Slashdot Mirror
DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe
D4C5CE continues:
"Earlier implementations have been reported from Austria, Denmark, Greece and Italy.
Legal scholars consider the directive itself an invalid "monstrosity", and the German law unconstitutional. In fact, this legislation is viewed as so terribly awful that even from the U.S., the EFF tried to prevent it in a rare intervention overseas.
Declaring that the circumvention rather than the use of Copy Protection is a Crime, the German parliament threatens to make things even worse by adopting a "second stage" with further steps to impose DRM and additional levies later this year, but unsurprisingly, all of the issues that DMCA-style laws have become notorious for are already there: Overbreadth, overprotection of technical measures, and Chilling Effects aplenty.
Record companies eagerly awaiting this "lex Bertelsmann" have already caused ISPs to send out warning letters to P2P users for alleged copyright infringement, and are expected to take legal action against individual users of file-sharing networks, following in the footsteps of RIAA.
Confirming the fears expressed by Alan Cox on Slashdot, computer gurus will soon find no place left to go even on the European side of the pond, and the Free-X "Independence Day" XBox exploit posted by one brave German just in time before this dismal day may well have been one of the very last legal disclosures in this part of the world as well."
The number of European countries enacting their ignorance..
No, it is not ignorance, it is Corporate Control. And don't fool yourself, both left and right alike are controlled by corporations, in almost every country.
Don't forget it's mostly because of the US (and US companies) pressuring Europe into their legislation.
Does this really surprise anyone? Most people don't care about the issues in general, much less this one. Those who do care, and try to be vocal about it are simply paid no attention to by our governments, no matter what the nationality. We're slowly losing the ability to control what we do with our technology, our knowledge, and our lives. I keep waiting for something to give, for that final straw where more than just a few of us stand up and say 'No More!' but it hasn't happened. I fear it won't happen in my life time.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
This is a wake up call all you Europe fan-boys who piss and moan about the United States:
There's no safe-haven in the world from this type of B.S., face it. America ain't so bad.
You've got that backwards. This is fodder for people who piss and moan about the united states. These type of laws were pioneered in the US, and it is (to a large degree) US interests that have helped to push these laws overseas.
The US has, in the past, threatened to walk out of international talks because other participants refused to consider the implementation of DMCA-esque laws.
We (the USA) produce most of the world's copyrighted material, and we give out billions of dollars each year to other countries for free. If we want them to pass a law that favors us, they will all do it. They have little choice. If we decide applejuice needs to be outlawed, we'll get (via bribes and threats) every country in the world to outlaw it. What the US wants, it gets. As an American, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Were we wanting rational things, I suppose I'd be somewhat happy and maybe even a bit proud (in an egocentric sorta way).
Anyway, that's all this is. Sorta like drug laws. We want it to be illegal, so we'll pay for everyone else to make it illegal. End of story.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
This is more or less a flamebait of the most transparent form. Mode me troll if you wish, but moderator, most of the time on slashdot I see post on how EU has less liberty than US because of free pseech law. And now that ? Get real. This isn't funny at ALL. Even with a bad humor you should not find this flame bait funny.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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I'd say they learned all too well from our experience with the DMCA. Our opinion of the DMCA means nothing to those in power, nor to those pushing for DMCA-like laws. I know it will come as a big surprise, but none of the copyright holders nor politicians have been intimidated by a bunch of whiners on /.
This is exactly what the copyright holders want, and is exactly what the copyright holders' donations bought them.
When I read and discuss this here, I'm unable to imagine how the DMCA and its ilk continue getting support. But then I leave my house and talk to ordinary people, and they have no idea what the DMCA is nor how it impacts them. And, amazingly, if they do know they usually parrot some of the "pirating is bad" BS they hear in the press.
You'll be surprised, but millions will probably actually be intimidated by the upcoming prosecutions by the RIAA of individuals downloading music, and they will stop. Remember, these are the same Average Joes that believe Microsoft can track their email and Bill Gates will send them thousands of dollars for forwarding chain letters.
... based on systematic intellectual property violations, reverse engineering and circumvention, take your peak, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, you name it. I guess they will put themselves behind those laws and continue to surf the wave. It's not the developed countries I am so concerned about, it is the enormous technology gap that will continue to grow between those countries and the less fortunate ones.
