According to an article on silicon.com, it will make it "a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection or access control systems on digital content such as music, videos, eBooks, and software", and was passed without public debate. According to silicon.com, if the directive is applied in law without changes, we in Europe may face our own versions of Dmitri Sklyarov's prosecution. It gets more draconian, legitimate copying activity, such as teachers copying materials for their students or blind people making Braille copies of their work, could also become illegal, as could encryption research. The actual directive is available in HTML. So, who knows enough about european law to tell us if we should be worried or not?"

Comments

Did you read the text?

[europrobe]

Did you read the directive at all? I followed the provided link, and look what I found:

(48) [...] In particular, this protection should not hinder research into cryptography.

Article 5

2. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 [...] in respect of specific acts of reproduction made by publicly accessible libraries, educational establishments or museums, or by archives, which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage.

3. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations [...] in the following cases [...] uses, for the benefit of people with a disability, which are directly related to the disability and of a non-commercial nature, to the extent required by the specific disability.

(End qoute)

Which shows that neither teachers copying for students, nor Braille copies, nor encryption research will become illegal.

Why, oh, why doesn't the submitters read their own sources?

Also, it's important to note that the directive is not law, it's simply a template for the national lawmakers to make their own laws. It allows for considerable flexibility in interpreting, so no two coutries are likely to have the same laws anyway.