German Library Allowed To Crack Copy Protection

AlexanderT writes "The EU Directive 2001/29/EU (also known as the European Copyright Directive) has made it "a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection or access control systems on digital content such as music, videos, eBooks, and software". Since today, at least in Germany there is one notable exception: The Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany's national library and bibliographic information center, has received a "license to copy", i.e. the official authorization to crack and duplicate DRM-protected e-books and other digital media such as CD-Audio and CD-Roms. The Deutsche Bibliothek achieved an agreement with the German Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the German Booksellers and Publishers Association after it became obvious that copy protections would not only annoy teenage school boys, but also prohibit the library from fulling its legal mandate to collect, process and bibliographic index important German and German-language based works."

Comments

8-bit museum

[Neo-Rio-101]

Sweet! It will now be able to legally store the complete collection of cracked Commodore 64 disk games!

Re:8-bit museum

[zakezuke]

Sweet! It will now be able to legally store the complete collection of cracked Commodore 64 disk games!

Oh joy. Eternaly preserved load screens with "Cracked by xxxxxx" "Greetz to...." and "k-rad 0-day vvarzz". And worse yet... eternaly preserved bogus hex-edited credits that say "Cracked by Kaptain K Mart".

Re:8-bit museum

[Anonymous Coward]

http://planetemu.net/

Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this would be a brilliant time to point of this essay, the right to read!
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read .html

It'll take you 5 minutes to get through but I think everyone should check it out :)

Re:Right to read

[dash2]

Let me bite.

Should it be illegal to break into someone else's computer? Yes. It's a violation of their privacy and means you could access information which you don't have a right to.

Why doesn't the same logic apply to breaking into someone's copy-protected CD? If you want unlimited rights to the digital content - i.e., you want to actually own the song or software - then you should buy those rights. If you don't have that ownership right then you aren't allowed to try and steal it - even if you own the physical medium.

Re:Right to read

[nkh]

But what happen when 10 years from now I want to listen to my copy-protected CD and can't do it anymore because it is protected?

I don't want unlimited rights to the content, I want unlimited rights to listening to the content, and this is what I bought...

Re:Right to read

[hkmwbz]

Did you even read the text?

"Breaking into someone's copy-protected CD" is one thing, but I don't see the relevance. Why would I break into someone else's CD? The thing is, I'm breaking into my own copy-protected CD. I bought the CD, it's mine.

Is it wrong to "break into" my own car?

Re:Right to read

[TheOldFart]

What if tomorrow DVD's are replaced by some other technology? Within a few years you no longer can find a DVD player to replace yours that just died. Now you have a collection of DVDs which contain the material you paid a license to watch. Your options are to pay again to have something you already have and paid for or to break the law and copy the data to a new medium. Why is that a crime?

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

You bought the right to drive your own car, not to build an exact copy of this car and sell it.

Re:Right to read

[hkmwbz]

"You bought the right to drive your own car, not to build an exact copy of this car and sell it."

Really! So I only have the right to drive my own car? I can't modify it? I can't change the tires when needed? Fill gasoline?

Building an exact copy of the car and selling it would be more like creating CDs with someone else's copyrighted work, and selling them. But that's not what I'm talking about at all. I am simply talking about the right to do with my own CD as I damn well please.

You really should go back to analogy school and get your shit sorted out. Your analogies suck.

Re:Right to read

[nkh]

What if tomorrow DVD's are replaced by some other technology?

There is a problem already happening right now: I still use old programs on my 386, programs I can't use anymore on Windows 9X or even XP (shared-memory, not enough EMS...). I have to install emulators to use them and even "crack" their copy protection just to launch them.

Re:Right to read

[Chran]

Maybe that guy should learn about the "right to writing classes".

Later, Dan would learn ...

It's a suck-ass story.

Re:Right to read

[Sloppy]

Why doesn't the same logic apply to breaking into someone's copy-protected CD?

[Talking about USA here.] Prior to the 2004 Blizzard decision, the "someone" was you; you were breaking into your own CD. For the period of 1789 through late 2004, whenever you bought a CD, you owned the CD. You owned a copy of the contents of the CD. You owned the software. You did not license it.

In spite of the fact that you owned the software on the CD, someone else held the copyright on this stuff that you owned, so there were of course many restrictions on what you could do with it. In 1997-1998, a bunch of new restrictions (DMCA) were added. But you still owned what you bought.

And in 2004, some judges (not legislators) changed it from "you own it but someone else has copyrighted it" to "someone else owns it, and when you thought you were buying it, the merchant was not actually transferring title to you, because he did not HAVE title to it, therefore you must be using it under the terms of some license."

Strange but true.

Re:Right to read

[Sloppy]

The Right to Read is one of those essays that I thought was utterly paranoid, stupid, and so ridiculously over-the-top dystopian in such an unrealistic way that the author must be smoking crack.

..Until it started coming true.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, without patents, you CAN build an exact replica of anyone's car and sell it. With patents, you can still build the car, but you cannot sell it.

GP is wrong on so many counts...

Re:Right to read

[hkmwbz]

"Actually, without patents, you CAN build an exact replica of anyone's car and sell it. With patents, you can still build the car, but you cannot sell it."

I'm talking about listening to a CD I bought, not counterfeiting.

Re:Right to read

[R.D.Olivaw]

I think that's partly the point here. They want you to buy the same content over and over again everytime a new technology is created.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it wrong to "break into" my own car?

Not at all, but is is a bad anology to start with a better one is , is it worng to break into a car that do not actually own and are rather only renting?

Re:Right to read

[cpt kangarooski]

Yours is a stupid comment, but I'll respond to it anyway.

You're wrong. And lets dispense with the stupid-ass car analogy.

When you buy a book, you buy the book completely in the absence of any further valid agreement otherwise. You do NOT just buy a right to read the book. You buy the book and get the right to do anything with it as a piece of personal property: read it, don't read it, give it away, burn it, etc.

What you buy, basically, is the right to use the book in absolutely any way, however you see fit, the right to extend that use to others (or take it back, as you like), and the right to dispose of the book in any manner.

This is the same whether you buy a book, or a baseball bat, or pretty much anything else.

The most relevant thing you get is access. Access to the intangible, unownable work that is expressed within the book. That is, if you own the paperback, you can access it to read the story within. If you don't, then the owner can determine whether you get to read the book, handle it, etc. which may as a practical matter limit your access to the story it contains.

Independently of all this, there MAY also be a copyright. A copyright is a negative right; it is not a right to do things or to allow others to do things. It is a right only to prevent other people from doing things.

Additionally, there is only a very short list of things it pertains to: reading is not one of them. Thus while a copyright holder can prevent other people from reproducing a work, he cannot prevent other people from simply reading it.

Thus the copyright holder cannot grant other people the right to read, since a) he can't grant rights, only promise not to himself prohibit them from doing things, and b) he has no authority over reading to begin with. Only reproduction, distribution, etc. which may, but doesn't necessarily, confer some control over access to the books, as distinct from the copyrighted works within the books.

Now, this is only a right to prohibit others. That's important! It means that other people must derive their right to read -- aside from matters of access -- from another source. In fact, since the copyright is a right of prohibition, it means that the right to actually do those things, a right we have accepted can be temporarily curtailed, must likewise derive from a different source than the mere copyright holder.

Because when the copyright expires, this means that the copyright holder can no longer prohibit others from doing things. Now they can exercise the right that they had all along, and do things that would've been infringing had they been done before.

Since these things are identical to the things the copyright holder likely was doing (and remembering that the copyright never conferred on him the right to do those things, only to prohibit others (this shows up a lot where there are two authors and two copyrights, one controlling on the other)) the copyright holder must've gotten his right to do those things from the same source as the rest of us.

That source is God. The right of free speech (which encompasses both expressing and receiving speech) is where the right to read and the right to make copies etc. come from.

We limit this a bit in the pursuit of some of the goals of our society (c.f. libel laws, advertising regulations) but ultimately we let it go unconstrained.

There are many practical examples of this:

Mark Twain was a noted American author who was very much in favor of ever expanding if not perpetual copyright (since after all it would make him more money, and he was bad with money so he needed more). IMO he was kind of an asshole. He NEVER would have wanted anyone to read his books without paying per read, and NEVER would've wanted people to get to make copies of his books without paying handsomely for the privilege.

But his books are in the public domain; I can read and reproduce them at will, for free. If he or his estate had even the slightest right to prevent this, I assure you, they'd use it as much as possible. They don't, illustrating my point, and ultimately showing us all that you are (in legal terms) a doofus.

Re:Right to read

[NotoriousQ]

Funny that you mention it, but breaking into your own car may not be wrong, but in many cases it is illegal.

The most legal way to break into your own car is to smash the window on your own property using a rock, because by opening the door with lockpicks, or breaking/cutting the window with specialized equipment, you have used "burglary" equipment, which is illegal to use, carry, and sometimes own without a license.

Check your state or nation's law about "burglary tool" and lockpicks in general. I think you will be surprised. Oh, and please see a lawer if you need real legal advice.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all, but is is a bad anology to start with a better one is , is it worng to break into a car that do not actually own and are rather only renting?

Obviously you should be able to access a car you're renting. If it's undamaged in the process then obviously there shouldn't be anything wrong with "breaking into it".

However, I don't think this tells us anything about access restrictions to copyright works which aren't rented anyway but are protected by law from being duplicated. All it tells us is that your analogy was even worse than the previous one.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm breaking into my own copy-protected CD. I bought the CD, it's mine.

You didn't buy the CD .. only the right to listen from the particular media in concern (otherwise they have to provide a new CD for every broken one you send back, for the cost of the media).For software, it's even worse - the EULA restricts you further (I read the Windows EULA with my sister , she freaked out after she realized what we had paid for)

Sad, but true :)..

Re:Right to read

[northcat]

Why doesn't the same logic apply to breaking into someone's copy-protected CD?

Because it's not someone *else*'s CD. It's yours. You bought it. You paid for it. Sure, you don't "own" like you own the house you live in, but it's not someone else's like the analogy you gave about someone else's computer. That's why the same logic doesn't apply. Now close your copy of "How to twist the English language to propogate your propaganda for dummies". It's obviously not helping.

Re:Right to read

[Pofy]

>Why doesn't the same logic apply to breaking
>into someone's copy-protected CD?

As allready pointed out, ownership of a copyright to a work and ownership to individual copies of the work is two completely different things. I can own a copy of a book (with work in the form of text in it) or a copy of a music CD (with work in the form of music, lyrics and performance of them on it), yet, someone else owns the copyrights to them. The copyright owner holds a few specific rights which is basically to create new copies of the work, the distribution of them and the performance. Anything else is NOT an exclusive right to the copyright owner. The owner of the specific copies can do pretty much anything else with them, just as with anything else you own. Specifically note that USE is not an exclusive right to the copyright owner.

Finally, also note that in most cases the CD will not be copy protected but rather access protected. You can copy it all fine, it is accessing it that is restricted. Access is, again, not a right that belongs to the copyright holder. The directive, by the way, really only mandates to prevent corcumvention of protection related to the copyright and the copyright owners rights, not any other general "rights" or "will" of the copyright holder. Of course, countries might decide to broaden it an also ban circumvention of other protections, that really have little to do with copyright though.

Re:Right to read

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Because humanity as a whole has a say in just what property rights should be allowed. Obviously, some property rights are a good thing, others would be bad. And it just so happens that IP is a controversial property right at the moment, in no small part because *humanity as a whole DID NOT* had a say in it. Our politicians are corrupt, and that right was purchased with bribes financed with the proceeds of a century of corrupt monopolized entertainment industry.

If literally anything can be property, why not sell off the atmosphere, the air we breathe? The federal government could make a fuckton of revenue, auctioning that off, for our own benefit of course. Pay down the debt. We'd have to pay a fee to breath, and wouldn't it be wonderful? I mean, now that someone owns it, they'd have reason to take care of it. They could charge hefty fees to polluters. Whole air industry bureaucracies would spring up, so that people with asthma or emphysema would get discounts. Heck, the "stop smoking" movement would really pick up steam, forgive the pun. Mind you, I'm not talking barbarianism here, if someone doesn't pay their air tax, we don't strangle them, they're just thrown in jail, on a work release program, wages garnished until they're paid up.