Yeah, criticise aepervius's poor spelling. Let him know how badly it "suxx".
Apart from the US spelling of "humor" the only mispelt word in his entire post is the typo of "speech". Granted, his grammar might not be perfect but, as English most probably isn't his first language, that's excusable.
I'd like to see your French, German or Spanish grammar stand up to a rigorous inspection but I doubt that you're able to speak any foreign languages at all.
Stop being a petty little man and grow up.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
MP3 players are popular in Germany, particularly now for cars (MP3/CD) where the compression means you don't need large and inconvenient changers.
Bertelsmann are big though and control distribution rights for both souznd and video products in Germany. They have been lobbying for the implementation of this rule.
However, the real problem is that it is an EU directive. Unless countries can prove a get out under subsidiarity, they must implement the directives or risk a large fine.
The other problem is the multi-region DVD players on sale. This will certainly stop under this technical measures clause. Shame for all those people who want to look at non-region 2 DVDs, for example that large immigrant population from the former Soviet Union.
See my journal, I write things there
Well, there are issues about how this directive could be translated into domestic law - it could be in a hard hitting way or it could be in a softer way.
One the democracy point the issue is this: this matter should have been tackled when the question of principle came up in 2001, not now.
Between 21% and 40% for the majority of the population. Maybe not insanely low, but not insanely high.
communist health care
The right to free health care is a bad thing?
no right to bear arms
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
This is not necessarily the right to private ownership of arms - it can be argued this is the right for the state to have an armed militia (normally called an Army!). Not everyone views gun ownership as a good thing anyway.
forced conscription
National Service dropped in 1962 I believe.
unbelievable regulation of motor vehicles and communications
I am informed by friends in California that vehicles over here would be regulated off the roads there. Communications is as open as in the US.
rampant trade protectionism
No more and no less than in the US. That's why there are regular "trade wars" between US and European industries - you protect yours, we protect ours...
and now europe's getting its own DMCA
Sadly it looks like this may be the case. But guess which nation much of the lobbying is coming from.
My brother predicted this, about 4 years back. Essentially, he said that America had been the vanguard (note the past-perfect tense) of justice; this made American business more profitable, and meant that if other countries wanted to keep up, they had to have some reasonable fraction of the same kind of justice.
But as our ignoring the constitution accelerated, it became clear that American justice was not functioning properly, and American business immediately began to hurt. So my brother saw that this was going to happen [remember, 4 years ago we were still in the boom], and predicted that we would see petty dictatorships rise everywhere. Indeed, it happens.
Oh, well. It is indeed a sad day. Europe had the chance to become the leader of justice, and indeed when Lithuania was considering entering, I considered it more of an advantage than a disadvantage, provided that there was good will.
After all, more free trade is better than less free trade. More natural rights is better than more granted rights. Better for the economy, better for the human condition, better, even, for morality.
It seemed there was more of all that. Now I begin to wonder.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Art 6(2) EUCD
"Technological measures shall be deemed "effective" where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process , such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective. "
i read this "effectiveness" not as "effective" in a technical sense, but in a legal one; indeed very effective legal protection for the content holders since they can determine what you can do with your purchase simply by adding ANY protection mechanism.
Yes, they do. Because they claim to be protesting 'against globalization', which is such a wishy washy phrase, no wonder nobody listens to them. Now they have a list of damn good reasons to hate the WTO, maybe they could start producing some when asked by journalists.
== Jez ==
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Let's face it; there is no "them or us". /anything/ it is showing people of different backgrounds that we're pretty much alike. I, like you undoubtedly, have met people from all over the world, chatted with them a bit, and wondered where all there "misunderstandings" like that cold-war came from, since they're not that different from me.
/want/ to be different, we aren't all that different at all.
,person to person ,and have a normal conversation about just about everything. Sure there would be disagreement, but that's ok, but I think there would also be alot of things we would agree on, since it's a lot harder to severely dislike a person then an objectified country and everything it supposedly stands for.
If internet has done
What gives birth to these "misunderstandings" is "them or us" thinking. It breeds fear, and promotes the wrong kind of people into power.
