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Alan Cox Attacks the European DMCA

Posted by chrisd on from the alan-cox-is-xoc-nala-spelled-backwards dept.

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.

8 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. An European DMCA, the last thing we need... by danro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and join the EEF Europe or some similar organisation.

    The EU is trying to take away a very good reason to live in Europe...
    And after seeing what the DMCA has done to the US...
    Time to get on the barricades I guess.

    --

    "First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
  2. Re:uk eff? by thebowery · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    "It's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done" - Orbital
  3. Cox downplayed the risk to Free Software by Telex4 · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  4. Article is WRONG on DMCA exemption for blind by Seth+Finkelstein · · Score: 5, Informative
    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)

  5. The UK Campaign for Digital Rights by An+Audience+of+One · · Score: 5, Informative
    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!

  6. Re:EFF Membership by asv108 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    but it seems to me they would have more political clout if their total membership tally were much larger

    If this were true most political organizations would offer a free membership but there are probably two reasons why they don't:

    • Money Talks..
    • Less people would pay because they could get the same "inner reward" by joining for free.
    If a political foundation had to choose between a million free members, or a million dollars, they would probably choose the latter because the fact is money will bring you more influence. The free membership option would cannibalize their lower value donations which the EFF depends on. For example, the NRA counts on having gun-toting hicks send in their $25/year do you think the hicks would still pay if they could say they are an NRA member and not pay a dime?

    There is nobody, I mean NOBODY here who can't spare $25 bucks for the EFF. I'm sick of hearing sob stories on here about poor students who can't spare a dime yet they probably spend 20 hours a week trolling slashdot. Go work at McDonald's for a day, quit, and then send your paycheck to the EFF.

  7. Fair use by bbn · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:UK residents, contact your MP by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.