Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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.