If slashdot shows anything, it's that there are "likeminded" people in almost every country in the world. Some more agreeable, some less, but all in all it shows, that no matter how much we
Perhaps one day the ideal of a global village will become truth, a village where everyone realizes that everybody is somebodies direct neightbour, and there is no such thing as "our" freedom, or "their" freedom, but only freedom of "the people". If such a thing ever is to happen, it's seeds are sown now, where you can converse with people all over the planet, and see for yourself that you can like someone in Taiwan even better then your real life neighbour.
To see this idea bloom is the main reason for free speech and digital freedom, and is far more important then copying some music and the (loss of) riches associated with that.
I write this as a fervent anti-USA fanboy, because I don't like what your country does (promote horrid fast-food chains, promote dumb commercial television/channels, spread the belief that once you have a lot of money it doesn't matter how you got it, and overpromoted godawfull pop-music). But never be mistaken that you (if you're an american) and I could sit down
If your somewhat Free software inclined, I would probably agree more with you then one of my fellow countrymen, who wouldn't know eroding freedom if it jumped up and bit him in the ass.
All this "them or us" thinking leads to one thing, and that's FUD on a national level. Only when a large part of the populations are capable of thinking and making decisions for themselves, and will not buy into demonization of other countries (I'm not talking about *BSD evangelisation here), will true freedom for all be feasible.
So next time when a headline tells about eroding freedoms, don't think "well, at least it's not 'us' that have to worry about that, let 'them' worry", ultimately it's 'our' freedom it's about, whether you like it our not.
And always remember,
"Bad facts make bad laws"
And along with another French company, Suez, they control 40% of the worlds water supplies. America might lead with the fake free-market spin, but there are just as many European corporations happy to tag along (or even take the lead).
the conventional media has pretty much refused to cover it.
Duh. The "conventional media" is 100% owned and operated by the same companies that are benefiting from this law. Do you REALLY think they're going to speak out against something that gives them all the powers of law enforcement with none of the restrictions?
Losing HARDLY means that your case never should have gone to court. Only in an egregious case is that true. The truth is that most cases could turn out either way. If a jury could reasonably decide in favor of either party, perhaps you don't want the case brought out of a desire to not backlog the courts, but it was nevertheless a valid dispute. And when judges could go either way, and various levels of the courts reverse themselves, and the appellate votes are split, there is DEFINATELY a valid case. Besides which, unless the case is pretty egregious, and really never had any chance at all, how are the parties supposed to have such great legal minds as to know how things will turn out in advance?
No offense, but your dad seems to have more of a black and white of a view of things than seems healthy for a lawyer.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I think we need to hack up some way to keep a cashflow going from end-user to creators, be it music, film, software or underlying technological infrastructure.
I think it is counterproductive to insist on control of copies, or private monopolies, enforced with copyrights or patents. However, those who do the job need to eat, and it is also counterproductive to force them to sell auxillary products (e.g. sell a t-shirt to fund writing music), or make money through advertising (I'd like to see the death of todays advertising business).
It is therefore we must focus on getting the money from the end user to the creator with the least possible resistance.
We could draw up a standard where payment information could be included as metadata in web pages, Ogg files or software. The applications that is used to view or play keep track of what you're viewing, and every week or month, it presents you with a list of what you've done in the past week or month, and what payment is requested by the author or artist. Most likely, the payment is passed as a voluntary (anonymous) micropayment.
If we can get this working, and hackers and independent artists start making a living from it, we'll see some opposition, but I think that we would be in a much better position to argue that *AA is just protecting old style business models, worth no protection.
But I think it is the only way we can do it: Provide a new business model, that can be seen to be sustainable.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I'm a US citizen, and I do not like seeing this happen in other countries.
Other countries need to stand up to the United States and the WTO, and say "no." I'm sure most people in Europe do not want Europe to become exactly like the United States.
Tell your politicians that you do not want the European Union to turn into the "United States East," which it is slowly (maybe not so slowly anymore) becoming.
This "DMCA in Europe" is likely being pushed through by the WTO, which seems to serve the interests of giant corps who would like nothing more than to see Europe turn into a mirror of what the US has become.
I was rather refreshed to see France stand up and say "NO" to Bush on Iraq. I'd enjoy it even more if other countries in Europe started following suit and saying "NO" to the US and US-Style legislation.
Crap like the DMCA is bad enough in the US. It doesn't need to go overseas.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah