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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."
the French make the right decision! Guess I don't have to worry about my "backed-up" DVDs then ;)
But this judgement goes in the opposite direction of the EMI case, by a Versailles appeal juge. They said EMI could apply the copy protection scheme on audio-CD, given that the costumers knew what they bought. The court asked EMI to give 10 000E to UFC-Que choisir to repair the moral damage, since this system cause some players not to read their audio-CDs. http://www.clubic.com/actualite-19778-la-protectio n-dvd-rendue-illegale-.html/
The answer IS 42.
Looks like I'll be buying my movies from France here on out. It's not like the MPAA would stop selling DVD's in France...
Would they?
Bless you France for your gift of liberty.
I like the French. They cut through the crap, and they have pretty girls. Like that court ruling that you could pirate stuff, as you'd already paid the "piracy" tax on the blank CDs. Rock on, La France.
Get your own free personal location tracker
The French are invaded by the MPAA. Resistance crumbles within the hour.
-ShadowRanger
So what's going on here? Generally we don't like what the french courts are doing (such as their lawsuits against nazi junk on auction sites), but this seems like a Good Thing (tm).
Is this another thing that appears to be good, but actually creates more problems than it solves? Or is it truly a boon for DVD lovers everywhere?
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
No wonder people called them Freedom Fries. It seems the French are endowed with the natural freedoms us Americans have become used to losing.
From this day forth, I proclaim the French to be the bravest, politest and sweetest-smelling of all Nations! Let's hope this extends to the next generation of media, also.
But the french! They hate google! They didn't support our war! They... they... put mayonnaise on their fren- freedom fries! They're freaks! They're cheese-eating surrender monkeys! I don't care if they gave us the statue of liberty or helped us in the war of independence! They... they... [head explodes]
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.
Just when I thought we had finally stopped with the overzealous* French bashing here in the US. There's no way that Bush Co. and his corporate masters will not unleash the anti-French/patriotic jingoism after a ruiling like this.
just kidding...mostly...
*I say overzealous because a little French bashing, a la The Onion's "France Surrenders" second headlines in Our Dumb Century is a good thing.
my pet machine
Wow. Something good coming out of France. Who'da thought?
I wonder what will happen here. The French market is not so large that it gets all DVDs made specifically for it. Instead, they tend to use multiple languages and market to a lot of Europe at the same time. If that is the case, do the big media companies stop selling in France or do they start selling non-protected DVDs more broadly? This could get interesting. I wonder if France's actions will snowball or make it a backwater for digital media.
I blow my nose at you, so-called "DRM" - you and all your silly corporate supporters!
Maybe we ought to rename French DVDs as "Freedom DVDs", but this time not as a political statement, but rather because of the true freedom one has in DRM-less content.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
For me, the MPAA should be able to sell DVDs with any amount of DRM that they desire, as long as they indicate that the DVD is DRMed. I just want the right to be able to break the encryption, or even do simple things like interoperate my devices without being sued.
E = m c^3 Don't drink and derive E = m c^3
If you really believe in free speech you should admit that Corporations and individuals both should have the right to distribute (and sell) any kind of information they want. Anti-DRM leglisation is socialist and wrong. If citizens get too used to the government protecting them, they will have weak bullshit detectors and will become dependent on the nanny state to tell them how to be "free". As long as no person or property is physically harmed, the government should stay the fuck out of the way. Bring the DRM on!!! Let the idiotic masses pay too much for RIAA music and MPAA movies that they can only watch in very restricted ways. Anyone with at least some partially functioning cognative tissue in their heads will just find innovative indipendent artists. A new market for cheep intelligent media that allows fair use (probably distributed via the internet) will emerge.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
This must be a plot to return the French language back to its world wide popularity!
I think the case was easy to understand, easier for a Judge to agree.
This is after a man who was not able to copy a DVD he purchase to a VHS cassette so he can watch it at his mother's place. Which is considered private copying and is a consumer right in France.
