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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?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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?
...and there was much rejoicing!
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.
What?
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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u-bend
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.
...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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Finland != Denmark.
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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.
That's what those Swedes want you to think.
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Wish I had some mod points. That's the funniest goatse post I've seen since it became tired (which was about 5 minutes after it was first posted).
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Decrypting DVDs and violating copyrights are not the same thing. There are plenty of reasons I have for decrypting CSS without the DVD-CCA's approval which do not violate copyright law in any way.
Your linkage of unauthorized decryption with violating copyright law is exactly what the "mafiaa" would like for you to believe. You've fallen into their trap. You have lost. Have a nice day.
There's a very distinct (and important!) difference between bypassing enforcement technology and violating copyright.
Copyright law spells out how to tell if a use of copyrighted works is infringing or not, and provides a list of examples of non-infringing use.
However, enforcement technology may well prevent you from doing any sort of copying; even what is explicitly provided as an example of allowable use! Bypassing the enforcement technology for this purpose is clearly not a violation of the owners copyright.
So, circumventing the enforcement tech, and violating copyright are two seperate things.
Now, to continue on a slightly different topic... Why should circumvention be illegal in the first place? Copyright law already handles every case where someone who is circumventing the enforcement is doing something you'd classify as wrong. It seems to add redundancy, and more importantly, target a new class of people... namely those who are trying to excersize thier fair-use rights.
I'll leave it up to you to speculate who could want such legislation and why they'd want it. I'm pretty sure you can figure out my thoughts on it, I'll leave you to develop your own.
Why should circumvention be illegal in the first place?
Because the satellite TV companies, and more recently the movie industry, bought up a lot of Senators and Representatives and got some legislation passed?
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CSS is Finnished then.
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I didn't say why *is* it illegal, I asked why *should* it be illegal... :P
The answer you gave is to why it is.
All the swiss people in Sweden will take offense of the mixup here.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
I didn't know you Albanians even had Internet access...
Ignore this signature. By order.
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.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)