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CSS of DVDs Ruled 'Ineffective' by Finnish Courts
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.'"
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?
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It's an interesting concept though - if you can crack the system, and the cracks are easily obtainable in enduser products, then it is - for the purposes of the courts - not really encrypted. I like that thinking.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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Correct me if i'm wrong, but afaik the meaning of directive is that each member-country has to make their own law, based on these directives. So they must make their own interpretations if the directive, and therefore court rulings cannot make a direct precedence across borders.
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Duh, what do cascading style sheets have to do with DVDs? They must have embedded web content. That must be it.
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If the enforcement technology is ineffective, does that make violating the copyright OK? Weak analogy: A stop sign in an intersection is easily circumvented, does that mean it's OK for me to blow right by them? No, I'm not on the side of the mafiaa - just not sure I agree with the logic here. I'd rather see some discussion of the copyright laws themselves rather than CSS technology to "enforce" them. My 2 cents.
...do we have to bri^H^H^Hlobby to get some key sections from this "European Copyright Directive" tacked onto the end of the DMCA?
And how did the Europeans get all the good lawmakers anyway? I'm thinking about moving to Finland where copyright seems to make more sense.
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I do too. I wonder if we will ever see that in the good old US of Corporations... Damn there i go again being forward thinking like our , dvd decrypting european overlords, and I for one welcome them.
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...but just a note on law. Even though EU passes directives, each country must pass their own laws in parliament. The EU does not make "federal law" like in the US. They may also apply different exceptions and such. So the law is not the same and even if it were, precedents do not legally apply. However, this goes straight to the core of the directive so if other countries read "effective" the same way... The precedent sounds rather strange to me though, it's like saying "if enough people are breaking the law, the law doesn't apply". Somehow I think they meant "to the effect of" meaning "however they do it, as long as it protects a copyrighted work". Not that it matters since the actual law is probably in Finnish anyway.
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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:
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.
What if the packaging were required to notify you that the product contained encryption that may interfere with your fair use rights?
It isn't the current situation by any means, but I don't really want laws that force me to always pay for fair use; every once in a while, for stuff I want to watch once, encumbrance is just peachy. (and I realize that this is a hypothetical, as no such price differentiation currently exists)
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CSS is Finnished then.
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This is probably true if you think about insurance business. Likewise, trademark law requires the owner to actively defend the trademark.
Of course, the main problem with these analogies is that basic copyright still applies; you can break CSS in order to watch the movie on Linux, but you're not allowed to distribute tons of copies.
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No. DRM says that when you leave your house, someone ELSE controls the key and locks your door, and decides under what conditions you're allowed to have your key back to enter your own house. This ruling just says that if the key to your house is widely available on the Internet, you're allowed to use that widely-available key to enter your own house.
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You misunderstand. "Fair use" is an exception to copyright protection. It is not a means of defense against copyright infringement, which would necessarily involve the commission of copyright infringement--fair use is *noninfringing* use and therefore the two are mutually exclusive. If your act is fair use, it is not copyright infringement. People don't "generally understand what is meant" if you go by what people throw around on Slashdot. Fair use is not an excuse for committing an unlawful act. It is an exemption from the applicability of the act--it is a *possible* defense to *alleged* copyright infringement in a *limited* and *variable* number of circumstances.
There is no such thing as a prima facie defense to copyright infringement because there is no fixed definition of fair use, which you yourself point out in your own post. I also specified that format shifting is not CATEGORICALLY fair use. That does not preclude the determination of certain kinds of transfers to be covered by fair use.
Does this mean that since product keys are widely available on the internet for licensed products, like MS office, XP, etc.. that product key use-protection is ineffective, and therefore it's ok for me to use them as much as i want?
If you had a legally obtained copy then yes you can do what you want. If you got a illegal copy then it is still illegal
How about buying a widely-available automatic pick gun to break into someone's house? It's not trespassing then, right?
Using the pick gun is not illegal. Going into the house is.
All this ruling does is allows you to break the access control. It does not give you the right to COPY materials.
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