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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."
Consensual sex is boring.
One of the main reasons that the DMCA has caused so little controversy in mainstream American society (no, Slashdot is not mainstream) is that the conventional media has pretty much refused to cover it.
I'm just curious but have any Slashdot readers from Germany, Austria, Denmark, Greece, or Italy noticed any significant coverage in the media of these euro-DMCA laws? Also, what does the local reaction seem to be? Do most people know enough about the issues to care?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
[article]"6.1 Makes it illegal to circumvent a protection measure. Note that there is no requirement to show that the person who does the circumvention did it in order to infringe copyright law. Circumventing for the sake of making a copy of a music file you have bought in order to listen to it on your portable MP3 player is just as illegal as circumventing in order to put the music on Napster."
whats the point of creating technology that plays compressed music files to enable us to carry around loads of our (paid for) music in a small package if they make it illegal. the whole idea was to make it easy to listen to all of my CD's anywhere without a huge CD wallet bulging at the seams. the napster phenomenon was a different issue totaly, but now it's twisting MP3's from the beautiful thing they were, to a taboo that can land you in jail.
it's not the technology's fault, it's the users fault. guns don't kill people, people kill people - right? well, MP3 players don't steal MP3's. if i can no longer rip MY CD's and upload them to MY player without pissing off some litigator somewhere, then -- F*#% the bozos.
I personally went to the EP for 3 days last week and there really are an incredible amount of MEPs who did not have any idea at all about how bad the current proposal is and who became quite supportive of us after we explained the situation to them. Informing politicians is not the job of the media, but largely of their assistants. Informing the assistants is a job of lobbying groups and individuals.
If you don't contact any politicians or their assistants, you cannot expect them to hear your concerns (although it would be really nice, of course). They vote on about 60 dossiers per week in the EP, so they just don't have the time to go actively looking for information about each and every one of those. Each party has its own specialist for different subjects. The specialists from each faction then create a voting list together, which more often than not is followed blindly by the rest of the faction (since they don't know anything about the dossier).
This is obviously not an ideal situation, since those specialists often have an agenda to push. So informing as many politicians as possible about your point of view is indeed what is necessary. Some will refer you to their local specialist, but most certainly not all of them.
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Looking at the comments that have been posted so far, most appear to be around the "America vs Europe" contest that is ongoing on Slashdot, or "Who do we blame for this?" along with the usually lame trolls.
/. after all...
How about instead, people put some thought into the possibilities of beating some sort of system and what the actual outcome of such regulation would be? There are a lot of clever people in this community and occasionally it's nice to hear what one of them has to say.
1. Will it just be the large coporates who put out DRM protecred media meaing that people who do not get the share of the consumers wallet.
2. Is this going to be like prohibition in the '20s where speakeasy joints for music trading spring up around the world.
3. How practical is it to build an encrypted freenet or something entirely separate from the regular 'Internet' which would allow a sort haven from this type of legislation?
4. Will we just end up as a fractional online society where certain geographical areas of the world (Far East, emerging African states) continue to pump out copies by the ton?
Anyone care to put in a serious comment?
Nah! This is
How can this be claimed to be consistent with the ideal of 'democracy' that the eurocrats are always blathering about? An unelected group of beaureacrats draft a 'directive' which the elected representatives of, for instance, Finland reject - and then it's enforced on the Finnish people anyway, against their wishes?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I remember hearing a BBC article on the difference betwee the Finnish and British governments. You (yes, you, Joe Public, even Joe Foreigner) can just walk in off the street to the residence of the Finnish Prime Minister, and ask to see any government related document. And they don't peer at you in a suspicious manner and tell you they'll get back to you in two years after checking your security clearance, they smile and fetch it straight away, and get you coffee while you're waiting. For example, they fetched some of the personal correspondance between Tony Blair and the Finnish Prime Minister, the actual original letters, and just handed them over, no questions, no bullshit.
Contrast with asking for copies of the same correspondance in the UK. The UK Freedom of Information act gives you every right to see them, but when the BBC asked for them, they were given the run around, passed from department to department in Whitehall, each one of which expressed amazement that anyone would ask for this. They were eventually fobbed off by being told that such correspondance was classified, too secret to be seen. They said that they'd already seen it, and that it talked mostly about football. This produced outright disbelief, and vague threats about carrying out "further investigation" on the reporter.
I think that sums up the spectrum in Europe. In some places, there is a genuine openness and willingness to trust Joe Public. In others, the citizen is treated with suspicion and disdain.
My hope is that we move towards the Finnish position. My fear is that we'll all end up more like Britain.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The one thing about the Berlesconi incident (another publisher with alleged crooked links) is that it did prove that there is some life in the Parliament.
See my journal, I write things there
Do you really think that you could even get 5 people, let alone 5 million people, to turn themselves in?
