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CSS of DVDs Ruled 'Ineffective' by Finnish Courts

Posted by Zonk on from the rip-away-my-pretties-rip-away dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The CSS protection used in DVDs has been ruled "ineffective" by Helsinki District Court. This means that CSS is not covered by the Finnish copyright law amendment of 2005 (based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001), allowing it to be freely circumvented. Quoting the press release: ' The conclusions of the court can be applied all over Europe since the word effective comes directly from the directive ... A protection measure is no longer effective, when there is widely available end-user software implementing a circumvention method. My understanding is that this is not technology-dependent. The decision can therefore be applied to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as well in the future.'"

5 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Catch-22? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A protection measure is no longer effective, when there is widely available end-user software implementing a circumvention method. My understanding is that this is not technology-dependent.

    What this would seem to say to me is that in order to get to the point at which the protection measure is considered to be ineffective, you have to go through a point at which it is not widely available, and you're breaking the law.

    Does that seem a bit wrong to anyone else?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Catch-22? by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      On the other side of the coin, does this mean that all that is required to make it legal to crack a protection scheme is to crack it and make the crack widely available?

      --
      ____

      ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    2. Re:Catch-22? by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you crack the protection before the product is released, have you broken any law?

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  2. Re:But... by gerrysteele · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well your logic is askew... There are specific laws that deal with the use case of a stop sign denoting exactly what to do. There are no specific laws relating to the use of CSS on DVDs.

  3. "effective" means "used by copyrightholder" by Husgaard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There is a problem with this ruling, as it only takes local law into account, and not the directive. According to the EU "solidarity principle", the interpretation of local laws made because of EU directives should be in line with the directive.

    And the InfoSoc directive actually defines "effective technological measures" in article 6.3.

    The definition is contrary to common sense. Basically the directive defines "effective technological measures" as "technological measures" used by copyright holders:

    3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression 'technological measures' means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subjectmatter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed 'effective' where the use of a protected work or other subjectmatter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.

    You can only get such perverted definitions if you let the copyright holders write the law! I'm glad that Finland will not take part in such a perversion.