Until it affects you, and you can see the problem, most people dont understand the issue. This was the perfect example of people seeing the outcome of copyprotection on something you bought and no longer have control over how you use it.
Of course, I have no idea if I can copy a DVD to VHS tape legally for my own personal use in America, with the laws being passed on riders on bills for IRAQ, who knows.
a violation of the DMCA? Turning to the courts sounds like a circumvention technology to me.
BG
Looks like I'll be buying my movies from France here on out. It's not like the MPAA would stop selling DVD's in France...
I wonder if this is part of the hidden agenda with the ruling. The French do not like U.S cultural imperialism as embodied by Hollywood movies. If Hollywood's movie distributors stop selling into the French market, will the French be that upset? And if France becomes a center for the distribution of non-DRM DVDs that hurts Hollywood's profits, will the French be that upset?
It sounds like a win-win proposition for defenders of the French culture.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Obviously, the protection systems are hurting the loyal consumers (yes, there are some, trust me) as a side effect.
.2 cents
In France, it is legal to copy your CD and DVD, and anything. What is forbidden is to widespread them around, or even worse, selling illegal copies (the latter have always been toughly sued).
But now, with these protection systems, when you damage your cd/dvd (kids scratching them, anyone ?), you've lost the benefits of them.
IMHO, i globally agree the idea that you have to pay for what you consume (stealing is BAD. final dot.) -but may disagree on the price it is sold, or the insane way the bill is dispatched to the artists and producer amongst others-.
A good thing would be to life guarantee the possible exchange of your broken/damaged CD/DVD, thus allowing them to be protected and uncopy-able. Also coming as a MUST is "stop making protection system that make your CD/DVD unusable on some legacy device" (like protected CD that could not be played on car player).
That would be a good idea. But that implies that the majors invest some money in these, and also implies the majors cares about the consumer as a whole, not only his money...
my
I'm not excited. In fact, I'm disappointed.
This is not what we should want. We don't want courts or legislation dictating how we provide our content. Just like we don't want courts and legislation dictating how we should consume our content.
Organizations should be free to encumber their products with encrypted copy protected nonsense. Just as we should be free to circumvent that nonsense.
CSS is not the problem. It's laws like the DMCA that are the problem.
... do we like the french, now?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Every morning, 60 million Frenchmen wake up and think about how they can annoy the Americans. Every single day of their lives. Even before taking their first glass of wine and heading to the bakery to get their freshly-baked baguette. This is really their single most important duty to fulfill every day.
/. make it sound like we have nothing else to do of our time than to think about the mighty US of America, how to annoy it, how to counter it. Believe it or not, it happens sometimes that we have ideas, rules, laws of our own, that are not just there to be "against" the US.
Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but you guys here on
And by the way, even though you almost never see them in the US, there is actually a lot of movies produced in France. This ruling is going mostly to piss off the french movie producers. And there is absolutely no need for a "hidden agenda" to explain it.
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.
Ummm, this is France - they have hot lesbian scenes in darned toothpaste commercials.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.)
There is another good reason to buy DVDs in France. They are an excellent new tool for learning the language.
In North America, most new DVDs come with language choices. Most new DVDs are Hollywood productions and their original audio is in English. There is a subtitle set in English for the deaf. This is a great tool for learning English as a Second Language because the student can read the words as they are spoken. Even if the student's grasp of English is not yet to the point where the words can be understood, it is still an important learning tool.
The hardest part of learning a language like French or English is separating the stream of spoken phrases into individual words. In learning Romance languages like French and Spanish from English (and vice-versa), the vocabulary isn't the biggest problem because 50% of the words are the same. It's the rhythms of the pronunciations that is so hard to understand. Being able to see the words being spoken on the screen as they are being said goes a long way to understanding what is being said after getting an initial mastery of the language's basic vocabulary and grammar structure.
Hollywood films have a big problem with this learning approach, however. The audio and subtitles are translated by different teams and they never match. For this learning technique to work, you need an exact match between the spoken dialog and the subtitles.
