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

To the moon alice!

[WyldOne]

pretty soon the only place where ideas are not forbidden