Or how about the oceans? Come to think of it, there are plenty of things that could become property, if we only tried. But only these greedy fucks, want to claim property rights on something that in the same fucking breath they turn around and try to *sell* it to me. If you write a poem for your sweetheart, then yeh, that might as well be property. Stealing it might not be such a bad way to put it, no one else is meant to have it (ironically, the only people who might be the slightest bit interested in stealing it, are the same ones crying thief when I download an MP3). Selling me a cd, and then claiming I stole it because I disabled lame-ass DRM, that's kinda dumb, isn't it? Mind you, I'm not against giving them the sole right to sell it, especially if it's for a limited time (which it isn't anymore). Catch someone selling warez CDs on the street corner, then lock them up. But then again, those aren't the ones they're interested in...

Re:Right to read

[Twanfox]

A wire coathanger is an illegal tool? Ouch. Last I checked, that's all that was necessary to break into a car.

Re:Right to read

[SunPin]

What if tomorrow DVD's are replaced by some other technology? Within a few years you no longer can find a DVD player to replace yours that just died. Now you have a collection of DVDs which contain the material you paid a license to watch. Your options are to pay again to have something you already have and paid for or to break the law and copy the data to a new medium.

The cynical answer would be that they want to sell more hardware (i.e., players) but stamping out disks is FAR more profitable and efficient than making new electronics. Keeping standards is FAR more profitable and efficient than getting into a situation where new ones have to be created.

The object for business is a sustainable profit stream. If they can kill off innovation, profits go up. Look no further than Microsoft for evidence.

Re:Right to read

[Twanfox]

Then they're going to lose. I won't buy things 50 times on different formats unless it happened to be an oddity I'm bringing up into new standards (have tape, want CD) or it is something I really loved and the new format offered signifigant bonuses (VHS->DVD). I will not upgrade an entire collection just because the technology has advanced, and they can KMA if they think I should. I don't have the money, and I don't have the time to do such a stupid thing.

I mean, seriously, would they (as a company) do such a stupid thing if they were in a similar position? If they wouldn't, then why would they ever expect us to do that, other than being blind or hopeful?

Re:Right to read

[NotoriousQ]

Wire coathanger is not illegal, however, if you bend it into the shape that is needed to open a lock, then it becomes a manufactured lockpick, which would be illegal.

Some states regulate the making of burglary tools a well, in which case you may get hit with both posession and manufacturing.

Re:Right to read

[azuravian]

It seems so innocent, until it's bent for nefarious use (ie - made into a burglary tool). A spoon is just a spoon until it has a black mark on the underside and traces of heroin. Then it's drug paraphernalia.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he bought the CD. The copyrighted material on the CD is covered by copyright law (ie you can't make a copy without permission). Unless, of course they had a contract saying otherwise before hand.

Re:Right to read

[stinerman]

At this point, /. would run a YRO story about coathangers.

Re:Right to read

[Pofy]

>You didn't buy the CD .. only the right to
>listen from the particular media in concern

Huh? Why would you need such a license to start with? There is no law forbidding listening to a CD hence you don't need any license to do it. Besides, as far as I know and have seen, almost any shop will actually sell you CDs. Sales are covered in sales law and the change of ownership is regulated.

>(otherwise they have to provide a new CD for
>every broken one you send back, for the cost of
>the media).

Why on earth would they have to do that?????

>For software, it's even worse

No it isn't, it is the exact same thing.

Re:Right to read

[Novous]

Sadly, because the movie industry wants more money.

Re:Right to read

[NotoriousQ]

Is coathanger.com registered?

Actually never mind, I bet the anti-abortionists already have it.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I renting a CD? I don't remember paying rent for it, I remember buying it. I'm sure if you went into a music store and started asking about rental terms and prices they'd tell you that they only sold CDs there, they didn't rent them.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

Really! So I only have the right to drive my own car? I can't modify it? I can't change the tires when needed? Fill gasoline?

I have a windshield wiper on my car. Obviously I am free to take it off, set it aside, and install a different one. Perhaps one I've made for myself. Perhaps one I've made for myself using my factory in Taiwan. Similarly for any other part in my car. You see where this is going, of course:

1. Purchase original Mercedes.
2. Remove OEM part A.
3. Replace with part A' from own factory.
4. Remove OEM part B.
5. Replace with B' from own factory.
6. Attach B to A and call it A. I now have (1) a Mercedes with replacement parts and (2) some removed original parts that I am the original owner for, and which I happen to be reassembling.
7. Go to step 4 until no original parts left on original vehicle.
8. At the end I will have two vehicles, my original Mercedes (with no original parts) and my new own-built car (with all Mercedes parts). I elect to sell my spare-but-assembled parts now. Or I can sell the parts separately but charge a separate assembly fee.
9. Clearly I should be able to pay someone to help me do this. Call these helpers my "factory workers".
10. Repeat whole process.
11. Profit!

Re:Right to read

[MegaFur]

There clearly must be some sort of potential counter-argument to this--else why would the German library have been granted an exception?

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

With patents, you can still build the car, but you cannot sell it.

No, with patents, you can't build the car at all (at least in the USA). A patent (in the USA) restricts you from making a copy of the invention, period. It doesn't matter whether you are making it for yourself or someone else, whether you are making it to keep or sell or give away, or whether you are making one or one million. A patent says that you can't make even one, for any reason whatsoever, unless you have permission from the patent owner.

Re:Right to read

[Reziac]

Funny thing, they do it to each other too. Frex, Microsoft stops supporting old versions of Windows, then businesses scream about forced upgrades and being compelled to buy new hardware to support the latest Windows.

It's really the same thing in a different venue.

Consumers would scream a lot louder if it affected an investment of more than a few bucks per item. What if every few years, mandated changes in fuel type and availability forced you to "upgrade" your car??

Re:Right to read

[Twanfox]

In it's normal shape, it has the potential to be used to jimmy a car's lock open.

Point I'm getting at is that there are many items that have perfectly innocent uses which can also be used for nefarious purposes.

At any rate, if you own the item in question (car, CD, etc), it is (or should be) your right to do whatever you want to with it. The only exception to that is if you take it out into a common public area, that it must be deemed safe to those around you. However, you could turn your car into a watermill motor, a DC generator, or whatever, because it's YOUR CAR. If you wanted to smash it with a hammer, break into it with a rock, so long as you own it, exactally what right does anyone have to say what you can or cannot do with it?

Re:Right to read

[waterbear]

Additionally, there is only a very short list of things it [i.e. copyright] pertains to: reading is not one of them.

Amen to that. But part of the poison in the European CR Directive and the laws that implement it in the member-states, is that where they prohibit the unlocking of copy-protection, they also, in effect, bring reading under the scope of copyright. Previously, reading was not an act restricted by copyright -- as the parent poster points out. But by this change it becomes covered indirectly.

-wb-

Re:Right to read

[acz]

Wait until this EU directive is challenged in court.

First thing I do when I buy an original is copy it to hard disk
and remove the CD protection check.

Same with CD, rip to mp3, copy to IPOD.

Same with Xbox and PS2 games..

I hate removable medias... and I don't like to be forced to use
them because of some stupid protections.

Software protection only protects companies from honest people, pirates don't care about protection as most of them
are so trivial to crack with IDA.

Re:Right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not so sure about all that... most laws probably state that another crime has to be committed with the device. For example, a bong isn't illegal to own or use, but if you smoke marijuana with it, then it becomes illegal. If you break into your own car, nobody will press charges against you, therefore you havn't committed a crime. Besides, any cop that arrests you for breaking into your own vehicle needs a swift kick in the crotch.

Re:Right to read

[NotoriousQ]

Where are you from. In a lot of places in the US it is illegal to own and sell bongs. See criminal code for drug paraphenalia.

Kicking the cop is a separate offense too.

Just goes to show...

[m50d]

how wrong these laws really are. If this law is preventing the library fulfilling its legal obligations, perhaps this shows it was a badly thought-out law?

Re:Just goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really bizarre about this is the library is legally required and therefore must legally be able to make copies. So why do they need a license? It's not like these German equivalents of the *AA's should be able to stop them.

Re:Just goes to show...

[konekoniku]

The law doesn't prevent the library from fulfilling its legal obligations - it only makes it more difficult to do so. Just like, incidentally, how civil liberties laws makes it more difficult for the government to fulfill its national security obligations.

Re:Just goes to show...

[konekoniku]

You're advocating the government seizure of private property without compensation here.

To take one example of why such a concept is a bad idea, say the Department of Transportation is legally required to build roads for the betterment of society. Very few people believe that the government should be able to just kick people off their land, confiscate their houses, and bulldoze them without compensation (even with compensation, as currently exists under eminent domain laws, this is a very controversial issue).

Granted, the damage you do to the value of intellectual property by copying it is much less than the damage done to the value of real estate by bulldozing it, by the underlying concept is very much the same.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Savage-Rabbit]

What is really bizarre about this is the library is legally required and therefore must legally be able to make copies. So why do they need a license? It's not like these German equivalents of the *AA's should be able to stop them.


That isn't guaranteed to stop them from trying. This is probably an effort by the Libraray to avoid the aggrivation of a totally pointless lawsuit. German banks for example have regularly taken quite mundane lawsuits to the supreme court in the hope that the expense of the process would discourage people from even trying to seek their right in the first place. Frivolous lawsuits are not just a problem in the USA, the Germans are almost as good at it as the Americans.

Re:Just goes to show...

[cL0h]

Yes but they certainly shouldn't be prevented from doing so. If there were no legislation in place to allow for media archival in this manner then it could be argued in court that they cannot do this at all and that the granting of a licence is beyond the powers of the government. In your analogy a roads authority needs to acquire a compulsory purchase order before removing someone from their land. This is not granted automatically but a process is set out in law for the provision of such.

Re:Just goes to show...

[konekoniku]

I definitely agree with you - there's a reasonable argument to be made here, but giving the government automatic authority to seize intellectual property is, in my opinion, a solution that creates more problems than it solves.

Re:Just goes to show...

[gl4ss]

yeah.. the "only makes it more difficult to do so" would have meant that the 'difficult' thing in it would also have been breaking the another law, if they didn't get the exception.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're advocating the government seizure of private property without compensation here.

Which btw. would be perfectly legal in German law when it serves the "Gemeinwohl" (common good, or something). And this issue incidentally happen to be all about preserving cultural goods for the people.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Rolo Tomasi]

Congratulations, sir, you are the first one to use a crappy and completely wrong analogy in a thread about intellectual property and copyright. Here's your award.

Re:Just goes to show...

[a24061]

You're advocating the government seizure of private property without compensation here.

Not at all, since copyright is in the first place a privilege---not a right---granted by the state in order to promote the public good. Copyright is a valid principle only to the extent that the benefits to the public (by increasing the quantity and quality of work that eventually gets into the public domain) outweigh the harm to the public (by restricting the public's rights to copy).

Two hundred years ago copyright was a good deal for the public, because it protected authors but in practical terms restricted only publishers, not the general public (since printing books required expensive equipment and specialist skills). It also lasted (typically) at most 28 years.

The corrupt form of copyright that exists now in most countries is not a good deal for the public. It severely restricts the general public, and for the benefit of publishers more than authors.

Re:Just goes to show...

[qwp]

your statement is very controversial,
you have totally ignored the fact that roads need to be built on property. Personally, I am very glad I80 was built. but i suppose if we all rode horses and bitched and moaned about property being bought up our lives would be better off.

Re:Just goes to show...

[dajak]

You're advocating the government seizure of private property without compensation here.

In the Netherlands we have a problem with the privatization of former government musea in the 90s. The "public" still owns the art works and should be able to see the works for "free" according to the law. Government just completely forgot about that when they decided musea should be able to make a profit in some way.

The government will commit the biggest art theft since WWII if they would transfer the complete rights of ownership to the musea. The publicly owned collection includes the major works of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Vermeer etc, and the musea certainly can't afford to buy them. Many of the works are "priceless" in the sense that they haven't been on the market for centuries.

The publicly owned universities here have also been giving away the copyright to scientific works to publishers for naught for decades, and never patented anything. The government actually pays legal publishers to use copies of its own legislation. And the national railways and energy grid have been given away for naught to companies.

Theft from the public through privatization of publicly owned assets by short-sighted governments is the threat of today. They are giving away the national hoard and keeping the national debt.

Government seizure of private assets is negligible compared to that. It's just a rhetorical trick to create support for plundering the national treasury on behalf of the "free market".

Re:Just goes to show...

