Euro DMCA Fails

Kr3m3Puff writes "Looks like the Euro DCMA has failed according to Yahoo! It seems that only two member nations had adopted the local law and therfore the Euro wide law will not be adopted. The BSA is complaining they have no protections." Update: 12/23 17:50 GMT by T : That's DMCA rather than DCMA -- silly acronyms.

Comments

Thank $deity for that...

[RMH101]

I thought this was a foregone conclusion after David Blunkett et al's usual draconian bills.

For all UK readers, this is probably a good idea to publicise http://www.faxyourmp.org - a very quick, easy and above all *free* way to get a digitally-signed paper fax to your local MP from a webpage.

Shout loudly or lose yet more digital rights...

Wrong

[KilljoyAZ]

Reading the article one finds the hasn't failed, it just won't be in place in time for 2003. There's nothing stopping these countries from adopting the law in the future.

And for the last time, it is DMCA, not DCMA!

There's no point to this article...

[doctomoe]

Whether the countries have or have not implemented the Directive's text into local law does not matter. As soon as a Directive is published, it has an obligatory effect in all of the EU countries, whether it's implemented or not. So in short, in a lawsuit, any of the parties can take advantage of the Directive and the local judge will have to respect it, even if it is in opposition with the local law.

Re:There's no point to this article...

[paugq]

I'm sorry, but you are wrong.

A directive per-se it's a bit more than nothing. The EU works this way: the European Council or the European Parliament dictate a directive and give the EU members a deadline to implement ("transpose") it. Every member must transpose the directive, but there's always a transient period (monthes or even years) until the directive gives shape to a country-specific law. While this transient period, the directive has no effect. The point here is this: a directive is not a law and won't be used by a judge.

Kuro5hin carried an interesting article explaining what's the EU and how it works

No reason to celebrate...

[Kjella]

The laws are late, but that doesn't mean that the remaining EU countries won't adopt them. Particularly with all the controversy around them, and the large consequences, things take longer than the very optimistic deadline. In particular, some of the things it implements is:

* Your right is now tied to media. It's no longer legal to make mp3s of your cds, for one. Each country can make exceptions, but that's the directive.

* Illegal to import media from other zones (for companies). Blatant undermining of free trade and competition in my opinion. Also illegal to sell zonefree players or any other kind of "circumvention device".

It's the backdoor way of extortion. You can purchase something without a licence, but you can not use it unless you have a licenced player, and by extension, those licence terms apply to YOU.

Let me put this in a way USians can understand:

You buy a car in the US. It runs fine on the petrol around you, so no probs. Then you want to take it to europe, but you can't. Not for any technical reason, but because it can only use licenced gas, and that gas is only licenced to the US. Note that you never signed a licence agreeing to the fact that the car is only good in the US, but you've been had.

It's also illegal to make your car work with any other gas. And if you ask the car manufacturer, he'll suggest that you either sell your US car and accessories and buy a Euro car (and likewise sell your Euro car and buy the US one back when you get home), or if you like it so much, buy one of each, even if they in function are completely identical.

Screw them. If they want to make it region-crippled, they're asking for it. I don't mind if they copyprotect it with CSS2 or whatever. But if I'm banned from buying DVDs because I'm in the wrong zone, then they are just pissing me off. Somehow businesses should think a little about the customers they *do* have, and not only about the pirates (arr!) they *don't* have as customers, and probably won't have in the future anyway.

Kjella

Re:Well..

[Zeinfeld]

why won't they protect their own companies from their property being stolen?

It is somewhat a mark of the polarization of this issue that a comment like that gets moderated as Troll.

Of course the issue for the EU parliaments is protecting property. Don't project from the corruption of the US Congress where this issue is decided with multi-million dollar bribes make you think that all countries are like that. The US is an aberation in that regard. While campaign contributions occasionally influence policies in Europe the blatant influence peddling simply does not exist. Politicians do not collect campaign contributions directly, their parties do. That makes a big difference on issues of this sort.

Reading the story I have to think that it was created by the BSA. The statements made simply do not add up.

It seems very unlikely that the EU council of ministers would issue a directive in April requiring legislative action by the end of the year. National parliaments are not merely a rubber stamp for EU directives, no matter how hard the BSA tries to make that claim. None of the European parliaments work at that pace. Legislation in the UK typically takes a minimum of two years and the legislative year starts in the autum. Time in the legislative calendar is very scarce and the idea that the government would allow Brussels to direct it to prioritize an IP bill is somewhat interesting.

This is just a story created by a self important industry association as a way of trying to keep an issue alive. They probably realise that the tide is starting to run against them and that unless they get their way soon they will have to make concessions and may not get their way at all.

Re:It's not an acronym, it's an abbreviation

[tomhudson]

It's an acronym. Acronyms don't have to spell words. Your example is an example: before the phrase "RAdio Detection And Rannging" was shortened, there was no such thing as RADAR. Same with SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus), etc. Until they were shortened into acronyms, there was no such word.

You, sir, don't know what you're talking about.

French DMCA on the way

[hysterion]

As others have written, the headline is vastly overoptimistic. If the editors had read the following, they'd know that France, for instance, seems in the process of adopting a DMCA-like bill:

• 2002-12-04 15:16:13 France to introduce own DMCA (articles,news) (rejected)

Today's Libé previews a new bill introduced by the French government to, in one stroke and all too familiar terms, not only legalize anticopy media , but also prohibit everyone from diffusing, advertising and even making known any means of circumvention. (Google translation.) Meanwhile, no plans to end a 56 tax on blank CDs, which brought the industry 95.3 million in 2001. Sad news from a country which, in more enlightened times, pioneered copyright reduction (to 50 years) and thus enabled such wonderful reissue programs as Chronological Classics.