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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.
When I read the article I expected Britain to be one of the two that implemented similar legislation. I was quite surprised to find that our IT illiterate politicians missed another chance to cock things up.
Chris
Shouldn't that be "DMCA"?
Now when will the USA version fall?
:)
Or, when can I move to europe?
-RickTheWizKid
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...
if the pockey-boys to legislators [in america see lobbyist] thought all the countries with little to no money flowing in from the very source this ridiculous serious of laws aim to protect profits would just adopt these strict, un-adaptable laws that suppress creativity and limit personal rights.. they're either crazy or blinded by their ultra greed.
oh yeah..
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Why would the Boy Scouts of America want extra protection in Europe?
(Posted anonymously for my protection.)
At a quick glance, you could read the BSA mouthpiece's name as "Ignorance".
No, I don't have anything useful to add to the discussion; I just wanted to mock the name of the Mouth of Sauron.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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!
This
it's smart of the EU member nations to look to the model that the US has set and the problems surrounding implemetation of these laws
Sure, the RIAA and MPAA and their buddies in the government have tried to apply the DMCA to every aspect of life, but if you look at how it is being enforced, versus how it could be enforced it really isn't that bad. Afterall, they could break your door down, tear gas your dog, spray you in the face with pepper spray then push you down the stairs for DMCA violation...or at least that's what they told me.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
You have just violated my digital copyright on the word "millennium, established by the Digital Copyright 'Millennium' Act. And you misspelled it to boot. Shame on you.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I feel really sorry for them. How ever will they enforce their policies without this bill? Especially with half of Europe switching to Linux, the BSA rapidly approaches obsolescence.
We'll miss them, won't we?
You guys sure are lucky over there to have politicians that can actually think without being prompted by big-business. Go EU!
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.
- DCMA == Defence Contract Management Agency
- DMCA == Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Spellcheckers don't know much about acronyms, esp. since they're both valid, and they're both Big Brother - relatedDon't rejoice too fast; I fail to understand how the article implies that most member countries being late means that the directive will not be implemented...
... Unfurtunately, I happen to live in Denmark, one of the two. We have a small, private organization going by the name of Anti Pirate Group, who get issued warrants from local judges, and afterwards basically bust into people's homes, rummaging through their computers and CD collection in search of pirate material.
There have been cases where they have denied the owner the right to an attorney, on the grounds that "it would take too long", and other similarly unfair treatment of suspected pirates.
Another case was when they confiscated a computer from a 13-year old attending a LAN party, and then have him, to his great embarrasment, hauled downtown for questioning without attendence of his legal guardian.
A recent competition of their making was hacked, and the email addresses of the participants were signed up on just about every spamlist in existance.
Can't say I feel much sympathy...
the BSA will keep trying and trying...... that's what particularly bad about this situation.... it will keep on going and going and going - they just lost one round.
The EU recently welcomed in a bunch of nations from Eastern Europe, around 10, like Poland. Those countries don't make a lot of money on Software Sales yet, nor on giant media type stuff. What's the incentive to pass a law for the politicians whene it doesn't do anything for their nation. They wolud have to see a benefit (personal or national) or its going to be a backburner issue for them.
Thou shalt not speaketh the word "spellcheck" in Commander Taco's Realm.
Repent, fellkow mortal, REPENT!
Go Europe, go! I knew you weren't as stupid as the american goverment! :)
From the article:
Mingorance at the BSA said it may be months before any EU-wide law goes into effect. "I'm hopeful that before the summer it will be adopted, or at least before the end of next year, but then that will be very late."
This
From the article:
With hopes dashed of having a strong copyright law in place for the start of 2003, media and software companies complain that they are largely unprotected from digital piracy
I don't get this, making copies of copyrighted content was already illegal, why would they need extra laws for digital content ? Why would a law that forbids decrypting data protect them any more than they are now ? It's not like the pirates are suddenly going to care about the fact that what they doing is illegal.
Was Microsoft the founder of the BSA? It seems kinda odd to me that only a few dozen companies are a part of the BSA and that most of those companies, with the exception of Apple and IBM, have close ties to MS.
Does anyone know who exactly is behind the BSA?
