Slashdot Mirror
Finland Drops EUCD For Now
replicant_deckard writes "Electronic Frontier Finland just got a huge legal victory. They report the local DMCA-copy (based on EU copyright directive) was dropped today at the parliament after heavy criticism. So far just two EU nations have accepted the innovation threatening law. Campaigns go on in different European states. They need your support!" cabra771 writes "The European Commission has put up a new proposal dealing with online music piracy that appears to have slightly upset a few people."
so how many posts by people who are never going to move to finland saying "whee, i'm moving to finland" do we get to see now?
If copy-protection schemes are to succeed, they must be as undetectable as possible by the end user. I don't mean that he won't realize he's using a copy-protected format, but that his ears won't be able to tell the difference between a copy-protected one and a non-protected one.
VHS macrovision is popular precisely because it's undetectable in how it alters visual quality. You'll hear lots of complaints by people who are unable to copy videos correctly, but you'll never hear a complaint by anyone about how macrovision has degraded their signal -- it hasn't.
We're almost at the stage where digital watermarks are completely seamless. Ten years ago, inititives like this would've been scoffed at. Now, they're becoming reality.
Government listens to citizens! Peace comes to the world!
More seriously I am pleased that such legislation was dropped. The less 'corrupt' CDs I see the better.
Hi!
:-D
:-D
Yeah. It was a very sweet victory indeed, especially because the content industry was very confident that the proposed law would pass.
Unfortunately this is only a temporary relieve, the war against fair use will continue very soon and long as EUCD exists we are on the losing side. Never the less, the situation is now much more hopefull in Finland, because the public knowledge is now much better and also because the MPs seem to understand how important these questions are.
Ville
For a status of the implementation of the EUCD, look here .
Too bad my country didn't see why the EUCD is totally bogus. I'm not allowed to buy my region 1 DVD's here in Denmark anymore, so I have to import them. My favourite DVD stores are closing. :-(
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Finland is the undisputed home of the Linux. It has the power to undo that which is wrong in the DMCA and can call upon Greyskull. HOME OF LINUX.
From the article:
The industry in a statement issued jointly by 10 organizations, including the Business Software Alliance (BSA), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Motion Picture Association (MPA), blasted the proposal, calling it "inadequate" and "unambitious."
Funny, I never considered it a virtue for a government regulation to be "ambitious".
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
I think its just a matter of which side is willing to fight harder and longer... Free access to information enthusiasts (pretty much the general public) or DRM enthusiasts (RIAA, companies that generate profit from licensing)
Meet new people, and kill them.
I know. I'm scared too. The nation that has some of the most draconian computer crime laws - hell, the way legal system's acting we're lucky to have the concept of "fair trial" - hasn't done something against the informed public's wishes!
At this rate, Scotland are going to win the World Cup within a decade...
-Mark
I'm going to Finland.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The fact that only two member states have passed this into domestic law could well be a BAD thing, because the directive is now enforcible at the European Court of Justice. They may make a repressive ruling that will then automatically apply to all member states. For those from the US think of it this way - all the states have agreed to implement a law within two years - only two have done, but someone goes to the Supreme Court and seeks a ruling - that's where we are right now.
I apologise beforehand for continuing the offtopic parent topic.
as many a man before me has noted: if signal degradation is undetectable, and that signal can be put through some device that only picks up on the important parts (in your case, the sound and vision) then it may be copied in some way.
I also suspect that macrovision is only in place by default on videotape X, not because a company has noticed large quantities pirate of videotape X appearing. As soon as they bring in a new standard, it gets cracked and anti-piracy bodies are none the wiser until they commission a study many or so more years down the line.
The same thing applies to digital works (albeit in a slightly more convoluted manner)
And ultimately, what's the real point? Is it just so no pirate can *pretend* they are Blockbuster Video? (so to speak).
I think it's obvious to the end-user that their copy of Product X is pirated: it didn't cost them as much as it would thru official channels. And that's the real reason why piracy thrives.
<B>note to self:</B> <I>post as html</I>
You're lucky, this time!
Denmark - nearing the end of it's EU Presidency - was too preoccupied with other EU affairs, mainly integrating new member countries. It was apparently so important that this law be passed before 2002-12-22, that suddenly a massive vote against the law at the second hearing, turned to a massive vote for the law at the third hearing. One party actually "pushed the wrong voting button" - literally, and two (I believe it was two, one being the second largest) other parties had suddenly changed their minds? WTF?!