[m50d]

No. If it wasn't preventing the library fulfilling its legal obligations, the library wouldn't need the exception.

Re:Just goes to show...

[maxpublic]

Very few people believe that the government should be able to just kick people off their land, confiscate their houses, and bulldoze them without compensation (even with compensation, as currently exists under eminent domain laws, this is a very controversial issue).

It's hardly controversial, except to the people the government is stealing from (and yes, I do say "stealing" - current eminent domain laws violate fundamental rights of property ownership). The government has been doing this since before the first tie in the first railroad track was laid. Laws in this regard have only gotten worse (much worse) over the years, not better, but I don't see citizens up in arms over it despite the fact that we've gotten to the point where the government can pretty much do anything it wants to your land at will, or mandate a list of things *you* must do or not to, according to the whim of some government agency.

Max

Re:Just goes to show...

[Mant]

You're advocating the government seizure of private property without compensation here.

Private intellectual

property, which isn't the same thing at all. In fact, the only way to "seize" intellectual property is to seize the limited time monopoly. If the government just makes a copy, but the owner still has the rights, how can it be considered seized?

Granted, the damage you do to the value of intellectual property by copying it is much less than the damage done to the value of real estate by bulldozing it, by the underlying concept is very much the same.

It really isn't, because despite being called intellectual "property", the principles and concepts behind the forms of intellectual property are very different from physical property, and indeed between types of intellectual property.

Remember, the whole point of IP laws originally was for the public good. If a government keeping a record serves that it is in the original spirit of the laws.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Fortun L'Escrot]

i would argue there is little to no damage to intellectual property at all. home entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry and there is no sign that this is a falling trend.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hardly controversial, except to the people the government is stealing from (and yes, I do say "stealing" - current eminent domain laws violate fundamental rights of property ownership).

I advise you not to start down the road of "there is a fundamental right to own property without having it taken away by somebody else".

Because the line of logic that leads down ultimately requires you to track down the descendants of whatever Indian tribe used to own any land you now own, ascertain whether their ancestors sold it voluntarily, and - if not - to return it to them, or compensate them fairly, at their discretion.

I'm suspecting you don't want to go there.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is an advocation of "the government seizure of private property without compensation," as you say, then why did the German equivalent of the *AA's grant the license to do it? Anyways, advocating was not going on in my post. Rather describing the state of reality with respect to these things. And then making the value judgment of bizarre.

It seems the bizarre arrangement going on here also is confusing (to some Slashdot posters).

Re:Just goes to show...

[Alsee]

Your point actually provides a perfect example to clarify the *correct* understanding of copyright.

Just look at what happens after X years. It goes to the public domain. That would be a seizure of the property, to place it into the public domain. And that is done for the public benefit, right?

Whoops! It would be illegal for the government to do that without paying the owner compensation for taking his property! So either the expiration of every copyright and patent is an illegal seisure by the government, or there is something wrong with the model we just laid out.

I'm going to specifically refer to the US legal system (it's the one I know), but the theory should be pretty generally valid. If you actually read the Supreme Court ruling on the basis of copyright and patent laws, they make it perfectly clear that the fundamental state of "intellectual creations" is that they lie in the public domain. To any extent that it is "property", it is public property. This is the point where copyright and patent law come into the picture. They were created to encourage more intellectual creation and to encourage them to be contributed to the public domain. A limited bundle of copy rights or patent rights is taken from the public and temporarily given to the creator. That taking from the public is done for the public benefit.

Which now makes it perfectly clear why library copying and fair use and other premitted copying and use is not a taking from the copyright holder. The copyright holder was never granted exclusive rights to those uses in the first place. The bundle of rights given to the copyright holder does not include any right to object to this library usage.

The US Supreme court has directly ruled that copyright is a limited "bundle of rights" and that it is NOT some ordinary peice of propery. And while copyright infringment is a violation of the law, the Supreme Court ruled that it does not equate to theft. Copyrighted works are covered by copyright law, not property law.

The term "intellectual property" is very bad because it gives the impression that the normal implications of property law apply. It leads to erroneous conclusions about copyright, like the appearance that the expiration of copyright is a "taking" from the "property owner". People often rationalize fair use and other copyright exceptions as a "taking" from the owner for the pubic benefit. Both are backwards logic. The expiration of copyright is merely the expiration of certain rights the public has loaned to the creator. Any copying and usage that is leagally non-infringing is simply something which was never given to the creator in the first place.

-

Re:Just goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming it ever should have been considered "property" in any meaningful sense to begin with.

That's one of the core issues here, and I don't think it's beyond question by any means.

I mean, is it a good thing for the government to go around creating monopolies? They were supposed to be limited in time, once, but we're starting to leave behind any pretense of that if we keep lengthening them retroactively... Imagine if, say, the Bible (or some literary work important to you) were both copyrighted, and the rights to it had been passed down to heirs for generations. Should someone who "owns" it in some future generation, who had NOTHING to do with its actual creation suddenly inherit the rights to it? What if they were opposed to the original work and wished to destroy it or remove it from public consumption?

We're already getting there--copyrights last life+70 here now. Eventually, copyright terms will probably last longer than most of the works they protect do (though they already seem to do this now).

The opinions of this post are my own and not those of my employer.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Snaller]

Granted, the damage you do to the value of intellectual property by copying it is

quote often non exsistant.

Quick Question

[metlin]

Isn't law supposed to be equal for all?

If Joe Sixpack kills someone and is forgiven, why shouldn't anyone else be? While that is an extreme (and criminal) analogy, it is unfair that the law does not treat everyone equally.

I'm sure a good lawyer could argue out this point - if X can be exempted, why can't Y be exempted if his reasons are quite similar?

Re:Quick Question

[kentaromiura]

ahahah , this is so Funny!! :D yes and Santa Klaus exist..

Re:Quick Question

[dhalgren]

IANAL, but I believe you've just deduced the existence of 'precedence'.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. A cop has more rights than you do. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Re:Quick Question

[JaredOfEuropa]

Isn't law supposed to be equal for all?

The aren't exempt from the law; they have negotiated with the publishers for permission to make copies.

Technically they may still be breaking the law by cracking the DRM, but since they're doing so with the permission of the publishers, it'd be silly to call them to task for it.

Re:Quick Question

[Christopheles]

Well quite simply, no one is getting killed here. The apparent reason is that since the recording industry owns the copyright, they can let whomever they want do whatever they want with it. It does not say explicitly that the Bibliothek is breaking the copy protection, only that it is copying the material, which it is allowed to do. If it's breaking the protection as well, and it is indeed a criminal offense, then there might be some question as to equality here. From the article it appears that the companies are indeed allowed to make exceptions, so nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically they may still be breaking the law by cracking the DRM, but since they're doing so with the permission of the publishers, it'd be silly to call them to task for it.

Why? If i give you permission to kill me, the police are still going to arrest you and bring you up for murder after you have done so... The library is still breaking the law, wether or not the publishers gave them permission (which is not for them to give).

Re:Quick Question

[mrogers]

Actually the EUCD does provide a specific exemption for public libraries, provided they have no other way of getting a non-copy-protected version of the data. However, the EUCD is implemented differently in different EU member states, and implementations can choose which exemptions to include. What's legal in Germany might not be legal in the UK, for example, if and when the UK ever gets round to implementing the Directive.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not speaking for those above the law (such as the insanely rich, politicians, mafiosi and the like, who are often the same), did you ever hear police sirens ? It means that the police or emergency vehicles have the right not to respect the law...legally because there is a legal exception for them ! It is exactly the same situation here.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I was recently thinking about this in relation to military law. For instance the idea that someone who is part of the military actually has an entirely seperate branch of law representing them is rather odd at first. Then if you look into it you realise that it is actually rather essential. A soldiers life is designed to effectively murder someone, whilst in civil society that is of course the worst thing that you can do. Now of course this doesn't entirely realate to the above article, but I think it illustrates the point that there are many requirements for law, and to say that it should be equally applied to everyone is a rather simplistic view to take.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

if X can be exempted, why can't Y be exempted if his reasons are quite similar?

By stating that X is exempted you are confirming the fact that X is an exception to the rule and this is exactly how that saying that the exception proves the rule came about. If you prove the existence of a case is an exception that implies that a rule contrary to that exception must be valid for all other cases.

Re:Quick Question

[Retric]

If there still breaking the law then the government is involved but not the company's that make the software. So it does not matter if they care or not you could go to jail for breaking encription protecting software that was latter released for free.

Re:Quick Question

[Urkki]

• Isn't law supposed to be equal for all?
  If Joe Sixpack kills someone and is forgiven, why shouldn't anyone else be? While that is an extreme (and criminal) analogy, it is unfair that the law does not treat everyone equally.
  

Not really, circumstances matter. An extreme example: an enemy soldier that kills soldier on your side in a battle is not guilty of murder even though he's an enemy (and vice versa your side killing enemy soldiers). But if you purposefully kill a soldier on your side, you're not only guilty of murder, but possibly of treason/sabotage also, even if you're a soldier too.

Do you call that unfair, too?

• I'm sure a good lawyer could argue out this point - if X can be exempted, why can't Y be exempted if his reasons are quite similar?

Well, in this case it'd mean the lawyer would have to show that Y has legal (or moral or somesuch) obligation to do something which requires breaking the copy protection... I wouldn't bet on success, no matter how good the lawyer was at twisting words.

Re:Quick Question

[KiloByte]

Uhm, no one negotiated anything with me. No extortionist publisher association has any rights to give permissions for my works to anyone.

Of course, anything (software, documentation, game data) I ever published as myself went with a free license -- and they're pretty useless for a library, but that certainly isn't the case for a majority of authors. Remember: RIAA, MPAA, and in this case, GFPI and GBPA are not everything.

Re:Quick Question

[campaign_bug]

Quite frankly, the german library already has a legal mandate to index these works which conflicts with this new EU law. I think the article is exaggerating a little when they say "crack the DRM" - more likely they'll ask the relevant copyright holder for the decryption key, and under the terms of their deal, the copyright holder will give it to them. Not quite the same thing as cracking the DRM wrapper.

Re:Quick Question

[russint]

If a police officer kills someone and is forgiven, why shouldn't anyone else be? While that is an extreme analogy, it is unfair that the law does not treat everyone equally.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

And what if there is no decryption key available? How about copy-protected CD-Audios which don't use decryption keys?
According to a speaker of DDB, it is unlikely that DDB would always receive personalized copy-protection-free media, in which case they have to crack it (which they are now allowed to do according to the release).

Re:Quick Question

[Advocadus Diaboli]

The aren't exempt from the law; they have negotiated with the publishers for permission to make copies.

No, they negotiated to break the law that says you're not allowed to crack copy protection. If I give you the permission to break into my house its still a criminal act if you do so. And every police officer will ask: "If he gave you access permission to his house, why didn't he give you a housekey?". So, if content industry wants to give copy permission to someone they have to give them unprotected material, otherwise the copying party is still breaking applicable law!

Re:Quick Question

[JohnFluxx]

If Joe Sixpack kills someone and is forgiven, why shouldn't anyone else be? While that is an extreme (and criminal) analogy, it is unfair that the law does not treat everyone equally.

Um, circumstance? I'm sure the military can do more things than I can. We aren't treated equally.

Re:Quick Question

[ajs318]

The Library is obliged to preserve copies of copyrighted material ready for its entry into the Public Domain. Since it gets this job by Government mandate, then anything standing in the way of it doing this job has to go.

This is really just a special kind of Compulsory Purchase Order. It might be temporarily unpopular with a few individuals, but the benefits to Society At Large outweigh the inconvenience it may cause them. And one can presume that an organisation like a National Library probably will take reasonable steps to prevent a premature release.

The library is still breaking the law, wether or not the publishers gave them permission (which is not for them to give).

No, it is entirely for them to give. The copyright holder -- usually the publisher -- is by definition absolutely entitled to grant permission to make copies of their copyrighted work. That's how the GPL works.