Thanks!
Quoting from the article: "However when an employee takes source code, or a company removes protection from a demo version of software and sells it as its own product, it certainly feels like theft, but technically it is not stealing. The case of Oxford v Morris held that software was not property and copying it was not stealing for the purpose of the Theft Act. However it is copyright infringement."
You may well not agree with other points in this article, such as the need to criminalise circumvention, as software publishers are too poor to bring their own court case.
But let's not further devalue the language, by calling copyright infringement by incorrect emotive words such as theft and piracy.
Andrew Yeomans
that they have no protection. The fact of the matter is their *right* to protection is defined by *law.* In fact, the very right to have anything to protect at *all* is so defined.
Without such definitions they have * no rights.*
IP is a purely manmade construct. Different nations and cultures have different ideas on the extent to which they will assert and defend such "rights."
If you wish to do business internationally, get used to it.
You might well even have to get used to the idea that certain cultures and legal systems do not accept the so called "right" to IP.
It's incredibly arrogant to take your business model formed to comply with and take advantage of one nation's set of laws and demand that other nations mold their laws to comply with your business model.
If you find this arrangement unacceptable why not get into a business where you *make stuff?* It works for others.
KFG
...to maintain their monopoly. What did you expect them to say, "OK, we give up, you can copy anything you want and we don't care?" Any business man will tell you they are only in business to make money. Any business man that tells you different is probably selling something.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Could this be a new measure of how well something is aligned with the public's best interests? If the BSA doesn't like it, it's gotta be good?
Works for me!
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The Eurocrats in Brussels never give up. If at first you don't succeed, scare, scare, scare.
I mean, look at Ireland and the Nice Treaty. Rejected first time round, the Government then sponsored a scare campaign in its favor and had a revote. You may bet your bottom dollar that now they've approved the Nice Treaty, the ignorant masses will never be asked another opinion.
This law will eventually be the law of Europe.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The Europeans are rejecting the United States' Defense Contract Management Agency!
Errrr....wait a sec.
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word (replacing the letters IGITAL with a "." in the D of D.M.C.A for example). An acronym is when an abbreviation itself works as a word, liked RADAR.
Shame on those who replied rudely to this person! If this poster is for real, you might have just alienated him/her not only from you, but from your cause as well. All of us learn of these things for the first time, so relax and be informative instead of just angry.
I heard that they were having some problems too... ;-)
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
European lawmakers must have an insanely high price if MPAA/RIAA haven't paid them off already. Ours were bought and sold for pennies.
Today's special, three Senators for only $1.00! Purchase 10 packs and you are entitled to your choice of 10% off any Supreme Court Justice of your choice or the Vice Pacemaker...erm...President!
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
All their kiddie porn is being illegally copied on the internet.
Remember they don't want gay's but petifiles are AOK!
Assholes.
Well, one of the reasons for the delay has been the crisis in (read: fall of) the Dutch government. The Dutch implementation has already been through several rounds of review though, and it'll probably be up for discussion in the 2nd Chamber pretty soon after the elections in January. As I'm very much involved in these discussions I'll keep you posted on the progress...
PLEASE go read the Directive. It's short, as these things go, certainly much snappier than US legislation is - though the URL I have is long:
http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi !celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=32001L0029 &model=guichett
Among other differences from the DMCA, it establishes a *right* to exercise the equivalent of "fair-use". My reading of the draft UK regulations implementing this Directive suggests, for example, that if I want to make a Braille transcript of Disney's next opus and it's encrypted, I can apply to the Home Secretary (=~ Minister for the Interior) for appropriate cracking tools to get the job done.
And my reading of the Directive itself is that once an encrypted work enters the public domain, it must open itself up. Cue "foom" sound of .PDFs blatting out plain text automatically
70 years after my death and mailing the Gutenberg Project to say 'hi'...
And, as others have pointed out, the fact that EU member states are late implementing the Directive doesn't mean it falls. It's not a US Constitutional Amendment, guys. Other legal systems are available, out here.
F'rexample, only five or six of 15 EU member states have implemented another Directive that says freelances can claim interest (at 7% over base) on invoices paid late by our clients. But even Greece will get round to it eventually - even if it takes a Greek suing her government in den Haag to make it do so.