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
And this is the negative point of the European Union. If their is one authority, their is only 1 bribe. But with multiple authorities, it becomes prohibitively expensive to get your laws passed.
If the EU ever gets too much power, Europe will suffer heavily. As we know
"absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I thought that was exactly the thing which the recording industry was so miffed about - and this legislation is nailing that one straight on.
I still wonder about how hard they are going to hit onto what I consider "fair use". I consider placing of impediments to fair use applications to be a severe infringement of MY rights.
This stuff telling me I can not make backup and make proper use of what it is I am purchasing.. well looks like the European Commission didn't like it much either. I wonder how the European Union recognizes it. I hope they recognize a noose when they see it.
Don't get me wrong, I am not an unreasonable man...I am willing to compromise my position.
If you want me to give up my right to make backups, you *must* be willing to provide me with one at any time in the future I may need one - and be willing to compensate me for my time and other losses that was incurred because I put said product in a critical position, when having backups in place would have eliminated that loss. Remember, the vendor will have to issue me the exact software I had running with whatever patches I had applied... or come in and make whatever he has work in a way that is acceptable to *me*.
I can bend too in my belief that I am not supposed to "reverse engineer" the product to try to make it work, if the vendor is also willing to take unlimited liability in assuring me the software does what it says it does, nothing more, and nothing less. So if I get some software that sent stuff out on the net, I would have recourse to recover from the vendor whatever I valued the data it sent at. Basically the same law they had the US Congress pass for them, but directed back at them as the target of the Liability.
I do not think I am asking anything unreasonable, its just if you want to take away my rights to try to make the thing work, you will take on that responsibility of making it work. If you want to do something behind my back and don't want me to see - you will take full responsibility for what it does.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Write to your government officials and let them know that you're against this law and point out that it's been used in the USA primarily to suppress research, stifle competition and delay innovation. Argue that since copyright infringement laws already exist (They do in most countries) this law is neither necessary nor well advised.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Owww! My Brain hurts! This it TGIF, this is America!
No, actually, this is Europe...
What does this crap have to do with me?
All this crap was explicitly designed to make you realize the world is much more than the US of A.
If you're interested: DMCA blues
From what I can figure, the European Court can't *make* law. Granted, they can rule that the countries haven't followed the directive, but the court still can not *implement* the directive over the head of the individual countries. And until it's incorporated into law, it's not legally binding for the citizens. I answer to norwegian law, not EU directives. Not quite sure what sanctions they do have though, probably some strong ones anyway.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
These stories celebrating delays or apparent abandonment of 'EUCD copies' in the EU and EEA member states, most recently Finland, are probably about celebrating too soon, unfortunately.
The arrangements in Europe are that member states have an obligation to implement EU directives. If member-state governments drag their feet beyond the patience of the European Commission, there is now more than one way for the Commission to put a financial sting on them. The threat of open-ended financial liability may be one of the important drivers for implementing EUCD in the member-states in spite of any campaigning. This is particularly remembered in the UK, which got badly stung financially for taking unilateral action on fishing rights. So, for example, the few-months delay to about the end of March recently announced by the UK Patent Office (for review of the consultation replies, and for completing and amending the UK draft implementing regulations) will probably not be easy to stretch out much farther than that.
The real legislative power in these matters is with the EU Commission, which deliberates in secret. How this appalling state of things came to be is another matter, but the time to lobby effectively is the stage _before_ a directive issues from the EU Commission --- at the stage after it has been made a fait accompli, it is really too late. It's too late now to do much about EUCD in its current form except to mount marginal delaying tactics, and to be vigilant in campaigning so that the member states don't change their local copies in the direction of making matters even worse -- which is what the UK's draft local copy that went out for limited consultation in 2002 would have done. I suppose there is always some faint chance to try and get the Commission to reconsider/repeal the directive, but that looks like a tough and long haul.
so what if it's unfair. at least you know where you stand.
hope you enjoyed your free speech.
who told you life was fair? it s not even a little bit fair. but it will occasionally be unfair in your favor.
really though dude, if you've got this kind of energy, you should be doing it to write your elected representatives and stuff.
how much were your membership dues? slashdot is free as in speech. you get what you pay for.
take a deep breath and move on.
disponibile
DOnt they have to become a country first
before they can win the World Cup?
beeb
Yup.
You are totally right. This is only a temporary delay, in the Finnish case most likely 4-5 months. But it still shows that the content industry can't anymore expect to get their all demands fullfilled. And it also shows that you can't buy all the democratic institutions.