Movies made in France and put on DVD do have this needed exact match.
This is a great tool for learning a language and I suggest giving it a try. However, I would not recommend learning French if you are living in the US. Spanish is the most important foreign language to learn at this time.
In Canada, however, definitely go with learning French if you are a native English speaker. The first time that you go from Kamloops to Chicoutimi you'll see instantly how smart that it was to take a little time fooling around with audio and subtitles on your DVD player. Even if all your friends do tell you that there isn't any real reason to learn any French because you'll never ever use it. You will.
French movies used to the coolest films on the planet for a short period in the early 1960s and a major contender at all other times. The French invented cinema even if Edison invented motion pictures. But lately French movies have become either really stupid or really stupid and boring. For that reason very few of them actually make it to the US as DVD releases. Or they get filmed in English and dubbed into French. Usually these dub translations have the audio/title mismatch problem. A really great movie to start with is "La Femme Nikita" from early 1990s. Unfortunately, few of the Nouvelle Vague films from the 1960s have both French and English subtitles. And many have not aged well: becoming boring and incomprehensible over the decades. The two best French New Wave films still worth watching are "Jules And Jim" and "La Jetee", both from 1962.
Must be great to have a government that is not in the pockets of the corporations.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
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!
You guys here on /. make it sound like we have nothing else to do of our time than to think about the mighty US of America, how to annoy it, how to counter it. Believe it or not, it happens sometimes that we have ideas, rules, laws of our own, that are not just there to be "against" the US.
If I offended you, then I apologize.
What I said was not meant to imply that the French spend all their time cooking up schemes to annoy the U.S. As you say, the French have their own laws for their own reasons. I saw the court ruling as a legitimate way to change the economics of imported American movies with an eye toward preserving French culture.
And by the way, even though you almost never see them in the US, there is actually a lot of movies produced in France.
Absolutely! The local university has an excellent International Film Series where I have seen some very enjoyable French movies.
If this ruling stands, it might be a very interesting test of the validity of arguments about DRM. If DRM really is essential to the economics of the motion picture industry, then the ruling will hurt French film industry especially. If DRM is a barrier to film consumption, then the absence of DRM on French DVD should mean prosperity for French film makers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The overwhelming preponderance of /. readers' responses to this story seems to have been a thoughtless regurgitation of all things anti-French. I sort of feel like pointing out that, based on those posts, at least on this side of the Atlantic precisely the sort of idiotic self-centeredness you're describing holds true. The French don't think that way, no, but apparently slashdot does.
This isn't about France -- it's about the suppression of dissenting views. The entirety of the anti-French idiocy over here amounts to one big "ad hominem" attack; nobody really had an answer to Villepain's Security Council arguments, so we demonized the speaker rather than countering the speech.
(Cue jokes about how the French won the American Revolution by pitching in with their navy at the opportune moment... Oh, never mind, we're supposed to forget that one. Surrender monkeys and all that. Yeah. That stuff. Belgian fries. Etcetera.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The reason the French and Americans don't get along is quite simple: We hate the French for thinking that they are more arrogant than we are. So there!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We have learned that like it or not we will be dragged into the world problems. We were reminded again in 2001 when a couple buildings fell, even though Bush was up to that time persuing a more isolationist policy. The US cannot be an isolationist.
We haven't been isolationist since WWII. We have troops in over 100 countries and have had them there for decades.
There's not much we can do about the world problems we get dragged into. The problem is all the world problems we create ourselves.
For example, 50 years before 9/11 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected President of Iran and installed that secular puppet dictator the Shah. 25 years ago he in turn was overthrown by an anti-American religious fanatic Ayatollah. That in turn gave Osama bin Laden his "base" to pull off 9/11.
Connect the dots.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/
The term "Maginot Line" has been used as a metaphor for something that is confidently relied upon despite being ineffectual.
Wow! That sounds remarkably like DRM!