If you have a felony on your record, you'll find it very hard to get a job, get credit for a mortgage or car loan, or anything else. That risk alone (and the risk of going to jail) will scare many people away from even thinking about turning themselves in, even if they have done something against the law.
On the other hand, if you can prove via statistics that 90% of the population has copied at least one CD or downloaded an illegal MP3, you might have a great case on your hands... without the risk of so many people being carted off to jail.
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No question the US government companies have backed such legislation. But there are many large European companies that also back this legislation. To blame the US and only the US is naive. Take for example one of the world's biggest media companies, Vivendi-Universal, its a French company. Or Murdoch and his media conglomerate, he's an Australian...
Seen from the side that even a "suspected violation" can get you fined, the Germans have just proven they follow some 60 year old traditions again.
And with German lawyers very triggerhappy to send out cease-and-desist letters, it won't get any better. Luckily, we don't have any of this crap one country south yet.
due to the eu the next world war (or should it now be called a 'civil war') will take place. i`m guessing within the next 2 decades. seeing as when a country joins the eu they're going to be bound by a constitution meaning they cannot EVER leave the eu. which means the eu can only break apart when either ALL countries agree (not gunna happen) or if there's a war, which there will be.
the eu is a big dictatorship in the making, they're taking over countries with a "one size fits all" attitude, with disreguard for national identity, suddenly everyone is "european" not "german", "french" or "belgian" etc.
the eu should be one thing, a free-trade market. that's what these countries signed up for, and suddenly they're being told they're going to be one big federal state like the US. they're making the EU into a single country through the back door.
every couple of days i see a new law being passed or proposed by the eu which restricts peoples rights, it's the exact opposite of the US - the us was for freedom for the ppl, the EU is freedom for the politicians.
you only have to look at the laws proposed by the EU to see how bad it is, regardless of whether or not they're passed, the fact that EU politicians want to have a common foreign policy etc shows just how disgusting this is.
the norwegians aren't being pushed into cos they have a source of finance, same with lichenstein, i think switzerland along with great britain aren't swallowing their shit.
this will end in tears, it will end in a war, maybe before then it'll end in a US - EU cold-war II situation.
WTF is a sig?
Well, let's see it Europeans.
I was really hoping you were right.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Do you know that the DMCA is the result of a treaty passed by the WIPO (itself a cousin of WTO)? When you see people, protesting in the streets to end the WTO treaties -- THE DMCA IS JUST ONE UNDEMOCRATIC, ANTI-CITIZEN products of the WTO!!
/. ive posted this link, and other bits that let people know exactly where the DMCA is coming from -- no one seems to put two and two together.
/., who dont support overbearing copyright law, do you realize, that the people who are protesting in the streets -- the world over -- against the WTO are on your side ? This /. crowd, being very in-tune with IP and Technology are just one small group, angry and frustrated with the DMCA. The DMCA is a PRODUCT of un-democratic bodies like the WTO -- literally funded by massive multi-nationals -- who are re-writing international relations in order to entrench their power. The DMCA is just ONE MINOR aspect of this effort.
For all the times on
Please read below:anti-dmca.org/faq_local.html
For the Pro-public domain crowd at
The USA's corrupt, plutocratic government is only partly responsible for the DMCA, in reality, they have empowered the bureaucracy to take their weight and allow it to be wielded by the Lobbyists and Lawyers of International Capitalists.
It doesnt matter if you think Im a crazed (i am not) anti-capitalist (i am), the reality is that Corporate Bodies are very literally writing international treaties, that are later enforced in the domestically in the USA, Canada, Australia, EU etc etc etc. The WTO is staffed / funded by the International Plutocrats... * THEY * are responsible for the DMCA -- your corrupt Congress is only an after-thought in the DMCA effort.. and all the rest.
It doesn't help that there's been very few people fighting this from the beginning. Check the EUCD status page. Of the groups listed there, most didn't exist five years ago. Now we are teaming up, making sure we won't be late next time. (The directive was passed spring 2001, no protests)
I believe these organizations are going to make a real difference in the coming years. If you live in Europe, contact the nearest, especially if you are eastern european (We need contacts in the soon-to-be-EU countries)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
From the very beginning, the EU has been about the creation of a single market and the removal of internal barriers against the circulation of people, goods, services, and capital. So if a good is legally in the EU, it is free to move anywhere within the EU without any restriction.
What will happen with DVDs? Manufacturers of DVD players are supposed to sell their products only in the area covered by the applicable region code. The same goes for the disks themselves. Thus manufacturers will try to prevent the free circulation of goods (DVD and players) between the Baltic countries and the other members, because these countries are in another DVD region.
Isn't that likely to render the DVD region coding scheme simply illegal under the EU internal market rules, since it amounts to voluntary fragmentation of EU markets? And if so, won't the circumvention of the region code, illegal under the EUCD, be authorised because the region coding itself would be illegal?