The next step is to take the fight to the international level. Most of current IPR-regulations are based on international treaties and the fight on national level won't help much. It gives us at most some time to prepare for the next round, that's all.
Ville
We apologize for the preceding humorous post. All /. users involved have been sacked.
We now return you to waiting for /. to load.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The Slashdot story link above points to a 404 Yahoo story.
/. ed's would just inline a small detail like that instead of linking it in.
The only ref I came across (in, we'll 5 seconds of looking. Damn that ADD) was this one from 2002-12-20 which states that only Greece has passed it.
Sure be nice if the
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
No court can "make law" (that's for politicians on European, member state and local level), the job of a court is to determine whether or not the law has been followed. In the case of the EU, case law and treaties dictate that the European Court of Justice has the final juristiction in disputes between member states where the treaties are concerned, and failure to implement EU directives as national law is breaching the treaties. Since the power to enforce the law is still with the member states, it's not like the EU Court could use force to get its will through -- but the whole framework of the EU depends on member states abiding by the rulings. Failure to do so can result in very heavy fines, as determined by the court, and the eventual exclusion from the Union.
Congratulations, YHBT!
"The real legislative power in these matters is with the EU Commission, which deliberates in secret. How this appalling state of things came to be is another matter"
No surprise that the Economist said being a EU commissioner was the "cushy job of the year". Lots of power, hardly anyone to answer to, rather good pay and best of all, you work behind the scenes and largely out of the public spotlight.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Nightwish did the same thing, by the way, but their crippled version was a limited edition which sold out fairly quickly. I wonder what they learned from that. (Nightwish was tainted with evil, though. They said on their website which was which but the CD package didn't mention it.)
If I can figure out what "R-TX" means, then you can figure out "EUCD" :-)
The only reason a state law would be taken to the federal supreme court would be to argue it's constitutionality. Each state has it's own supreme court to decide matters of state law... so if the states agree that they will pass a law, only the states that actually pass them will have that law enforceable in their state. Of course federal law is another matter.
I feel an odd kinship with those accross the sea who are fighting off the same bullshit that we are.. and sadly losing to apathy.
My Blog
EUCD was dropped because the EU was threatened under the DMCA for copying the DMCA.
EU has very much less nukes and no proper delivery system anyway.
I susspect we're talking football (FIFA) World Cup here. This is the competition in which National Football Associations take part, not countries. Scotish FA is a member of FIFA, thus eligible to participate, as Northern Ireland, England and Wales are.
However, Scotland has as much chanse of winning one of these, as pigs have to fly one day.
Or you use the RCA in on your TV
Not all television sets sold in the United States have a composite video input connector (commonly called an "RCA in"), which was stratjakt's whole point.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has had a DMCA-clone on the books for nearly fifteen years: Section 296 of the Copyright Act
Will I retire or break 10K?
AFAIK, Norway refused to enter the EU, so why do you feel concerned about EU directives? they are not relevant there.
From the EUCD-status page:
Norway
* Note : Norway is not an EU member state. It is however a member of the EEA and thus has to implement the EUCD.
Ah the liberty of being outside the EU - not....
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I've got the perfect solution to our problems.
Here's what we do: Stop paying taxes. Every last one of us.
If everyone refuses to pay taxes, the government will be completely cash-starved. They can't jail all of us, right? They can't even afford the first investigation. So they'll just have to do without the money.
This means a huge (100%) decrease in the budget. Then we tell the senators and representatives to get dayjobs, because we'll only start paying taxes again if they give up their salaries completely, and amend the constitution to make it permanent.
Now, two things happen. First, eventually all the politicians will be poor folk like the rest of us, so they'll make laws that favor the poor folk rather than the rich--such as allowing fair use, including making backups since that's cheaper than buying a second copy of something.
Second, eventually nobody will really want to be a career politician. Since the only people fit to rule are those who don't want to (who am I quoting? I forget the source at the moment), and there will be nobody around who wants to rule, we'll have rulers who are fit for the job, almost by definition.
With the political parties/machines gone, people will vote for their next-door neighbors...or themselves. It'll be chaos, and I think we'll come out with a better government than we have now because of it.
Then we get around to such things as repealing the DMCA and really skewering Microsoft.
Finally, once again the U.S. will be a leader of the free world! No longer will we have to follow the lead of pioneering countries like Finland--we'll be the pioneers! Glory to this great nation!
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
From what I understand, this is similar to a single state trying to overturn a law enacted by the U.S. Federal Government. If Michigan decided they didn't like the DMCA, nobody would really care...it wouldn't have any effect on the outcome of, well, anything. Finland's case sounds like it's different only in the specifics.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
EUROPA!!!! I Wanna live in EUROPE!!!