At least the DMCA stopped at circumventing a 'technological measure' that controls access to a work. The EU directive defines a 'technological measure' as anything that stops you from unauthorized acts. Yes, that's unauthorized acts! That goes quite beyond 'mere' access to a work.
EUCD is the european drective that is the equivalent of DMCA in the European Union.
The Anti-EUCD fight is not finished in France as the law project has been proposed on December 3rd. It will be voted in february.
The FSF Europe/France is fighting it. Their aim is to propose arguments to deputees to reject the law. Yes, it is Free Software lobbying.
The main problem is to inform the mainstream of the danger of this law: the approach is that the law kills the "private copy" autorisation.
For more information (and more reliable) see http://eucd.info/.They simply MUST be stopped before it's too late!
Does anyone know if this will help the DCSS case with Jon Johansen?
DCMA:
Digital
Consumer
Molestation
Act
-ted
This type of crap is getting really annoying. It's all BS, and I wish the major outlets would stop reporting it. Nothing is being lost! What's really happening is this: potential revenues are being unrealized. They're even projected revenues (note the word "estimates"?), which means the numbers are BS anyway. The truth doesn't sound nearly as sexy, does it? Much more sensational to say 'lost', 'stolen', and 'pirates are everywhere'. Put them all together for more impact (tell me if this sounds familiar):
I'm fed up. As a result, I'm going to take a brief leave of my senses, and send out a hearty FUCK YOU to Microsoft, the various ??AAs, all of their lobbyists and spin-doctors, and yes, Reuters.Here's more BS from the article:
The industries argue that the lack of a coherent approach to protecting intellectual property in the digital environment has led to the rise of a black market in pirated material.
This is not an argument. Using my trusty BS-argument buster, I see that this kind of statement is actually the fallacy of non causa pro causa. But what is the cause they don't mention? To understand where black markets come from, you have to use economics. Black markets only develop where they are profitable, i.e. where the marginal price is higher than the marginal cost. This never occurs in a free market, but does happen when the market is regulated (take drugs, for instance) or when there are not enough players, which is clearly not the case here. In the case of drugs, active regulation drives up the marginal price artifically (it sucks to go to jail, and part of the price of your dime bag compensates your dealer for the risk they take). In the case under consideration, the marginal cost is being driven up by bad IP laws (which Microsoft and the content industry were so excited about, I might add).
This is the elusive flaw with their argument, and just goes to show that they created their own hell. Now they're complaining about having to live in it. Morons.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I'm afraid that acronym is another of those words that through relaxed usage has come to mean all of these concoctions, e.g., here. I actually like it better the modern way, as some acronyms are pronounced or said different by different people -- URL -- and acronym to be connotes the abbr. of a common word by squashing letters out of it. OK?
This source says acronyms are a novel 20th century affliction.
What amuse me are the words that vary not in sound but by a letter, which sticklers nonetheless insist are entirely different -- farther/further, inquire/enquire, insure/ensure, potato/potatoe (heh-heh -- just kidding -- I wouldn't have let that one go!)
OK, admittedly I am careful in my writing to follow most of these stupid rules, excepe for splitting infinitives, which I do with abandon if it suits the occasion.
gays can still be Scouts
No, not according to the relatively conservative nat'l organization. Nor atheists, maybe. If anything they are clamping down. A recent example illustrating philosophical tension within the organization.
A site...
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
There is certainly corruption in most countries. However there is a major difference between individual peculation and institutional corruption which is what we have in the US.
To get a legislative bill through the UK parliament you have to have the support of the government party. All members interests have to be declared in advance and it is a criminal breach of the rules to offer any sort of bribe to advance legislation. The corruption that brought the Conservative party down was very minor, involving asking questions for cash and lobbying for citizenship applications.
There is no way that you could get the corrupt Eli-Lilly exception that Bill Frist patriotically attached to the Homeland Security bill. There is no way that the government can claim ignorance of what is passed. Corruption of the Bill Frist type only survives because the Senate rules allow business to be conducted in secret. Go take a look at the UK Hansard web site, anyone can see the exact progress of any bill at any time. MPs go to the Web site to find what is going on.