Re:Quick Question

[swarsron]

no, law isn't supposed to be equal for all. to stay with your murder analogy: if a persons with a iq 70 kills someone he's (at least here in germany, might be different in e.g. Texas) treated differently than a person with a normal iq

Re:Quick Question

[Gone Jackal]

The EUCD [http://ukcdr.org] explicitly states:

(30) The rights referred to in this Directive may be transferred, assigned or subject to the granting of contractual licences, without prejudice to the relevant national legislation on copyright and related rights.

and:

(33) The exclusive right of reproduction should be subject to an exception to allow certain acts of temporary reproduction, which are transient or incidental reproductions, forming an integral and essential part of a technological process and carried out for the sole purpose of enabling either efficient transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made. The acts of reproduction concerned should have no separate economic value on their own. To the extent that they meet these conditions, this exception should include acts which enable browsing as well as acts of caching to take place, including those which enable transmission systems to function efficiently, provided that the intermediary does not modify the information and does not interfere with the lawful use of technology, widely recognised and used by industry, to obtain data on the use of the information. A use should be considered lawful where it is authorised by the rightholder or not restricted by law.

Take a look at the text for similar clauses. In other words, if I understand this correctly, this is firstly a question of academic or research usage, secondly a matter of agreement which can be made between any party and the copyright holder.

This doesn't mean that the law sucks any less, but that this agreement is nothing unusual, and has nothing to do with "special rights" granted to a particular class of people/organisations. I haven't been able to find the actual text of the agreement, though. It could be that the National Library in Germany will be paying copy-fees, or similar, for their reproductions.

Re:Quick Question

[blane.bramble]

Actually, I believe "the exception (that) proves the rule" uses the word "prove" in one of its other meanings - to test something. Thus if you have a rule, and then have an exceptional case, you test this against your rule to see if your rule still holds - if it does then you have "the exception that proves the rule".

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider this:

It is forbidden, even punishable, to force a fellow citizen to actions against his will. Yet the executive organs of a state (e. g. Germany) are entitled, under certain circumstances, to force citizens to do their biding. Resisting this force can be punishable!

Obviously there is a difference between state run institutions and individuals.

Check R. Nozick's "Anarchy, State, Utopia" on specifics about the moral implications. Generally, you should read more books ;-) http://www.u-press.de/

Re:Quick Question

[PastaLover]

Basically it's a very different thing. This is IP law. The publishers can extend copying rights to everyone they please, including the public libraries. That they have to crack the protection is a trivial fact as long as it is with the permission of the owner. You cannot make this analogy since it are two very different cases. There's just no comparison. The one is property law, the other is not.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't law supposed to be equal for all?

It has been long standing on this planet that laws only apply depending on your status.

If you are powerful and rich, then most laws do NOT apply to you.

if you are poor, then all laws apply to you plus some they make up later.

Until they abolish the rich from being in government, that will never EVER change.

it is human nature to opress and exploit those less er than himself. Man is inherently evil and is most certianly born that way.

do not agree? then why does 99% of the world ignore at least 5=7 laws a day and compromise at least 2 morals a day?

and yes, you YOURSELF do it every single day. be honest and you will see that you do.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

Actually, I believe "the exception (that) proves the rule" uses the word "prove" in one of its other meanings - to test something.

I guess you did not bother to RTFM, here's the relevant segment:

Hmm. It grieves me to say this, but you're right. While the interpretation I gave, namely that the exception tests the rule, has a long history (it dates back at least to 1893), I'll concede that your take on it is the original sense of the proverb.

That said, your example could use a little work. We need something that better conveys the import of this ancient maxim. I have just the thing--an illustration from the Roman orator Cicero, sometimes cited as the source of the legal doctrine in question.

Cicero was defending one Bilbo. (No relation to Frodo.) Bilbo was a non-Roman who was accused of having been illegally granted Roman citizenship. The prosecutor argued that treaties with some non-Roman peoples explicitly prohibited them from becoming Roman citizens. The treaty with Bilbo's homeboys had no such clause, but the prosecutor suggested one should be inferred.

Nonsense, said Cicero. "Quod si exceptio facit ne liceat, ubi non sit exceptum ..." Oops, I keep forgetting how rusty folks are on subjunctives. Cicero said, if you prohibit something in certain cases, you imply that the rest of the time it's permitted. To put it another way, the explicit statement of an exception proves that a rule to the contrary prevails otherwise.

Re:Quick Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Which, to my understanding, makes quoting and linking to the Directive pointless, as it doesn't really mean anything. What matters are the laws that the various member states use to fulfill that Directive, and they will be different in each member country.

Re:Quick Question

[Tonytheloony]

The law is only equal for all persons (otherwise you should argue that it's unfair for charities get tax refunds).

Re:Quick Question

[cbr2702]

No, it is entirely for them to give. The copyright holder -- usually the publisher -- is by definition absolutely entitled to grant permission to make copies of their copyrighted work. That's how the GPL works.

That's not at issue here. The library is breaking the law because they have to break DRM on the things they are copying.

Re:Quick Question

[ajs318]

But the library is under a mandate to keep an archive copy. This means they are the intended recipients of the encrypted content, and by virtue of that fact they are automatically entitled to break the encryption. Simple common-law property rights and all that; if you rightfully own the disc, then whatever is recorded on it is not a secret from you. If a message is addressed to you in the first place, then it cannot possibly be illegal for you to attempt to read it. Reading a message addressed to you, in private, is exactly the kind of lawful activity it is illegal to disrupt!

Re:Quick Question

[maxpublic]

and by virtue of that fact they are automatically entitled to break the encryption.

The law as written gives them no such authority, whether the copyright holders allow it or not. You might wish it to work differently, but the copyright holders have no authority to grant anyone the right to break DRM - even their own. It's a criminal offense regardless.

Look up the law in question if you think otherwise.

Max

Re:Quick Question

[maxpublic]

A quick clarification. EU law grants the GOVERNMENTS of the member states the right to grant exemptions. From the article it appears that the exemption given to libraries from the German government does NOT apply to the specific case in question, and everyone is just 'letting things slide' because to do otherwise would take an act of the German Parliament and open the whole can of worms all over again.

Max

Re:Quick Question

[PhilHibbs]

if and when the UK ever gets round to implementing the Directive

"if and when"? I thought we already had....

Ah, thought so.

Re:Quick Question

[ajs318]

No it isn't. The disc is rightfully THE LIBRARY's property. That means that THE LIBRARY is privy to any secret embodied in the disc, and the "encrypted message" on it is addressed to THE LIBRARY. This is what gives THE LIBRARY the right to break the DRM without committing a criminal offence. If an encrypted communication is addressed to you, it is not an offence to decrypt it, anymore than it is an offence to break into your own house and steal your own property.

Re:Quick Question

[mrogers]

Good grief! I was under the impression the draft implementation had been sent back to the Patent Office. Thanks for the unwelcome news. :-)

Re:Quick Question

[1u3hr]

No, they negotiated to break the law that says you're not allowed to crack copy protection. If I give you the permission to break into my house its still a criminal act if you do so.

Of course it's not illegal. What if I've lost my key, or the door is jammed, etc, etc... and I ask someone, say a locksmith, to break in to my house. Just about any act short of murder is not illegal if the person you're doing it to has and is capable of giving permission. Sorry, but a silly analogy proves nothing (not that a more sound one does much either, analogies serve mainly as illustrations, not as proofs).

Re:Quick Question

[maxpublic]

That isn't what either EU or German law says. I've read the text of both and they directly contradict your assertions above.

Max

Re:Quick Question

[luisdom]

Technically they may still be breaking the law by cracking the DRM, but since they're doing so with the permission of the publishers, it'd be silly to call them to task for it.

Then someone else should sue them. If it's illegal, it's illegal. Period. If the law is wrong, change it. If it's not wrong, enforce it. Like we'd say in Spain, "... o follamos todos, o tiramos la puta al rio". Or something like that.

Re:Quick Question

[Lars T.]

The copyright holder -- usually the publisher -- is by definition absolutely entitled to grant permission to make copies of their copyrighted work.

Nitpick: In Germany we don't have "copyright", but "Urheberrecht" - "originator/author right" which usually lies with the author.

In Australia

[digitalchinky]

I know working for DSD all of the laws relating to 'intercept of communications' are also valid for joe public - meaning what I do in the lab, the public can also do without repercussion from law enforcement.

It seems odd that a library should be alowed to do something, yet the German public can not. Was it to affect me, I'd lobby against the law. Write politicians and such. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, though such exemptions are usually a good start for more stupid laws.

Re:In Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia, your puppet government would do what the US asks you to do.

Re:In Australia

[slavemowgli]

If they "achieved an agreement", as the article blurb says, then it's probably more a case of "we agree to not sue you for doing this" than a case of "we don't have a say in this matter because we're not part of the government in any way" ("we" referring to the content associations in questions). Reading the article seems to support this, more or less. The law in question seems to have provisions that allow "scientific and cultural use" despite copyright restrictions, and the latest version of the law allows for arrangements between the content industry and others to allow this to happen even when there are copy protections in place. It still would be a good idea to write your MP if you're living in Germany, of course, but not because of this specific agreement. Rather, you should write to them to express your concern about the lack of control of the EU by the people there is - Germany has no real choice but to establish a national law to reflect the EU directive in question, after all, and that is not a good thing, considering that there is little if any influence on the EU and its politics by voters.

Re:In Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

"It seems odd that a library should be alowed to do something, yet the German public can not."

To put it as simply as possible: a library is a publicly funded (and accountable) institution devoted to storing information and making it available to everyone; that is it's mission.

A private citizen is not a publc institution, has no obligation to store information, and no obligation to make it available to anyone. The problem with private libraries and museums is that they are completely unaccountable, and free to do anything they want at whim with their collections (including burn them).

Think about it for a minute, you might realize why public libraries and private citizens don't necessarily warrant the same treatment.

Re:In Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, is this going to get interesting next week then.

Re:In Australia

[digitalchinky]

Governments have no 'Obligation' beyond the will of the masses.

The reality (at least in my tiny little world) is that the desires of the masses (The Public) are lost amongst the back petting, self congratulation, and little old boys club attitudes of Management through to Ministers (Politicians) - I've seen this first hand.

Laws pushed through government that allow the DSD to monitor 'Domestic Non Communications Signals' - this allows DSD to monitor a limited set of transmissions originating 'in country' - What exactly is a 'Non Communications Signal' then?...

Think spinny parabolic mesh thingy - you've probably seen them at your local airport.

The laws are all public domain - anyone can read them on the internet, I'm sure we have our fair share of crap laws as well.

My personal opinion, I position all people as equal. The government is 'people' too.

Re:In Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Governments have no 'Obligation' beyond the will of the masses."

That's a pretty big obligation, and not one ignored lightly. Besides, in Australia libraries are publicly funded, but are not part of the government as such; public libraries have a charter spelling out the exact role and function. This makes the management of each library seperately accountable, while isolating libraries from government policies. In this regard public libraries are more independent of government policy than, say, the Defence Signals Directorate*.

"The reality (at least in my tiny little world) is that the desires of the masses are lost...I've seen this first hand"

The NSW Labour caucus once met in my living room (planning the strategy that led to Neville Wran's election victory); believe it or not, a lot of politicians actually DO think of the public interest (yes, even Liberals - Neville Bonner used to stay at my place when he was in Sydney). This doesn't mean they aren't capable of making daft legislation because of a lack of technical knowledge, or based on poor or incomprehensible advice from their underlings (such as those who head the DSD for example). I've seen this first hand.

"The laws are all public domain - anyone can read them on the internet, I'm sure we have our fair share of crap laws as well."

So you're saying "because law 'A' is absurd, laws B-Z must also be absurd" (while admitting you've never actually read any legislation); are you TRYING to undermine your own credibility? But then, what makes you think having the legal capacity to monitor high powered RADAR signals (as used in, say, military targetting systems) is such a daft idea? Perhaps you lack the perspective to see why this might be useful (in fact, the folks I know at ASTJIC thought it was a very good idea...). There's also ham radio operators to consider: if monitoring RADAR was illegal, Dick Smith (VK2DIK) could be in gaol right now (good, bad, you decide...)

"My personal opinion, I position all people as equal. The government is 'people' too."

No, the people who make up the government are people, the government itself has no identity other than acting as a servant of the people (BTW, since you work for the DSD, which is a branch of the public service, you are part of the government...do you feel personally accountable for the government's actions? Funny how nobody who draws a public paycheque does); Australia does not yet have an all-powerful President, please do not engage in the American habit of anthropomorphising the government. Libraries are part of the government's obligation to the people: providing education. To reiterate my previous post, private citizens have no obligation to provide education to anyone else. So who deserves more leniency when it comes to copyright: an organization that has a written obligation to the public, or individuals who have no obligations whatsoever? You didn't refute my point, merely stated an opposing opinion while providing a very weak analogy which tried to argue that all laws are flawed (or, if that wasn't your intention, that the Telecommunications act and amendments are somehow related to copyright, which they aren't). It would be equally logical to argue that all DSD personelle have had their brains scrambled by high-energy pulses (since some actually have**), and should therefore be ignored.

