DMCA, Auf Deutsch

Kavau writes "The lower house of the German parliament just passed an amendment to the copyright law (sorry, article in German only). The highly controversial law will severely limit consumers' rights to make private copies of copyrighted media, and imposes special taxes on virtually any device that can potentially be used for copyright circumvention (among these devices are printers, CD burners, scanners and cell phones). Also, circumvention of copyright protection mechanisms will become illegal, as it already is in the United States." There's a short blurb (in English) at the Register Update: 04/13 19:20 GMT by T : [Sorry, actually it's The Inquirer]; note that this has passed the lower house of the German parliament, but has not yet been voted on by the upper.

Kavau continues: "The law does not directly prohibit the fabrication of private copies, but it offers the copyright holder the right to do just that. And we probably can expect the majority of copyright holders to make use of this right. The law simply takes away what US citizens would call the consumer's right to fair use. An exception is made for schools and research institutes, which may provide excerpts of copyrighted media to a group students or researchers.

One of the most important maxims of European law is "in dubio pro reo" (if in doubt, rule in favor of the defendant). While this principle applies to the judicature, and we are talking about the legislature here, the new law nevertheless seems to have perverted this principle: it treats every computer owner as a potential copyright pirate. Thank you, government, for the trust you are showing in your citizens! What's next? Special taxes on pen and paper? Note also that we are likely going to see similar laws in other European countries soon. The law follows guidelines imposed by the European Union in 2001."

Comments

Interesting developments...

[Anonymous Coward]

Under ancient (and not-so-ancient) Arabic law, you steal, and you get your hand chopped off.

Under new American/EU policy, you get your hand chopped off so that you can't steal.

And *who* has the brutal regime here?

DMCA disease sweeps Europe

[D4C5CE]

For more information on why this is important news for people in other countries as well, just see the links below (some of them still in German, though):

The German parliament which has just adopted DMCA-style provisions to outlaw the circumvention of technical protection measures that control and curtail the fair use of intellectual property (and only needs the other House's assent for part of the new legislation) makes Germany the third country, following Denmark and Greece, to implement the highly controversial "monstrosity" known as the European Union Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC.

This move, allegedly a "propaganda victory" dubbed "lex Bertelsmann" (after the giant media conglomerate expected to line their corporate pockets under the new laws) in furious disapproval by tech-savvy parts of the news media, makes Germany one of the early adopters setting an unfortunate precedent for further European countries like the UK and France whose citizens, and notably developers like Linux kernel guru Alan Cox, will probably not be spared from similar legislation for much longer either.

Although open-source researchers, cyber-rights activists and even the ruling Social Democrats' very own IT experts as well as hardware manufacturers underlined the severe dangers and inconsistencies of this new and doubtful philosophy extending copyright law to reduce many of the general public's rights to insignificance, in a debate focusing only on academic exemptions from the publishers' power grab, the opposition even tried to tighten the government's bill, ignoring widespread experiences of Chilling Effects such as censorship and assaults on the Freedom to Tinker during the past four years under the EUCD's U.S. counterpart of draconian "bad law and bad policy", the flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, another overreaching implementation of the