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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.
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...
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
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
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.
Don'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...
Thou shalt not speaketh the word "spellcheck" in Commander Taco's Realm.
Repent, fellkow mortal, REPENT!
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.
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
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/
DCMA:
Digital
Consumer
Molestation
Act
-ted
Yeah, but guess who gets stuck with those costs? Not the record companies. It's the ARTIST.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
You, sir, don't know what you're talking about.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
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