It's -15 centrigrade and windy here. Whatever the law, moving is not worth it. Keep out.
Mikko
Reason for dropping the draft is really that the Finnish parliament decided that it doesn't have enough time to finalise the legislation before the elections in march... Not exactly a "huge legal win for EFFI" as it is hyped.
Unfortunately the EuroDMCA directive is in effect despite that not all member states have implemented the local legislation.
EUCD.INFO. You can donate money to help, tax deducible in France.
A proposal has been made last week to the national parliament to consider stating explicitely that data format, protocols and encryption are not technical measures of protection in the sense of the European Union Copyright Directive.
Laurent
Grrr.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
In the article about downloading:
"The Commission estimates over 17,000 jobs are lost annually through piracy and counterfeiting in the EU."
They don't say how this estimate came about, but at face value it seems to demonstrate a dismal lack of understanding of basic economics, I won't even introduce the fallacy of lost sales (would never have bought the disc anyway...) into the argument. I'm neither a downloader nor a big buyer of discs, yet every time I spend money it helps provide someone with a job. Exactly the same applies to people who stop buying discs and download, unless they leave the money they save in a tin box at home, which I doubt.
I am not defending downloaders; I am demanding that the European Commission resign en bloc due to imcompetence.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I believe it was, and still is legal for you to make backup copies of your CD's and to make greatest hits compilations of your collection for *your own personal use* - not for your friends?
What's new is that you're not allowed to do this any longer, if it means you have to circumvent the technical measures that content providers built into a particular medium to prevent this, ie. if the CD in question is copyprotected somehow. Think CD's without af CD-logo, think Star Wars scores.
This has a whole lot of implications, and for the CD's it may not be as big deal, but for DVD's for the time being, it means it's illegal to watch these on GNU/Linux systems because you have to circumvent technical measures (with DeCSS). Of course with a closed source and licensed DVD player, it's ok, but I believe you won't find this anywhere anytime soon for GNU/Linux. The essence of this is that EUCD conflicts with development of Free and Open Soure Software, in part because the content providers get to decide what *you* do with your *own* CD's and DVD's, etc. There's a whole lot more to the FOSS issue.
This is just the beginning. I don't watch DVD's on my computer, but as I stated elsewhere in another comment, the interpretation of the EUCD has led to the conclusion, here in Denmark, that it's illegal to import DVD's (and CD's for that matter) from outside the EU, with the intent of selling them. Again, it's completely legal to privately import them, as I do now, but it means that all the stores where I used to buy my Region 1 DVD's are closing shop.
In other words the EUCD makes it illegal for these stores to import *culture* for me - think about it - I mean sure I could just buy the same DVD's in Region 2, but what about Japanese Manga titles (Region 4), or really hard to come by Horror movies (mostly Retion 1).
Anyway, Carlsberg is great, but Tuborg rules, ok! :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Since I attended the 1st BB Awards Gala of EFFI, I have decided to join EFFI, but never got around to really doing it...
Finns are like Irish people. They have a lot in common.
Get the full text here.
The Commission also put up an FAQ
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The DMCA was written to protect the interests of data distributors. The whole idea is to prevent the cost-negating distribution network called the Internet from affecting the cost of distributing data which has enjoyed high cost (fat profit margin) CD[ incl. CDROM] and DVD distribution. The cost of CD and DVD distribution is paid to an industry of distributors. They are middlemen whose economic niche has been proven obsolete by the Internet. Since artists and producers do not need them for distribution, they are playing their other card: revenue agregators. That function serves the artist/producer end of the data economy.
Admittedly, a revenue model which pays the artists and producers for their work without involving the traditional distributors hasn't emerged. The distributors are not so confident, so they are seeking protection like tariffs. This is an age old issue rearing its ugly head in a new place, and we will eventually solve it the way we always do: the middlemen buy their policymakers and get their policy.
In the US, the distributors dominate the world market for movies, music, and any other software. In the EU, the distributors and the artists and producers from which they distribute software are worldwide underdogs by sheer revenue. Neither the distributors nor the artists and producers in the EU will gain if they support a scheme that allows the gargantuan US companies to dictate the terms of their business.The DMCA could give US media distributors the leverage they need to control the EU market.
What the US distributors fear is that the next Beatles will emigrate from the US to the EU where the DMCA allows the artists to dictate more of the business, and gives them access to more of the end-consumer's money...if such an economy were to pop up in the EU...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...