Disclaimer: IAAL. Yes, I(really)AAL.

*When abreviating it is polite to supply the definition of the initials where it won't be readily obvious to an audience. You and I know who you work for, but the 5.976 billion people who aren't Australian might need some help.

**Don't stand too close to the Gunn diodes.

This is important

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the primary reasons that DRM/copy protection needs to be less restrictive (or better yet done away with).

It is important that knowledge and information be available to all now, and years down the track. Particularly if the company that made the DRM is no longer around, or the hardware no longer made.

Information needs to be preserved and accessible and useful for all generations, not just for a companies short term profit.

Re:This is important

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM shouldn't exist. The problem is that it doesn't respect my rights after the copyright period ends (with the current laws).

This is one of the primary reasons that DRM/copy protection needs to be less restrictive (or better yet done away with).

Good luck with that, I'm sure that the media companies don't want their "intellectual property" go "unprotected". We need legislation, don't trust the goodwill of the companies. Something like "restrictions must cease to exist after a certain period" and probably a shorter copyright period for the art behind DRM curtains. Oh, and I want shorter copyright periods too, so that I would see that day someday for the art of today.

Re:This is important

[Makarakalax]

> Information needs to be preserved and
> accessible and useful for all generations, not
> just for a companies short term profit.

Quite, people forget that one of the most important reasons behind the explosion of technological progress in recent years is that people have easy access to the knowledge. You no longer have to track down x-famous scientist/engineer and be his prodigy to learn his trade, you can grab a book.

Not that I think it's likely we'll lose information. I just wanted to stress that if a DRM'd world is inevitable, there must be, at the very least, important exceptions made for schools and libraries.

I do believe information should be free, but I also understand that capitalism is what gave me my cozy lifestyle, and rosy looking future. A bit of both should do us all well.

Bond. Johannes Bond.

[Anonymous Coward]

EU License to Crack.

Re:Bond. Johannes Bond.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how you chose Johannes as an example of a typical german name. No doubt, this name is german, but it has become rather uncommon for parents to call their son Johannes. See http://www.gfds.de/namen.html for a list of common names.

Re:Bond. Johannes Bond.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Canada, have German roots, speak German and have spent a lot of time in Germany. Had I wanted to use a more typical (for my generation ) German name, my choice would have been Karl (or Karlheinz). I chose the name Johannes because, at 4:14 a.m., it was the first name that I thought of that was German, and was vaguely similar to "James" (which is what makes the joke). There may be a subconscious element to this is well - I am a fan of numerous styles of music including classical, and the name "Johannes Brahms" is vaguely similar to "James Bond". Thanks for the link - it is interesting to see that, just as here, name choices there change with popular culture.

The mind is a strange thing and mine is even stranger.

Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[3.09 a hour]

This seems odd to me, i mean why cant the library purchase a legit copy? Does the library of congress have the same deal? As for annoyoing teenage boys, copy protection sure annoys me, can i get a expemtion?

Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[mrchaotica]

Cracking copy protection on books and music is great, but what about software? N years from now we'll be able to read the books, but all the old abandonware will be useless because the source code is long gone... And no, emulation doesn't cut it because you can't make derivative works.

(BTW, I do realize that software isn't included in their mandate, but it's still an important related issue!)

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[TrancePhreak]

Why does one need to make derivative works on 15+ year old games? I don't think that fits in the fair use part of it at all. Also, consider this: DOOM was really impressive when it came out, but now any average joe programmer can make Quake. Quake being largely more impressive tech than DOOM.

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously another microsoft-centered slashdotter.. Anyway, what's the point of archiving software which can't run anyway without Microsoft ? Those ones are totally different from books !

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[strider44]

have you seen Doomsday or Doom Legacy? Doom is still a pretty fun game, so lets not lose that part of computer history now shall we?

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[TrancePhreak]

Doomsday and Doom Legacy were not part of the original DOOM history. DOOM is still around, as is DOOM 2. Both were released for GBA. Point = moot.

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[mrchaotica]

That's why I want to archive the SOURCE CODE! The particular scenario that made me realize this is important is the fact that there are a few particular abandonware DOS games that I really want to run on my Mac, but can't.

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[mrchaotica]

How "impressive" the technology is in a game is irrelevant! Even if you wanted to use the artwork from some of these old games, you (practially speaking) need the source code to figure out the weird format they used.

And anyway, DOOM is a bad example of the problem since the source code was released AND the company that made it is still around. A better example would be my personal favorite abandonware, Tyrian by Epic MegaGames. It was "just" a vertical-scrolling shooter, but it was a good vertical-scrolling shooter, and I want to play it because it's Tyrian -- Chromium or whatnot doesn't cut it, even though it's technologically superior. The only trouble is, I can't play Tyrian, because it doesn't run on my Mac. Now, I may eventually resort to recreating it from scratch, but why should I have to? Especially since I should legally be allowed to modify it once the copyright expires (If I'm still alive, but that's a different issue).

And that's the important bit -- the issue is not whether someone needs to make derivative works on an old video game, the issue is that the point of copyright law is to allow such! What if some historian 100 years from now was trying to research primitive programming techniques? They'd be screwed.

Get it?

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[TrancePhreak]

Why not just get Virtual PC or some such? You chose to get a Mac, that's your problem to deal with.

You people think games are just game code, but there are often several other libraries and whatnot in them. Those libraries might still hold copyright years and years later.

I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. Too many pirates want their fix for free.

Re:Now, if only they could decompile stuff too...

[mrchaotica]

First of all, I do have Virtual PC -- it's not fast enough to run the game (which is really sad, considering that it was designed for 486s -- it must use some sort of weird optimization (that I don't know about because I don't have the source code!)).

Second, I'm talking about after copyright expires, when anyone should be allowed to do anything with the game. You must not have been paying attention, since I explained it already:

Especially since I should legally be allowed to modify it once the copyright expires (If I'm still alive, but that's a different issue).

And that's the important bit -- the issue is not whether someone needs to make derivative works on an old video game, the issue is that the point of copyright law is to allow such! What if some historian 100 years from now was trying to research primitive programming techniques? They'd be screwed.

More EUCD Information

[MartijnH]

Here's also a great site on the EUCD

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[mrchaotica]

Please enlighten me on how the library is supposed to be able to loan out DRM'd copies!

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[Tomji]

The probaly want to archive them for good. In order to do that they need the data as direct as possibel and not encrypted and/or compressed.

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems odd to me, i mean why cant the library purchase a legit copy?

Sure, but what happens if the publisher goes out of business? How will you activate your DRMed content?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[konekoniku]

I don't see why it couldn't - perhaps you could elaborate?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not about not having money or not having legit copies. The national library is allowed to copy media for archiving purposes, e.g. copy a CD to another medium to prevent loss due to decay or to preserve the data after the CD format has become obsolete.

Copyright: for the betterment of society

[Gopal.V]

I've heard this a LOT about copyright being there to promote innovation , but most people forget the "for the betterment of society" part of it. altruists.org has the right ideas, but nobody with any real clout has said it so far. Until Now !!

Reworking Copyright pretty much covers how I feel about copyright.. (though not written by me).

For example , Gandhi was a great proponent of "Making money is not evil" (being from a business community) unlike the England educated Nehru's socialism. People rarely distinguish between the cost of an object and it's price :).. As long as the price is not paid by society (rather than an induvidual) , copyright holds. Interestingly society profits when an induvidual pays or that's the way copyright was supposed to work.

Re:Copyright: for the betterment of society

[Lumpy]

you are absolutely right. Espically when you look at the origional copyright laws. Those were well though out and had a balance between giving a good benefit to the origional author/creator and thne giving back to society.

now the pure and unadultrerated greed has perverted those laws so that copyright is unlimited in length.

I am going to copyright a song witrh the guitar chords G,A,E in it. Now NOBODY will be able to write a song with those chords in that order without buying the rights from me.

Is that fair? not a chance. But, that is the current state of copyright. It's silly, and rampantly out of control. ATF and FBI agents have no business enforcing copyright violation.

Until the greed and corruption that is directly tied to copyrights is dealt with, it will only get worse and people will increasingly ignore copyrights and even go out of their way to violate them.

Personally, the whole thing is silly, and getting worse. and I do not see any sanity attached to copyrights for at least another 20 years.

Re:Copyright: for the betterment of society

[sconeu]

I am going to copyright a song witrh the guitar chords G,A,E in it. Now NOBODY will be able to write a song with those chords in that order without buying the rights from me.


Google for and read "Melancholy Elephants".

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The library needs to copy the e-books and CDs on other storage media since CDs do not work for 100 year :-(

But how will they do it?

[jlar]

At least in the Danish implementation of the EU copyright directive it is illegal to produce, import, spread, sell, lease out, advertise for or in a commercial setting own products or components that are subject to advertised as usable for circumventing technological protection measures, only have limited use besides circumvention of technological protection measures or is primarily produced to make it possible to circumvent technological protection measures.

The German implementation is probably similar. My question is: How can the German Library break the copy protection when it is illegal to produce tools to do it?

Re:But how will they do it?

[term8or]

My question is: How can the German Library break the copy protection when it is illegal to produce tools to do it?

I would have thought the article tells you this. The german government wrote into law an exception that said that the German Library could produce and own tools to do it since it was impossible to carry out their legal functions without such an excemption. I would assume that this is legal since their is an excemption in the EU copyright directive to allow member states to make such exceptions (e.g)

(34) Member States should be given the option of providing for certain exceptions or limitations for cases such as educational and scientific purposes, for the benefit of public institutions such as libraries and archives, ....

Re:But how will they do it?

[andi75]

They grab CloneCD from

SlySoft Inc.
Dickenson Bay Street
John Henry Bldg.
St. John's
Antigua (West Indies)

In Antigua, it's still legal to produce such tools (at least, until the US invades it).

Re:But how will they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

> In Antigua, it's still legal to produce such tools (at least, until the US invades it). ... and the US *will* invade them, as soon as they can link producing cracking tools, with terrorism.

Oh wait - they already did:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=piracy+ is+ter rorism&btnG=Google+Search

What a wonderful world we live in.

Re:But how will they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they must develop all their tools in house, without outside help. This means that they will have difficulty cracking everything, and so their archive of proptected copyrighted works will be small.

Re:But how will they do it?

[Xcott Craver]

Wait now, the Library can build and own its own tools?

Suppose you had legal permission to break the lock on your own garden shed, provided you forged your own pair of bolt cutters.

Realistically, they will not have tools unless it is legal, in general, to sell or distribute them. No economy will spring up around one legal customer.

Xcott

Re:But how will they do it?

[Fortun L'Escrot]

and when will they start to realize that the internet is also a public institution that is at once a library and an archive.

i guess the only difference is that the internet was not created for the betterment of society. but it started out with the betterment of a single nation, its just interesting how the idea spread to other nations and how its existence is now leveraged by the communications industry who are like the board of directors of the internet.

funny how regardless of the outcome of IP law they will still make money. not even a library or an archive can say that. when will the shareholders, we the people, start getting on our dividends?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[AWxSlashdot]

IMHO, this is not about legit copy but about storage. The library must have a unique kind of storage format for digital content. With protected content, with SO many standards, they might need to adapt theit searching/viewing/indexing tools.
As new copy-protection standards emerge everyday (and I don't know if they are all available as a SDK to interface with another program) and as I think the library to not want to hire fulltime developpers to integrate every single API (if it exists and can be integrated - think about concurrent access, etc ...), they must have thought is was easier to store everything in a clear format and get rid of the protection.

ugh.. did NOBODY catch this yet?

[techarnate]

The jerky who wrote this thing up obviously confused "Phonographic" with uh... something a little different.

"annoy teenage school boys". HELLO. DUMBARSE. FLAGRANT STUPIDITY REIGNS YET AGAIN.

what a toolbox.

----

(incarnate) hey cres, I know what you're thinking right now
(incarnate) " "
(cres) i dont get it

Re:ugh.. did NOBODY catch this yet?

[apanap]

"annoy teenage school boys". HELLO. DUMBARSE. FLAGRANT STUPIDITY REIGNS YET AGAIN.

