Alan Cox Attacks the European DMCA

forged writes "The Register already reported Alan Cox's involvement against the proposed European Union Copyright Directive before. Today, Alan Cox has issued a wake up call to the Linux community amid concerns that the pending EUCD could stymie open source development. "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)."" If you haven't joined the EFF (or the equivalent in your country) , now might be a good time.

Comments

EFF Membership

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

I was suprised that they require a donation to become a member. I realize they need the money, but it seems to me they would have more political clout if their total membership tally were much larger - and making donations optional would certainly accomplish this. People who will give money would do it anyway, people who are too broke to pledge monetary support might still like to be counted as against draconian measures like the DMCA...

Actual Text of the Copyright Directive

[Lothar 0]

You can't get it off the Google list, but you can get it from their cache of the copyright directive.

Re:uk eff?

[thebowery]

http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk and
http://uk.eurorights.org/ are good places to get started

So, should we force Europeans to say they are not?

[budGibson]

Well, after the highly offensive campaign to force Americans to say they were not Americans before they could see the kernel changelog for security issues, should we turn about and do the same to Europeans?

Cox downplayed the risk to Free Software

[Telex4]

I attended the mini-conference, and The Register is actually a little off in suggesting that he talked about the threats of the EUCD to Free Software development. His central concerns, shared by Martin Keegan, the director of the Campaign for Digital Rights (http://uk.eurorights.org for those in the UK who want an EFF), were that the EUCD could create a new dark age, where digital rights management could see large amounts of information simply disappearing when the format becomes too old, and that minorities such as disabled people would suffer the most because it would not be profitable for companies to produce software to decode the DRM into a format suitable for them.

I wrote an article summarising the issues discussed at the talk if anyone's interested here.

Article is WRONG on DMCA exemption for blind

[Seth Finkelstein]

The article says:

The DMCA grants limited permission to circumvent copyright protection in order to make braille copies of eBooks for use by the blind, for example, but the EUCD makes such exceptions optional for member states, so they need not be implemented.

This is WRONG. There is no such permission in the DMCA. The writer has apparently confused it with a copyright limitation:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute copies or phonorecords of a previously published, nondramatic literary work if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I do, how ever, know the DMCA very well, since I've been worried for many years about being sued under the DMCA for my anticensorware work

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

The UK Campaign for Digital Rights

[An Audience of One]

The conference that Alan Cox spoke at yesterday was organised by the Campaign for Digital Rights - we are trying to do something about this, and other similar laws. Anyone in the UK, or Europe in general, who wants to help fight this, should consider at least signing up to our mailing list.

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!

Bad example

[danro]

I mean, a free open standard has worked pretty well for HTML.

Yes it has... but I worked as a <shame>webdesigner</shame> for a (short) while at the end of the browser wars.
And let me tall you.
For the longest time html was a mess! They (the w3c) even canned the 3.0 version and went to 3.2 because things were so confused. And 4.0 and CSS took years before most browsers implemented it in a reasonable way.

You can still run into issues created by Netscape and Microsoft in the browser wars if you don't watch out...

But you're right about things turning out ok in the end.
Html is good, css is ok, the browsers conform better to the DOM every day, and xhtml is a true blessing!
But it sure was a rough ride!

Fair use

[bbn]

The directive is made up of two parts. The first part defines copyright in general, and the second part is the DMCA equalent.

The directive has a list of exceptions to copyright that each country can optional implement. One of those is the right to copy digital content for private purposes. The country I live in, Denmark, already allows this. It it is the equalent of fair use, except it is spelled clear out in the law.

The DMCA part is confusing. It is required that the copyright holder makes it possible to copy in the circumstates where those exceptions apply. So in Denmark, the copyright holder needs to make it possible for me to copy the content for private purposes??

Looks to me like the different interrest groups in EU could not agree on if they wanted freedom or the DMCA nightmare from USA. So they tried to do both, which will not work.

petition

[canned polar bear]

This petition is directed to the European Parliament. Its goal is to warn European Authorities against the dangers of software patents. This petition is supported by the EuroLinux Alliance together with European companies and non-profit associations. http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en

Re:Cool, but what about all the whining ?

[eggstasy]

Uh, Portugal?
I live here and aside from libel and slander and those things that are forbidden in the US as well, we can do whatever we want.

We actually have a legitimate nazi party. They dont call themselves like that of course (they're the Nationalist Renovator Party), but we know very well what they are.They dont get any votes though :)

Actually you have a VERY wrong idea of free speech in the EU. What are you basing your euro-prejudice on anyway? Are you a lawyer?
IANAL but my cousin was a well respected attorney (he just retired), and lives on the floor below me.I'd wager it's all a bunch of hear-say and if you really want I could ask him about the free speech laws in various european countries.

All the dictatorships have long been dissolved here. There is no Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or Salazar anymore.They've been dead for ages.

UK residents, contact your MP

[DirtyDuck]

UK residents can contact their MP by first looking them up and then emailing them using this page. It uses a god awful web form but at least you can make your views known.

I've emailed my MP Paddy Tipping (What a name!)

As always, be polite but be firm!

Re:UK residents, contact your MP

[IamTheRealMike]

UK residents can contact their MP by first looking them up and then emailing them

No, don't do this! Why? Simple, it doesn't work. MPs, as a general rule of thumb, are very busy and therefore pay more attention to messages from their electorate when more effort has been put in. An email, in the mind of an MP, requires zero effort. And they are right. A fax requires a bit more. A letter is the gold standard. Preferably hand written (as long as your writing is neat). Don't simply bash out a 5 minute email, write your MP a letter! It'll have more effect.

Fax is tempting, but last time I sent a fax to my MP I never got a reply :( This time, I'll write on paper with my hands. They'll pay more attention, and let's face it, the extra effort is worthwhile.

Re:Equivalents...

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Here are some organisations to join:

EF Sweden www.efs.se

EF Norway www.efn.no

EF Finland www.effi.org

Re:Europeans vs. Americans

[t_allardyce]

I know you were probably joking, but just in case..

The DMCA came to America first, and hasn't even got to europe (yet). Secondly, you have your own problems, ie the SSSCA. Lastly, you are much to low on the UN Human Freedom Index to be giving europe crap about free-speech.

An expert opinion

[Pascal of S]

According to this publication: Why the Copyright Directive is Unimportant, and Possibly Invalid, dated 2000-something, the directive is not a clear (surpise, surprise) directive *at all*. It basically fails to do what they intended it to do: harmonize copyright law (which is basically a good thing).

I like the final statement he makes:

The European Court's decision raises the intriguing prospect of one or more disgruntled Member States challenging the validity of the Copyright Directive. Wouldn't that be the perfect way of getting rid of this monstrosity? I hereby offer my services to any Member State pro bono.

I would love to take him up on that, except I'm not a member state, just a citizen.

Audio from Talk

[thick_sliced]

You can listen to the audio of the talk:

http://www.odl.qmul.ac.uk/eucd/