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EU Encouraging Standardized DRM, Licensing
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The European Commission is trying to encourage a standard licensing and DRM scheme for all of Europe, as well as 'cooperation procedures' and 'codes of conduct' for ISPs, copyright holders, and customers. No legislation has been proposed yet, but the 'cooperation procedures' sound like a push for an EU version of the DMCA Takedown Notices, which are already routinely sent to people outside the US. While simplified licensing might be nice, it's interesting that they don't appear to understand the inherent tension between standardization, interoperability and DRM — break once, copy everywhere."
Actually EU law supersedes national law when it conflicts. This has been upheld on many occasions
European Law Supremacy
I never get used to these constant resurrections
Yes, for the foreign parties it does, but for the local parties it doesn't !
I'll give you an example:
A dutch guy wants to marry a woman from Africa. In the netherlands he'd have to fulfill all kinds of BS requirements so he moves to Belgium, then marries the woman while in Africa and then moves with her to Belgium. In Belgium the dutch person can claim EU resident status, so EU law will trump belgium law.
(this is known as the 'belgium route' in the netherlands)
But in the Netherlands because he's Dutch he would not be able to do that, for a Dutch national in the Netherlands Dutch law trumps EU law.
(which is why the belgium route exists)
I know this sounds crazy but it really is true, an eu-resident but non-dutch person in the Netherlands has more rights in the Netherlands than a Dutch person does and conversely a Dutch person has more rights in other European countries than those countries nationals.
MP3 Search Engine
Actually, if you read TFA, it sounds as though they want Europe-wide licencing for media downloads. Having one standard DRM schema might or might not be part of this, but they also want to stop the practice whereby paid-for downloads are charged at different prices in different countries: for example, Apple notoriously charge more for itunes downloads in the UK than they do in euro-zone countries. The original purpose of the EU was to create a "common market" where this sort of abuse could not happen.
This has nothing to do with Dutch national law trumping EU law in this case, which it doesn't, but with the fact that family law (the law governing marriage, custody of children, etc.), is not harmonized EU-wide. Every EU member state has its own marriage laws, but every member state also is obliged to respect marriages that have taken place under the laws of other member states.
Therefore, by moving to Belgium, you can profit from the (in this case) more liberal family law in Belgium, and when you move back to the Netherlands, the state is obliged to respect the marriage that has taken place in Belgium.
Therefore, your example is in fact an illustration of how EU law does trump national law!
DRM relies on encryption.
Encryption is designed to secure communication between Alice and Bob while denying it to the evil Eve.
In DRM, Bob and Eve are one and the same person.
In other words, DRM seeks to give a person access to an item while denying him/her access to that item. This is not a recipe for success.
The proponents of DRM seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the strengths and weaknesses of encryption, and so are attempting to use it in a manner that is inherently weak. The fact that DRM schemes are so frequently and so rapidly broken by people with minimal cracking resources is a clear pointer to this.
For further information, Google on Schneier.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
that's not how it is explained here:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgi%C3%AB-route
I hope you can read dutch, just in case here is a translation of one section of the article:
"Discrimination of own subjects.
European law trumps national law. And yet, every member state is free to apply more strict rules to its own subjects.
This so-called 'reverse discrimination' can not be remedied by Communitylaw, because it is a direct consequence of
the limited powers of the Community. The obligations with respect to liberalization, such as described in the
Communitylaw, has according to the current jurisprudence of the Court in principle only applicability to the
cross border traffic. This indicates exactly the necessity of living (temporarily) abroad before you can use European law."
and the original dutch:
"Discriminatie van eigen onderdanen
Het Europees Recht gaat boven Nationaal Recht. Toch staat het elk lidstaat vrij, om haar eigen onderdanen aan strengere regels te onderwerpen. Deze zogeheten omgekeerde discriminatie" kan door het Gemeenschapsrecht niet worden verholpen, omdat deze het gevolg is van de beperkte bevoegdheid van de Gemeenschap. De verplichting tot liberalisering, zoals dat staat in het Gemeenschapsrecht, heeft namelijk volgens de geldende jurisprudentie van het Hof in beginsel alleen betrekking op het grensoverschrijdende verkeer. Welke dus exact de noodzaak aangeeft waarom het nodig is om (tijdelijk) in het buitenland te wonen, alvorens je gebruik mag makenvan het Europees recht."
I realize this is highly confusing but this really is the way how things are. In other words, if everybody in the EU would retain their nationality and would move to a different EU country (farfetched but theoretically possible) all the national laws would cease to be applicable overnight.
MP3 Search Engine
Sorry, but you're going to have to explain it properly before that starts making any sense. EU nationals are subject to local laws regardless of where in the EU they are.
This isn't family law, it comes down to the law regarding freedom of movement of EU nationals and right to live and work in other countries. An EU person is entitled to bring their non-EU spouse plus any non-EU dependent children to any EU country except their own. If they bring their spouse to their own country then local immigration law trumps freedom of movement. In practical terms it means that if an EU citizen marries a non-EU person outside the EU citizen's country of residence and then brings them there to settle, they will enjoy the same rights to live and work as the EU citizen with the only condition being that the EU citizen must be able to show that he or she can support their spouse financially. Once settled and with a full residence permit, the non-EU citizen is entitled to all the benefits that an EU citizen can get. Once you have such a EU 'dependent' permit for a Schengen country, then you can travel throughout Schengen countries without a visa, but if you want to visit a non-Schengen EU country, such as Ireland which demands visas for nationals of your country then you are theoretically entitled to a more or less free one when travelling with your EU spouse, but you still have to apply for it!
See my journal, I write things there
Doing DRM right would be cutting off the viewer/listeners eyes, ears, fingers, and anything else that could potentially copy the information, no matter how tedious.