OK, so he should have put "annoy mentally teenaged boys". Or possibly "teenage school boys and slashbots". People in the Real World [tm] don't give a shit...

Re:ugh.. did NOBODY catch this yet?

[techarnate]

I'd defer this to the previous "i know what you're thinking right now" quote i said like 10 years ago... but I think even that'd be lost on you dude.

read the article and try to comprehend again. if you hear a scream and a dull thud come from the back of your skull, you've succeeded in permanently frying a few synapses: thank you, drive thru.

HINT: HE THOUGHT IT SAID "PORNOGRAPHIC". THUS THE COMMENT. IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS YOU'RE DYING.

Re:ugh.. did NOBODY catch this yet?

[apanap]

DOH. I got your meaning, missed your point... :)

Great, it doesn't solve the problem though.

[Anonymous Coward]

The European Copyright Directive and other laws in that nature make it increasingly difficult for libraries to deliver meaningful content to their users. This is especially obviouse when it comes to university libraries.

Take subito (http://www.subito-doc.de/) for example. It's a service provided by university libraries that let's you order copies of articles in case the relevant journal is not available in your local library. Now with universities always getting less money than actually needed, it's quite common that much of the journals you need are not available locally and so subito really provides a very useful service to students and scholars.

However, this will probably stop in a short while as there is a legal battle raging against it brought by the same institutions that gave the Deutsche Bibliothek to crack DRM.

To sum it up, these laws are in fact hindering innovation and research in Germany (and I'm sure also in other countries) right now and to give some special rights to one library won't change that.

Re:Great, it doesn't solve the problem though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice of the library not to give a stuff about BLIND and VISUALLY IMPAIRED users. Normally DE and EU respect minorities. Besides German Basic Law overrides all (I think). Anti-discrimination laws in some countries permit blind carers, to do what it takes to rip a book down into braille.

In Australia, a blind person has a lot of copyright lattitude. Old fashioned ideas state a copyrighted article should be lodged with your national library.If it was encrypted before distribution, then there is a good argument the work was NEVER published.

Taking the sublime to the ridiculous.

Re:Great, it doesn't solve the problem though.

[JadeNB]

Oh boy, does this sound like nitpicking, but I'm really curious. Besides the fact that I spit, as I suppose most of us here do, on intellectual property laws of this sort, as an academic I am also deeply grateful for programmes of the sort the poster describes. However, I don't understand this sentence:

However, this will probably stop in a short while as there is a legal battle raging against it brought by the same institutions that gave the Deutsche Bibliothek to crack DRM.

Which institutions? The ones that tried to prevent it from cracking DRM? (Were there some who specifically lobbied against the DB, as opposed to just lobbying generally for DRM?) The ones that tried to allow it to crack DRM? (Then why should they be on the other side of this question?) Another collection entirely?

Why does his link not work?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Gob Blesh It]

Please visit Slashcode bug #981137, which concerns automatically hyperlinking URLs in "Plain Old Text" mode, and add a comment to show your support for a speedy resolution. No progress has been made on this trivial feature request for longer than six months.

Re:Why does his link not work?

[slavemowgli]

Oh, come on, six months is nothing. There are trivial bugs in Mozilla, for example, that haven't been fixed in six *years*... Just give it some time. With luck, your grandkids will see this feature implemented. :)

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Grey Ninja]

In the meantime, there's plain text links. :)

Re:Why does his link not work?

[slavemowgli]

Nice. But it would be even nicer if it integrated into the renderer to actually turn those plain text links into clickable links - marking them and then selecting an option from the context menu is hardly more efficient than copying and pasting into a new tab.

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Grey Ninja]

Yeah, no disagreements here. But frankly, I'm too lazy to modify the extension. I was considering perhaps making a bookmarklet that did exactly that though. Javascript tricks such as that is exactly what I use my bookmarklets for.

Re:Why does his link not work?

[slavemowgli]

*nods* Maybe we should just file a request for enhancement on bugzilla...

But then, considering how slow these guys are even when it comes to fixing *actual* bugs, it's probably not worth it. :)

Re:Why does his link not work?

[QuantumG]

If you really care I will implement this feature for you. Just make a $50 (US) donation to my Sourceforge Project and I'll get right on it. Of course, there's no guarentees that my patch will be accepted and there's even less chance that Slashdot will pick up the change. But hey, at least you will be doing something instead of complaining.

Re:Why does his link not work?

[ch3]

Then you want Linkification . Absolutely necessary on Slashdot

Re:Why does his link not work?

[slavemowgli]

Nice. Does it work in Seamonkey, too, though?

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Gob Blesh It]

Offtopic, but I am "doing something": (1) I took the time, six months ago, to write and submit the feature request, and (2) now I'm trying to gather support for it. I'm sorry if my suggestion rubbed you the wrong way--though I don't see why it would--but seeing as I personally have no programming skills and no desire to spend a few days learning perl just to fix an inconvenience in an entertaining, but ultimately recreational, website I happen to browse occasionally, what you call my "complaining" is really the best way I can think of to contribute to this project. You've got your skills and I've got mine.

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely off-topic but: Kudos to your Boomerang project, it looks really good!

Re:Why does his link not work?

[QuantumG]

Oh I'm sorry, I ment no offense. I mean submitting a feature request and then gathering people to nag the developers to fix it, that's obviously "doing something".

Re:Why does his link not work?

[koko775]

On the contrary, it only needs one hand ;)

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Gob Blesh It]

Well, what would you suggest I do?

Re:Why does his link not work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to bring attention to it? Why not put it in your .sig you fucking leech?

Re:Why does his link not work?

[QuantumG]

I believe I've already made my suggestion.

Cracking? By whom?

[RenHoek]

Where will they get the know-how, once the MPAA and RIAA have reached their ultimate goal of exterminating all reverse-engineers?

I don't see the gray-hair-in-a-knot granny librarian soft-icing her way through the latest Safedisc protection...

Re:Cracking? By whom?

[Tom]

I don't see the gray-hair-in-a-knot granny librarian soft-icing her way through the latest Safedisc protection...

That library is in your imagination. Modern libraries not only are computerized to an astonishing amount, they do train the next generation of librarians on stuff like Java, SQL and Internet topics.

Re:Cracking? By whom?

[PhilHibbs]

That library is in your imagination. Modern libraries not only are computerized to an astonishing amount, they do train the next generation of librarians on stuff like Java, SQL and Internet topics.

You've never been to Ludlow.

Feeding them their own medicine

[shish]

Is it a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection (rot26) on digital content such as this post?

Re:Feeding them their own medicine

[strider44]

I've cracked the above rot26 encoded message! It reads:

Is it a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection (rot26) on digital content such as this post?

Do I have to go to prison now?

Re:Feeding them their own medicine

[P-Nuts]

It's sad that I spot stuff like this, but in your .sig, which is:

0x2B | ~0x2B == 0xFFFFFFFF. So there.

you need to add some parentheses as the precedence of == (logical equals) is higher than that of | (bitwise or).

Re:Feeding them their own medicine

[sconeu]

Only on a 32 bit architecture.

Re:Feeding them their own medicine

[Anonymous Coward]

His .sig is refering to instructions in a 32 bit enviromnent - 0xFFFFFFFF

Thats 4 bytes 4*8 = 32.

Re:Feeding them their own medicine

[sconeu]

Reread my post. That's what I said.

Huh?

[xstonedogx]

Of course they reached an agreement.

The German Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the German Booksellers and Publishers Association didn't want this agency getting the entire law overturned. A potential ally for the little guys in their struggle against these stupid laws has just been bought off.

At the same time, they get the added benefit of making it look like these two groups are in charge of the law and can exempt people from it.

In the US, if the RIAA said it was okay for a library to crack it's copy protection mechanisms (haha), would that be okay under the DMCA?

I mean, if they can do that, that seems to mean that it's okay for ANYONE who has the legal right to copy a protected work to break the copy protection mechanisms prevent that legal use.

Re:Huh?

[Kjella]

In the US, if the RIAA said it was okay for a library to crack it's copy protection mechanisms (haha), would that be okay under the DMCA?

Assuming they are the sole owner of the copy protection mechanism and the works, why not? If I took your property without permission, it is called stealing (note to trolls: physical property, not IP), and is illegal. If you gave permission, it is called giving it away, and is legal.

Of course, I don't quite understand it. Why wouldn't they simply recieve a non-DRM copy? Or is it just another plot to make it so that "You have the right to crack it, you just aren't able to exercise it", in the same way fair use is becoming "You have the right to fair use, you just aren't able to exercise it"...

Kjella

How they try to justify the decision...

[AlexanderT]

The official press release states that, "Das Urheberrechtsgesetz sieht so genannte Schrankenregelungen vor, nach denen der Zugang zu urheberrechtlich geschützten Werken zu bestimmten Zwecken, wie zum Beispiel für wissenschaftliche und kulturelle Nutzungen, zulässig ist. Die letzte Novelle des Gesetzes, deren einschlägige Regelungen im September 2004 in Kraft getreten sind, sieht hierfür ausdrücklich die Möglichkeit von Vereinbarungen zwischen Verbänden vor, um diese Nutzungen auch von kopiergeschützten Medien zu ermöglichen."

I think they are referring to this particular revision in the German copyright law, which apparantly states that associations such as the Phonographic Industry have the right to allow particular institutions, such as the National Library, to duplicate copyright-protected media (for the sake of science and culture).

Alex,
MobileRead.com

Re:How they try to justify the decision...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and how does that go along with European copyright laws? Can Germany simply rule such exceptions?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[lachlan76]

If DRM ties a media to a single computer then there isn't going to be any loaning, is there?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[konekoniku]

Truthfully, the vast majority of DRM out there does not tie media to a single computer. (In fact, I'm not aware of any DRM that doesn't give you some way to legally uninstall media on one computer and reinstall it on another, but I could easily be behind the times).

In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha funny. A ruling from a couple of week ago in Sweden made it legal for anyone to crack programs and other schemes as long as it is for personal use. You are also allowed to distribute the cracked software to personal friends.

(This is the case against the cracker group DOD, Drink or Die. While the American members all got jailed the Swedish member (who actually did most of the cracking) was freed of all charges)

And yes, Sweden is also in the EU but thankfully our local laws can override BS laws like this (i think)

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

thankfully our local laws can override BS laws like this (i think)

No, Union law is above member state law (in most cases). And Sweden have been fined for not implementing the infococ directive.

Basically, the EUCD/Infosoc is already valid in Sweden, but since a lot of clauses were optional, not all of it would be.

But, IANAL so what do I know... :)

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have an URL about this?

Re:In Sweden...:D

[goldspider]

"A ruling from a couple of week ago in Sweden made it legal for anyone to crack programs and other schemes as long as it is for personal use."

That's the big difference between Sweden and the U.S., isn't it? In Sweden, everything is assumed to be illegal, and laws are enacted to make them legal. Here it works quite the opposite! Hurrah for capitalism!

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

... to put it precisely please use:
IANAGL or IANAEL

'kay? :^D

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Pofy]

>No, Union law is above member state law (in most
>cases). And Sweden have been fined for not
>implementing the infococ directive.

There is no "Union law". There is a directive which member states should implement. It is still the law of each country that tells what is allowed or not. You can't drag someone into court using the directive. You can bring the country though, and it can be fined by EU for not implementing it though. So until the law of Sweden is changed, it won't affect the legality of acts done by someone in Sweden.

You might also want to know that this directive doesn't really cover software at all since that has allready been covered in the past in other directive AND implemented in Sweden. You might also be interested in knowing that in the proposed implementation for Sweden (at least the proposal I read last summer), there was a very sound reasoning that the circumvention only deal with protection that relates to rights of a copyright holder and copyright. Access for example is NOT such a right. Many such protections that people call "copy protection" or "copyright protection" is in fact not at all about copying but about access. You can often copy such CDs for example, it is access that it deals with. Such a thing is NOT protected. The text relating to the proposal for the new law specifically mention for example region coding on DVDs to not be protected at all since it is all about access and not copying or other rights to the copyright holder.

As for the case mentioned here (versus DOD) I really have not read or heared about it so can't tell anything about it more than that it has nothing to do with the directive in question.

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Pofy]

Do you have any link to that ruling? Yes I read Swedish as well.

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

How big are these fines for not implementing the directives? Would it be practical for a member state to just accept the fines indefinately and refuse to implement the directive?

