Finnish Appeals Court Rules Breaking CSS Illegal

Thomas Nybergh writes "Due to an appeal court decision from a couple of days back, breaking the not-very-effective CSS copy protection used on most commercial DVD-Video discs is now a criminal act in Finland (robo translated). The verdict is contrary to what a district court thought of the same case last year when two local electronic rights activists were declared not guilty after having framed themselves by spreading information on how to break CSS. Back then, it was to the activists' benefit has CSS been badly broken and inneffective ever since DeCSS came out."

Comments

Better URL

[Anonymous Coward]

A better URL to a non-robo-translated english version is http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=156

Human made translation of Turre Legal's blog entry

[livingdeadline]

There's now a proper, human made translation of Turre legal's blog entry available

Headline incorrect - CSS breaking is still legal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the headline is incorrect - the court did NOT rule that breaking CSS is illegal but distributing the software to accomplish this is illegal - breaking the copy protection for private use IS STILL LEGAL.

So nothing changed really - media is just screwing over the whole thing as usual.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to reply but apparently /. comment engine is even worse than Diggs.

The headline is WRONG - it's NOT illegal to break the CSS content protection for PERSONAL use - it's completely legal. Period.

This ruling is not about viewing the movies on Linux or any other device but spreading the DeCSS program itself.

So bottom line:
Decryption of movies to view them on Linux was not and is not even after this ruling illegal.

Unfortunately Slashdot fails and posts every piece of FUD they can get their hands on without any verification.

Re:criticized

[weicco]

You missed a little, but crucial point. You must download non-encrypted version of the movie from P2P network. If you download encrypted one, you are still breaking the law if you are watching it without properly licensed player. And you must download it by using a client which doesn't share the same file you are downloading.

This law, Lex Karpela as some might call it, is really confusing but luckily I don't have to deal with it. I do live in Finland but I own a standalone DVD player and buy all my DVDs :)

Re:Copy Protection?

[Kjella]

But it does nothing to prevent duplicating (i.e. copying) the DVD using another DVD because doing that doesn't require cracking CSS. In the days before DVD burner's were common, CSS may have been effective copy protection, but now days it just keeps people from playing it in the wrong country. The CSS key is written to sector 0, and if I remember correctly regular DVD recorders can't write to sector 0 and regular platters have sector 0 filled with zeros. So no, you could not make a 1:1 copy using a regular DVD burner. I honestly don't remember or care, it might be illegal but it's been about two lines of commands to get it in any recent Linux box.

Re:Copy Protection?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

well, sort of.

The idea of region encoding is so that they can set different price points (and release dates) for different parts of the world.

They can sell a DVD in region 6 (China) for the equivalent of $2 (say) because that is the maximum price that the market will bear. The region encoding stops someone from buying up 10,000 DVDs at $2 and then importing them to the US and selling them for $10. Making $8 profit whilst still significantly undercutting the discs that the studios want to sell in the US.

It also means that they can stagger the release of a movie around the world, and then stagger the DVD release whilst keeping people from getting DVDs from one of the earlier regions into one of the other regions whilst the movie is still in the theatres there (thus creating extra ticket sales from the people who just have to see the movie more than once and can not get it on a DVD yet)

Re:Headline incorrect - CSS breaking is still lega

[Anonymous Coward]

My original comment is still valid, here's an excerpt from the Finnish law:

"Mità 1 momentissa sÃÃdetÃÃn, ei sovelleta, jos tekninen toimenpide kierretÃÃn salaustekniikoita koskevan tutkimuksen tai opetuksen yhteydessà taikka jos teoksen kappaleen laillisesti hankkinut tai haltuunsa saanut kiertÃà teknisen toimenpiteen teoksen saamiseksi kuultavilleen tai nÃhtÃvilleen. Teoksesta, jota suojaava tekninen toimenpide on kierretty teoksen saamiseksi kuultaville tai nÃhtÃville, ei saa valmistaa kappaletta."

A crude translation is as follows:

"What is set in moment 1 shall not be applied if the technical system is circumvented for in use in research or teaching or if the item in question, being legally acquired by the person, is circumventing the copy protection in order to allow the owner to view or hear the item. Item that is decrypted in this fashion to remove the protection shall not be copied further."

Note that the translation is very crude because I wrote it here in the silly editor adn the English isn't very good either but the bottom line stays, if the person has legally obtained a copy of the DVD and is decrypting it for personal use it is still completely legal.

This is straight from the Big Book'o'Law.

Re:Copy Protection?

[gnuman99]

You can get "special" burners for $1000 or so that will write to those sectors. Someone posted it on a similar discussion months ago. You can search for those types of authoring dvd writers.

It also doesn't stop pirates these can easily afford these special burners or just get a DVD shop to press real DVDs for them from the original "master" they bought for $30.

Not Cascading Style Sheets... d'uh

[Crazyswedishguy]

I was slightly confused at first, and from the comments I see I wasn't the only one. For those who didn't at first know what the post was referring to, it's not Cascading Style Sheets, but Content Scrambling System.

Content Scramble System (CSS) is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme used on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. It utilizes a relatively weak, proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 and has subsequently been compromised. CSS: Content Scrambling System

Re:Live by the golden rule

[zrq]

And nothing can change that fact that piracy is and will remain stealing!

Sigh. No, it is not stealing, it is copyright infringement.
Both illegal, but they are different laws.

One appeal left

[Aggrajag]

The defendant can still appeal to the Finnish equivalent of Supreme Court.

Re:Linux DVD playback

[TypoNAM]

How about every single Linux user out there that watches a DVD via mplayer, xine, VideoLAN Client, or any other open source DVD/multimedia player?
Most of them simply use libdvdcss in order to access CSS encrypted content.

Re:Copy Protection?

[poetmatt]

Actually, I run my own business, and I think long term, and it pays off every time.

Not every business is stupid enough to think short term, just the ones that want to be big now and die out just as fast.

It's only the fault of the companies that give shareholders majority control thus failed long term thinking in the first place.

Re:Copy Protection?

[mpe]

It also means that they can stagger the release of a movie around the world, and then stagger the DVD release whilst keeping people from getting DVDs from one of the earlier regions into one of the other regions whilst the movie is still in the theatres there (thus creating extra ticket sales from the people who just have to see the movie more than once and can not get it on a DVD yet)

Or at least that is the theory. In practice most of the planet has region free DVD players, which are not catching on in the US now that TV series are appearing on DVD. Some countries have even declared the whole region coding system to be illegal. Finally just about everything is likely to be available free of any DRM as soon as it's been made available anywhere...

Re:Copy Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

CSS prevents copying a DVD to a video tape or other format. Bullshit. CSS does nothing of the sort.

Macrovision is what prevents copying to another format.

Unless your argument is that you don't get a bit-perfect copy.. but then it's still not CSS, it's the fact that the formats are different.

CSS is playback protection. It does nothing to prevent copying.