Slashdot Mirror
French Courts Ban DRM on DVDs
blamanj writes "According to a story on Boing-Boing, the French courts have banned DRM copy-protection on DVDs, because it is a consumer right to make a backup or to change formats (in this case, to VHS). Original story (in French) is also available."
Source (linked to by the boingboing article)1 3
http://www.allpeers.com/blog/?page_id=1
UFC-Que Choisir (a French consumer protection organization) has been granted a prohibition on DVD copy protection devices by the Paris Court of Appeal, these devices having been judged to be incompatible with private copying rights.
Arnaud Devillard, 01net., April 22, 2005 at 7:28pm
What consumer protection groups have not yet succeeded in gaining for CDs, they have just obtained for DVDs. On April 22nd, the Paris Court of Appeal prohibited the use of DVD-based copy protection systems. The reason? The incompatibility of this practice with private copying rights.
Two companies, Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, thus suffered a serious setback after having won the case in the Court of First Instance at the end of April 2004.
UFC-Que Choisir latched onto the case of a consumer who was unable to copy a DVD of Mulholland Drive, a David Lynch film produced by Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, onto a video cassette. This person wanted to watch the film at his mother's, who did not have a DVD player. The strict familial context mandated for the exercise of private copying rights was therefore applicable.
The tribunal also faulted the DVD producers for lack of consumer information. This was not entirely absent but was judged to be insufficient. The label "CP" for "Copy Protected" was indeed present on the jacket, but in "small characters" and not sufficiently explicit.
A worrying judgement for the French Video Producers' Association.
Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal have one month to unblock their DVDs. At the same time, Alain Sarde and Universal Pictures Video France must pay 100 euros in damages to the consumer in question. The same two companies, and Studio Canal, must also pay him 150 euros as well as 1,500 euros to the consumer association.
On the other hand, the court refused the request for damages and interest by UFC-Que Choisir against Studio Canal. The consumer association admitted to a legal misstep on its part, having chosen the wrong target for its request. The court also refused to release a judiciary communiqué on the decision.
It goes without saying, however, that UFC-Que Choisir is more than satisfied, as the damages and interest were not the main object of the case. This was rather the acceptance of its argument regarding private copying. This, and the fact that the decision can be applied to other cases "as long as the original DVD was purchased legally," says Gaëlle Patetta of the association's legal department.
But for the delegate general of the Video Producers' Association, Jean-Yves Mirski, the decision is "worrisome". Not having had the time to analyze the decision in detail, the VPA has not yet decided whether to appeal the decision to a higher court (the Court of Cassation). But this is far from out of the question.
In any case, according to Jean-Yves Mirski, this judicial turn of events "directly contradicts the European Copyright Directive." The latter permits the use of copy protection systems. This will certainly not make future legal action on this subject any simpler.
This case is different, because the DVD was not correctly labelled. There was a small CP (for "Copie Prohibee", which means "copy unauthorized"), which has been decided by the court to be not enough to inform the customer about the protection.
wasn't the "pirate tax" Canadian, not French?
If you're referring to a levy on blank media, I think you'll find that most "first world" countries have one, including the USA, which had it long before Canada did.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
As always, this isn't legal advice, this is a Slashdot post, if you want real legal advice, get a lawyer in your area. So take it for what it's worth.
However, my understanding of the DMCA is that it only applies to digital copies and protections. Thus you are still legally allowed to circumvent analogue copy protections, which is what prevents you from copying a DVD to VHS.
The reason you can't make the copy is Macrovision. It's a "protection" that functions by varying the signal intensity in areas that are off screen. This causes the automatic gain control of the VCR to wig out and you get an unstable signal. Some newer devices actually look for it and will just refuse to accept the signal at all.
Well you can eaisly get commercial devices that will filter this out with no ill effects. You can then make a copy as normal. As a practical matter, even if these were to become unavailable (they are still around as of today) you could get a semi-pro or pro VCR that will allow you to manually set the gain, which will then copy fine (though the copy will then have Macrovision present on it).
So at this point it appears to be legal, as well as easy to do. That could change, however.
This was not the government, this is a single judge with more brain. On this subject, the current French government is following the same line as the US.
I do not expect much of this judgment. All we will win is "Copy protected" written on all DVDs.
Christophe (Don't hesitate to point out my spelling and grammar mistakes, I want to learn - Thanks).
The movie industry has hoisted itself by its petard. How many advertisements have you seen saying "Own it on DVD!"? Well, if they are advertising that they are selling you a copy of the movie, then how can they legally enforce claims that they actually sold you only a licence to view the movie?
Thus, once the copy is yours, it logically follows that you can do anything with it you like, as far as your personal use is concerned. (Copying it for others is still a copyright violation.)
This came up in my Marketing class just this semester. It is illegal in the United States to price discriminate. However, this law doesn't apply to the case in question, because they aren't trying to sell for artifical prices in, say, California vs Kansas. Rather, they are discriminating against global geographic areas, which is beyound the jurisdistion of the US law. So it isn't illegal. (But it should be.)
Q: Why did the French give us the Statue of Liberty instead of putting it up in Paris?
They have the original scale model in Paris.
It's the size of an ordinary statue, but it's exactly the same otherwise.
You can't take the sky from me...
it's easier to resist when you'll, oh, get shot for resisting. Really, France surrendering to Germany is something that we criticize them far too much for. If Germany had, say, bordered the States . . . remember that at the time the U.S. didn't even really have a military force to speak of, compared especially to the German Reich's forces. Nearly anyone could have been steamrolled.
Furthermore, while we make a big deal of our sacrifices in WWI, we did it from the safety of distance; soldiers went over, but the threat to North America was never there. Meanwhile, the horror of war was literally in the backyards at best of the countries in Europe. The French especially had a rough time of it, and just in general Europe was pretty much experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The German forces just overwhelmed them; the military might was just too much to bear (and, it would be quite some time before American production and conscription raised enough military force to be able to help even if it had been the popular opinion). No, France, though admittedly acting with much defeatism, was outmatched, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. The strategic reserve, which had saved France in the First World War, was nonexistent. General de Gaulle managed to forestall the fate of Paris for quite some time, but eventually the crushing weight of German reinforcements.
And if we're going to berate France, then berate Britain at the same time; great friends that they are, they hastily pulled their forces out of the continent as France was being overrun (of course, this was strategically the only sane option at the time, but since when did logic and historical accuracy have anything to do with these kinds of accusations?).
The bottom line is that the causes aren't so straightforward as to just be "oh, those French pansies". It seems to me almost as if the current trend of "belittle the French" might stem more from modern annoyance in the States with France's political opposition to current administrative doctrine than any historical accuracy or fairness. This whole meme is quite suspect.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Well, there are definately laws against international cartels price fixing in Canada, there have been some pretty hefty fines. A recent reference
Here in Canada conspiring to isolate Canada from foreign markets so you can jack up the Canadian prices without competition is definately illegal. I would imagine most countries have some means of protecting themselves from this sort of activity.
The whole dodge is, make the discs region coded and encrypted with css to make them useless when played in the wrong player and make it illegal to sell multiregion drives because they circumvent copy protection and most countries are receptive to that sort of thing these days. Just like that, you've got your price fixing in effect, but you're doing it all to "protect against piracy". Selling DVDs for a $1 in Asia and not being vulnerable to competition from your distribution chain when you sell them for $20 in other countries is just a side benefit....
-1 Uncomfortable Truth