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

No real facts, but i think it's not a one-time fee, but it would get bigger and bigger and you have to pay again and pay (otherwise these directives would make no sense)

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh... No.

Re:In Sweden...:D

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "Union law". There is a directive which member states should implement. It is still the law of each country that tells what is allowed or not.

There actually exist a ruling from the Union court that effectivly make EU level law be applicable immediately. It is however only at the moment valid for such laws that affect individual rights positivly (e.g. anti discriminatory law). This will however (thankfully) be fixed in the constitution, which will make all community law valid even if the law (including directives) has not been implemented in a memberstate. And Union law has predecence over state law.

Teenage school boys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, teenage school boys are not the only ones who are annoyed with DRM and copy protections ;)

Re:Teenage school boys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I too thought it was a strangely sexist and agist remark that only teenage boys are interested in the library.

Re:Teenage school boys?

[Anonymous Coward]

At my National Library we have the largest porn collection in the southern hemisphere.

I'm not kidding.

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[lachlan76]

Substitute "computer" with "owner". You get the idea.

And just because it doesn't exist now doesn't mean it won't in the future.

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[konekoniku]

I'm certain no DRM bans the sale of legally acquired software from one party to another either. And the slippery slope argument, defined as a logical fallacy as it is, is ipso facto a poor one to make.

German Phonographic Industry

[drgonzo59]

Was I the only one who read that as "German P0rnographic Industry"

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[Grey Ninja]

You know, until I read your post, I thought it DID say German Pornographic industry. I kept wondering why the Porn industry was so important there.

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I kept wondering why the Porn industry was so important there.

Because for some people it's hard to masturbate without the Playboy channel.

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[Ithika]

Because German porn's an institution! :D

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[Lisandro]

Porn is important everywhere, you insensitive clod! *hugs his porn box*

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[ysegalov]

Shnell, Shnell!! (99% of scenes from German-speaking porn movies)

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[Thing 1]

Mmmmm, porn box...

Re:German Phonographic Industry

[bickerdyke]

missing 1%: "Ich bin der Klempner. Ich soll hier ein Rohr verlegen"

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[lachlan76]

Well, there is Steam for instance.

Distribution

[wintaki]

The big question is whether they will be permited to distribute the crack they make. I would be very interested in obtaining German library crack.

Governments suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Great... The government creates a law and makes an additional one to make sure it doesn't apply to them.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

What's in the parent post makes 90 % of the discussion redundant.

Dirty mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

The German Federation of what?! ;-)

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot sell or lend Half-Life 2. (or any other Valve games that come out in future)

Wrong laws

[Pan T. Hose]

Just goes to show... how wrong these laws really are. If this law is preventing the library fulfilling its legal obligations, perhaps this shows it was a badly thought-out law?

Indeed. This law is wrong, but it is reassuring to see that Europe once again is able to recognize such laws and have the guts to do something about it. Contrast this to the attitude of "yeah, DMCA and software patents are wrong, but what are you gonna do?" on the other side of the ocean. I can only say bravo to German government. Some laws will always be wrong. The question is: what are you doing to fix them? And this is clearly a step in the right direction. When there is a conflict between corporations and public education and free access to knowledge--and there will always be in the case of "intellectual property"--who are you going to defend? Germans have just answered this question: citizens.

Re:Wrong laws

[Sique]

You applaud to exactly that entity that has drawn the law in the first place (and then the parliament ratified it.)

What a sentence.

[FauxReal]

The Deutsche Bibliothek achieved an agreement with the German Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the German Booksellers and Publishers Association after it became obvious that copy protections would not only annoy teenage school boys, but also prohibit the library from fulling its legal mandate to collect, process and bibliographic index important German and German-language based works.

If only the rest of the world operated by such noble and romantic ideas.

Is it just me,

[Anonymous Coward]

Or did anyone else read that as German Federation of the Pornographic Industry?

Scary...

How can an agreement with a private entity

[terminal.dk]

place the library above the law ?

If the law says breaking DRM is illegal, then it is illegal. The agreement can onlycover breaking DRM made by the entities represented by those 2 private organizations.

Re:How can an agreement with a private entity

[Anonymous Coward]

"If the law says breaking DRM is illegal, then it is illegal."

Wrong. It isn't illegal if special exemptions are written into the law (and in this case, libraries are specifically mentioned as possible exemptions in the EU directive), if the law takes into account regional laws (it does), and if the institution (public libraries are not private entities, BTW) is permitted by the law to enter licensing agreements with the copyright holder permitting limited reproduction for specific purposes (they are).

Laws are black and white, but only if you bother reading the fine print.

Pretty Meaningless

[MunchMunch]

This would be important if the German National Bibliothek had somehow negotiated a way to ensure that non-DRMed copies will be made available to them for the library archives. As it is, they've only really negotiated the ability to archive for maybe another five to ten years, as by then content will more likely than not simply not be crackable.

I only need to point to the TCPA/Palladium/locked-bios architectures that pop up every so often--if you're someone who thinks DRM will 'always be crackable as long as the content can be seen,' I have to suggest that maybe you aren't fully taking in the DRM onslaught that is about to take place. If content decoding only takes place in your speakers, monitor, etc, with watermarked/recorder-distorting tech within the images themselves, are you really prepared to crack open your monitor and speaker, braving deadly electrical currents, to solder around a connection or two in order to get a clean signal? What about when it all happens within a single piece of silicon?

The German Bibliothek basically won the rights they already had before the EU/CD and which any logical person would argue they had as a matter of course. What they've lost in this 'victory' is the future.

Re:Pretty Meaningless

[Kjella]

If content decoding only takes place in your speakers, monitor, etc, with watermarked/recorder-distorting tech within the images themselves, are you really prepared to crack open your monitor and speaker, braving deadly electrical currents, to solder around a connection or two in order to get a clean signal? What about when it all happens within a single piece of silicon?

Me? No. Someone? Yes. Watermarks are trivial to remove for any mass produced media. Recorder-distorting tech has never succeeded. A trivial sensor -> AC/DC converter -> raw data will always be able to record it, even if your DV camera refuses. If that was the only way, it wouldn't take *that* much to rig up a sensor grid on top of a TV, and do pixel-accurate captures. Or bring a DRM'd audio player into a studio and record it at extreme fidelity.

Software producers may love this new DRM world. But content producers will still be up shit creek. And they always will. The analog "hole" is our eyes and ears. As long as humans have those, they can not succeed.

Right now, it is trivially much easier to crack a CD or DVD than going through any of these cumbersome ways of getting to the content. And I'm not so sure the DRM will be all that fool-proof. But even if they win, they will still lose. Simple as that.

Kjella

why our rights are trampled on by RIAA&co

[N3wsByt3]

This is actually NOT a good thing. If people or organisations have to request an additional special exemption to be allowed to bypass artificial restrictions, where will it end? We are already legally bestowed with the right of exemptions, yet is the the fault of RIAA&co we can't make use of those rights anymore!

In fact, in many countries, those restrictions may be downright illegal, which is why it is so puzzling the EU directive seems to endorse it by making it a criminal offence, no less!

Why is that, you ask? Well, in most european countries, you pay a tax on blank carriers (including CD-r/w) because it compensates for the right to take a personal copy of digital media (which, in case of film or music, IS allowed to be viewed by family/friends, whatever the RIAA says. Now, clearly, by allowing and even endorsing 'protection measures' and making it a criminal offense, you effectively prohibit that people can make use of their right of making a copy.

So, at one hand, there is a law that says you are not allowed to do crack something (not even to be able to make a personal copy), and on the other hand, it is law that you have the right to make such a copy. There is a contradiction here, but one which is solvable: OR the RIAA&co create a system that allows you to make at least one personal copy (they have been sued by consumer-protection organistations in this regard), OR you get rid of the tax on blanc carriers.

Of course, the RIAA&co don't feel like doing either of both things: they want people to continue to pay, even if they can't make use of the right they are paying for anymore. why shouldn't that surprise us?

Equal for all

[Pan T. Hose]

Isn't law supposed to be equal for all?

Remember that this is a country where you have an undeniable right to knowledge and education, and ask this question: shouldn't the right to read in public labraries be equal for all? Shouldn't both of those answers be "yes"? Which "yes" is more important? As you can see, the answers to both of those questions are somewhat in conflict in this case. Now, I agree with you that everyone should have the same rights as those just granted to libraries, and this is what in my opinion is going to happen: schools will be next, students will be excluded as well, etc. until there will be a huge list of ad hoc exceptions and someone will think: "wait a minute, this law is harmful unless everyone is excluded, so let's change it." That is why I believe that this is a step in the right direction. Keep in mind that this is a place where there is a clear conflict between laissez-faire capitalism and individual freedom of citizens. One have to decide what is more important, and every government has the power to do it, in a manner they believe is optimal for their country. I think the German government is going in the right direction.

Re:DIGEST

[Maavin]

Yes, this is clearly a troll...
But there is so much truth in it, that I couldn't possibly mod it down

Only in Germany...

[clawDATA]

...would they have a "German Federation of the Pornographic Industry".

Come on, admit it. You saw that too.

Re:DIGEST

[dawnread]

Hello - from the tone of your excellent post I have a feeling you may enjoy this link - hope so!

Link if SFW if a bit of swearing doesn't bother you (and you need sound)...

Yes

[Pan T. Hose]

You applaud to exactly that entity that has drawn the law in the first place (and then the parliament ratified it.)

Yes, I do, because that is how I believe governments should work. I always respect politicians who can admit that they have made a mistake and who want to fix it. The are no people who are always right, and that's why I don't respect anyone who claim so. Also, I tend to focus on people rather than on entities when it comes to politics.

Important???

[brian0918]

They consider Britney's Christmas in Deutschland an important German-language based work???

Re:Important???

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion that shouldn't even be covered by intellectual property laws. It's far from intellectual.

breaking the law?

[Anonymous Coward]

In english law i'm pretty sure it's someones right to make a backup of digital medium they own for there own personal use. So arn't companys by putting copyprotection on there software, which is illegal to circumnavigate denying us of our right and thus breaking the law?

Why oh why?

[strider44]

Why do I keep looking at that post and reading "German Federation of the Pornographic Industry"?

Re:Why oh why?

[stinerman]

Why is it that everytime /. runs a story with the word "Phonographic" in it, there are ~10 posts about how "Phonographic" looks like "Pornographic"?

Re:Why oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I keep looking at that post and reading "German Federation of the Pornographic Industry"?

Because you have a mind like a Welsh railway station - one track and dirty.

This won't work if the copy protection is any good

[badfish99]

If the copy protection really works the way its manufacturers say it does, the library won't be able to crack it. So the "right" to crack it will be an empty right: a right to do something that is impossible.

If the Germans really wanted to have these things preserved for posterity, they would have to pass a law requiring the manufacturer to supply the library with a non-copy-protected version.

Re:This won't work if the copy protection is any g

[t_allardyce]

Look:

Recording Industry: Employing world experts to create super secure DRM technology, working so hard to make sure DRM doesnt prevent people enjoying music.

Hackers: Evil villans who have the ability, like wizards, to do anything they want with computers, they are so so evil we must stop them now because they can hack into your bank and steal all your money! burn them all!

Re:Quick Question - Because it's the Government

[iammrjvo]

If Joe Sixpack kills someone and is forgiven, why shouldn't anyone else be? While that is an extreme (and criminal) analogy, it is unfair that the law does not treat everyone equally.

The answer here is simple: because this is the National Library. The government can do whatever it wants because it makes the rules. We serfs must follow its edicts, but we should not expect it to be bound by its own rules.

De directive is inherently flawed...

[lucason]

I think this whole idea of it being illegal to even try to crack copy-protection is inherently flawed.

In fact, it takes away completely the importance of actually creating copy protection of any level of quality.

It's like locking your bike with a 1 digit combination lock that only goes up to 9 and then ranting about the fact that it gets stolen. I think this whole idea of it beeing illegal to even try to crack copy-protection is inherently flawed.

In fact, it takes away completely the importance of actually creating copy protection of any level of quality.

It's like locking you bike with a 1 digit combination lock that only goes up to 9 and then ranting about the fact that it gets stolen.
Apparently one only has to say the work is copy-protected. No actual protection seem to be required.