Rather than change the constitution as you propose I think that it would suffice to change the rules of the senate. In particular no ammendment to be allows to any bill without a written mover and seconder. All business to be announced on the Congressional Web site.
The Democrats if they were smart would run the type of campaign that Gingrich ran, only instead of the citizens bill of rights make transparency of the congressional process the issue. Heck, Newt might even lend support since he is rally pissed off at what the party did to him. He thought they believed in what he did, he now realises he was wrong.
There is no reason why transparency should diminish the power of the Senate. In fact I am trying to convince folk that the only long term way to address the judiciary problem is to increase the threshold for confirmation to 60 votes. The reason for this is simple if you do game theory. At present a President has the effective power to stack the judiciary one way or the other if he can get a pliant congress. So as a result the parties and in particular the GOP have recently been trying to delay appointments until they have sufficient control to install idealogues. If the rules mandate a supermajority in perpetuity the President is forced to be reasonable and so is the Senate since there is nothing to be gained through delay.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"My" senators were in favor of it (the DMCA). My representative was against it. (Not, after I expressed my opinion, that my senators were willing to tell me how they would vote or had voted.) This government is driving me more and more towards anarchism as the superior choice. Not that I think any more favorably of anarchism than I ever have...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Errmmm.... has noone cottoned on to the fact that the directive *still* stands? And as such all EU countries are still obligated to pass into local law legislation that implements the Directive. While a directive may contain a deadline for local implementation, missing this deadline does not remove the obligation to implement it.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Imagine you own a house. One day you leave the door unlocked, thieves enter and steal your television. If the thieves are caught they will be arrested only once. This is because you are only a citizen, and are not afforded any special privileges.
Now imagine that your door was locked. Thieves break your lock and enter and steal your television. Under the current laws they would still only be arrested once. This is because there are no special laws applying to the lock on your door, and so the theft is not a special case.
Now imagine you are a big media conglomerate with lobbyists in Washington. You get the government to pass a special law covering the locks on your doors, so that if a thief actually breaks the lock on your door they can be arrested and charged extra-heavily and go to jail for even longer.
Isn't that excellent? See, in the first case you didn't have a lock on your door, so it could be argued that you were inviting anyone to take your television. Once you put locks on your door, it tells people you don't want them entering your house and stealing your television. But this is still not enough, because there is nothing in the law that says "by having this lock on my door I'm not kidding, I really don't want you to take my television."
The DMCA is that new special law that says, "locks on doors are extra-specially-explicitly things meant to keep others out."
Without the DMCA there would be all kinds of confusion and no one would know what locks are for, or what's legal and what's not.
Aren't you glad we have people in government to clear these things up for us?
-- thinkyhead software and media
So in effect the wonderful EU system they have now is in all essence the same as the United states... The fed's make a law and the states HAVE to follow them...
OK, but I cannot resist faming this twit. The member states of the EU have already agreed to this directive. As part of their agreement they agreed to enact it in domestic law within a three year deadline. Now they have failed to do so they can be taken to court for failing to enact in national law something they had passed via directive.
So nobody has forced them to do anything, whatever you may think of the DMCA and the European directive the people to blame are you - either because you voted for the politicians who enacted the law, you couldn't be bothered to vote or you didn't get politically active and persuade enough people to vote...or maybe you are wrong?
Actually it's "unlawful", the difference being you can't got to jail for giving a copy of Operation Flashpoint to your friend so you can play multiplayer at a LAN meet. However, Codemasters can sue you for giving a copy to your friend because if you hadn't given a copy to your friend he might have gone and bought a copy, so they're out the few bucks they make off the $69.95 purchase price.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...just get out of the software business? Seriously, they must really be doing something wrong if laws that have worked for years for publishers of other types of works have managed to be profitable I can't imagine why they can't. Books have been copyable for over 50 years, and the "source" is even included with the product, yet they still manage to make money.
Speaking of books, anyone remember when software used to come with paper manuals? Now that was value!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The status of the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) is updated in this wiki.
I should also point out, that the EUCD is late, not overturned. The countries are still obliged to implement it.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.