Where is the obligation of the owner to actually protect his property?
We have it for physical property. In many countries it is illegal to keep expensive items in plain sight in you car for instance. Its just to tempting. Hell even adam and eve couldn't help themselves when it came to forbidden fruit. While I don't necesarily agree with the idea that keeping a laptop on the front seet of your car is asking for it, I do object to it beeing illegal to crack copy protection by pressing the shift button. (talking about the extreemly lame copy protection used on some audio-CDs)

In fact it's not cracking at all.

You can't charge someone for breaking and entering if you left the door open, right?
You can't shoot your neighbour for tresspassing if you didn't put up a fence either.

So where are the definitions of what actuallt IS a copy-protection?You don't even have to create copy protection, you just have to say its copy protected.

Re:De directive is inherently flawed...

[t_allardyce]

Well the difference is that in the physical world, property theft can be clearly defined. If you put a 1-digit lock on your bike and you catch someone going through the numbers, AFAIK they are tampering with your property with the intent to steal it. Its pretty clear where the line is drawn, although im sure there are some laws governing how much security you need for something.

It just never happens that someone else's bike legally turns up in your house with a 1-digit lock and you then try and open it only do discover that you have committed a crime, that would just be an insanely stupid concept, but the entertainment industry wants us to accept this very concept!

If something is your property and on your property then really you have every right to do anything you want to it, period. Now if someone wants to sell you something but under the specific contract that when you buy it, its not entirely your property then that contract should be CLEARLY given when you pay for your CD etc.

AFAIK under UK consumer rights law:
"You can expect to own outright the goods that you purchase. Any legal restriction on the ownership or use should be fully and clearly explained before the sale."
and importantly:
"Traders cannot exclude, restrict or modify your statutory rights in any way. They risk legal action if they do so or even attempt to mislead you about your legal rights."

Im not sure about other countries but I think the EU would probably have similar laws, but it would seem that unless i've been clearly told that I can't copy my DVDs then the MPAA etc can suck my balls or give me my money back.

Re:De directive is inherently flawed...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should say "copy restriction". Unless you are one of the few who benefit from such action.

Damn...

[lucason]

I repeated the first paragraph in previous post.

Any chance you guys could find it in your heart to ignore that?

Re:This won't work if the copy protection is any g

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently german right states, that media must be accessible for educational use, this includes (as stated in the law) that those producing copy protected media must (if needed) give unprotected media to schools/universities etc.

Don't know how that incorporates with european law, at the moment, but I read this in the (there) "new" version of the copyright act some month ago.

Hallellujah, brother

[CaptainZapp]

I don't want unlimited rights to the content, I want unlimited rights to listening to the content, and this is what I bought...

Alas I think it could use some improvement. I suggest the following enhancement

I don't want unlimited rights to the content, I want unlimited rights to listening to the content on any fucking device, supporting such content, that catches my fancy, and this is what I bought...

Re:Hallellujah, brother

[Reziac]

Exactly. What people tend to forget is that owning a COPYright doesn't mean "I am the only one with the right to COPY it". It means "I am the only one with the right to DISTRIBUTE it." Really, it should be renamed "Distribution Right".

IOW, as the concept was intended, personal copying (that is, copying without redistributing, as may be needed for one's own private use) should be permitted as a normal and legal act. Meaning if I want to convert my CDs to MP3 for my own use, I should have every right to do so, so long as I don't then scatter them to the four winds.

But as "digital copyright" is being interpreted and enforced (legally and technically) today, it's the equivalent of saying, "Congratulations for buying our book. Your rights and limitations are as follows: You may only read this book under the lamp for which it was purchased. Reading this book under any other lamp is a violation of copyright. Also, if the lamp's bulb burns out, you must buy a new copy of the book, because you only purchased the right to read it under the original lamp equipped with its original bulb."

Inferring further...

[presarioD]

if you have the right connections or if you represent the vocal majority, you can bend the law without breaking it, a law that was enacted by paid corporate legislation services to begin with!

I love the Germans! They always set the example...

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[cbr2702]

see this comment.

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[finkployd]

And the slippery slope argument, defined as a logical fallacy as it is

For a logical fallacy, it sure seems to come true a LOT. Someone clearly forgot to tell it that it has been defined as a logical fallacy.

Finkployd

DMCA exemption

[ghakko]

The Internet Archive (which would be its counterpart in the US) was recently granted a similar exemption from the DMCA for the archival of vintage software.

ooooooh, "license to copy"

[iamatlas]

woooooow, impresive, a "license to copy". That is just soooooo not as impressive as a license to kill. This is why there will never be a cool action movie about German government agents.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, now the Germans are going to make copies of their David Hasselhoff CD's?

and yet another thanks to the pr()n industry!

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the recent discussions on how the pr()n industry helped with this and that, is it any wonder that I read what I read?

"The Deutsche Bibliothek achieved an agreement with the German Federation of the Pornographic Industry"

It is not insightful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather, it's full of errors.

Let me start by pointing out that not all of us agree that "real estate" can be owned. Why us? What have we done to be entitled to own land? Why not the monkeys? Why not the insects? I'm not trolling, we must have in mind the difference between "taking something" and "deserving it".

But more to the point, what is intelectual property? Even if it were right to exploit the Earth with methods and knowledge -- but what/who are we exploiting by controlling "knowledge"?

If one can thrive by exploiting the ones of his own race -- and I mean _human race_ here -- well, I cannot.

Better yet, I can, but I don't do things "because I can". This is lowly, dishonorable.

In fact, even those who don't pay much attention are not doing "because they can", but instead actively choosing a course of action.

Where do YOU stand, reader? What will YOU choose, willingly or not?

Re:DIGEST

[Justin205]

No, this does not mean that you can steal music and movies legally.

Unless you're outside the States. Then it varies. And it's been that way for a fair while.

Take Canada. We can share music legally, as long as it's for personal use only. Movies isn't so clear cut, but with music setting that precedent, I don't think it would be classified illegal.

New Encryption?

[Xesdeeni]

But at the same time, efforts have been made to make breaking the encryptions illegal, and more difficult.

So, while there are methods of breaking copy protection on CDs, and encryption on DVDs today, there very well may not be such a piece of software in the future.

Then how does this library break them? This ruling seems to count on the availability of a circumvention tool. All while the industries are doing everything they can to discourage development and distribution of such tools.

I guess the library will need to spend countless euros paying someone to crack every single new encryption scheme as they are released...all at taxpayers expense.

Xesdeeni

Re:In Sweden...:(

[caridon20]

link to info about it. (swedish)
http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/200501/0 5/200501050 84546_IDG.se596/20050105084546_IDG.se596.dbp.asp

Note that this ruling is based on the old law, the EU directive is not implemented and would have made this ilegal in sweden to. /C

The question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a torrent site functionally different than any library?

Hell, how is the WWW different than a library?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not only about the money. It is more about ensuring that media is still available in the future.

Think about DVDs. Will you still be able to buy DVD players in 25 years? Probably not. Will you be able to listen to music protected with some proprietary DRM scheme in a few years without sticking to OLD computers and OLD software (which brings its own set of problems)? Probably not.

With the new agreement the library has the right to circumvent DRM restrictions to preserve information and make it available in the future - e.g. copy DVDs to some new medium/new codec in a few years.

Yes, german literature...

[wertarbyte]

Bibliothekare, gar nicht träge, Sägen heimlich mit der Säge, Ritzeratze! voller Tücke, In das Gesetz eine Lücke. http://www.fln.vcu.edu/mm/mm3.html

WHO CARES?

[enigmals1]

I mean no offense I guess that's sorta kinda interesting... okay no not really.

No but seriously, why is this even article worthy? This stuff goes on all the time. I mean just because people are acting crazy lately about CD's, DVD's and the like...copyright protection is nothing new at all, nor are exceptions.

What if I created a copy protected virus

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a thought. Why not create a virus and wrap the source code in some really lame copy protection. Does it then become illegal for the anti virus guys to break the copy protection and come and arrest the writer. ??

Just crazy thoughts ... need to get some sleep.

Regds

Re:What if I created a copy protected virus

[RealBorg]

There was a case when a lawyer got his cigars insured against fire damage. After he smoked them he filed a claim and won $ 15,000 in court.

However the insurance company soon got him arrested for 24 months in 24 cases of arson and a $ 24,000 fine.

Make the link yourself, lazy ass

[Anonymous Coward]

There are times when you don't want a URL to automatically be made into a link. For example, you have a low-bandwidth site and you want only those people who are really interested to visit your site. To prevent your site from being slashdotted, you post the URL in plain text, and that way, only those interested enough to make the effort to copy and paste the URL will visit your page (or download your file, or whatever).

Slashdot provides a very simple mechanism to turn URLs into links: Put "<URL:" in front of the URL, and ">" in back of the URL. That's only six fucking characters per URL. How fucking lazy do you have to be not to type six fucking characters? Also, a template is provided just below the text box, so you can't use the excuse that you don't remember how to do it. The problem isn't a bug or missing feature in Slashcode; the problem is lazy posters.

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[mrchaotica]

Well, after reading the other response to my post I figured out the better reason for no DRM -- how are you going to validate your files when the company that issued the license goes out of business? For example, iTunes phones home to Apple to validate itself with your iTMS account. How will that work when apple.com doesn't resolve any more?

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[klinsi]

Well, over 'ere in good ol' kraut county things are different:

If YOU publish, you have to send in two (afair) copies of your elaborate work to the german national library. So, no money needed for that.

But, the folks are absolutely righty on the topic of keeping that stuff for good.

As far as now, even the post ww 1 acid bleached "this book will self destruct in 100 years" stock our grand-grandpas used to print on outperforms all the electronic crap of merely captured white noise from outer space.

So, them krauties are putting all their money in developing technologies to store the stuff for future.

So the industry bought them off

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sad. The industry basicly licensed them to break the law so they would not lobby against it. Its possible that the Library a government body would have had the clout to get this legal enforcement of DRM over turned, now they wont try becase they have been exempted for the time being. That is untill the industry can sneek DRM into the hardware and make it impossible for the Library to break down the road, wether they are legally allowed to or not.

DRM is a scheme by the elite to make it so they can decide who can read what based on economic ability. Its a thinly veiled attempt to get back to the days when only the wealthy and upper middle classes had access to the writen word because it was only they who had the means to stop working long enought to learn how to read. So the difference is now that only the wealthy and upper middle classes will have enought money to buy media to read/watch/listen/whatever after they eat and put a roof over their heads. Its sad really considering this DRM issue as well as lots of other things that would be off topic here, the world looks to me to be on the fast track to the fifteenth century.

Mischievous links

[dsaklad]

How do you get rid of the mischievous links at my blog?...
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.buzzword.com /stats/referers

It is on a blog template provided free to bloggers.

Great, now we just need to get that right back...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that the German libraries has gotten this promission, however the general public should have the same right. In fact it should be required to sell "CDs" with a big fat red label telling the consumer that "This isn't a CD, it may look like it, but it isn't" or "If you buy this you accept that you can only it, how and then we tell you too. PS.: This is NOT a CD".

If I can't buy the music on a real CD, I won't buy it at all, why should I? If I use the "CD" as I see fit, I'll be a "hacker" (in the bad/work sence of the word) and therefore a criminel, I'd had paid for it to. But if I download the CD, I'll still be a criminel, but I wouldn't have paid to become one.

If I buy a CD, a book, a DVD or and MP3, I want the right to make as many copies/backups a I see fit, as long as those copies are for personal use within my household. I also want the right to convert them, change the media, without being called a criminel.
I want the right to scan a book to e-book, if I think it's a good idea.

Why is it that every "anti-pirate" atempt ever made punish the paying consumers? And the "pirates" gets the copies thats easy to use? Why not show the once who are paying you some repect.
And why do the industri have to make loaded terms, why can't they present their case in a more grown-up maner?

Region-coding on DVDs, PS2-games and more, should be illegal. Why can't I play all my legally paid DVDs on my equally legally paid Playstation 2?

The EUCD, infosoc or what-ever it's called , is one of the reasons I'll vote NO, for the coming election for EU's first constitution, and I hope all the countries that gets the chance to vote, will say loudly and clearly _NO_ to the EU's constitution.

Damn, I write to much...

- M_abs

Re:Uhh..okay? Library with no money?

[3.09 a hour]

My whole point was, if its a law, why have another law stating they can unencode the data, why not simply have the publishers give them the unencrypted data to begin with? As for how are they supposed to loan out copyrighted materals? netflix does it every day, if some upstart internet company can do it...