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

Linux DVD playback

[Nomaxxx]

What will be the impact on Linux DVD playback? "You're breaking the law by watching them, we'll have to seize your original DVD collection!"

Re:Linux DVD playback

[egork]

In other news in Germany a prosecutor has refused to start criminal investigations against private filesharers, as he sees an abuse in the way lawyers use this process to find out the identity of those sharers. The lawyers then would drop the criminal charges and start a civil case where they can earn money. In a criminal case there is not much they can earn. The said prosecutor was himself in turn sued for refusing the cooperation.

How long until the futility and the craziness of chasing and criminalizing of the software will be realized on a world scale.

What can people do? The best would be a flashmob where everybody using Linux in USA would just call the "copyright police" and denounce themselves in one go. So that police realize, what a nonsense it is to run after the millions of better educated citizens for such petty crimes!

Re:Copy Protection?

[ultranova]

The only reason they have added this crap is to stop copying anyway, it's obvious that it isn't intended to stop actual playback for 'legal' uses.

I seem to recall the very people who passed Lex Karpela saying that they don't know what it actually forbids and allows. Given this, I think the only thing it actually intends is to help are the profits of Karpela's then-boyfriend, movie director Olli Saarela.

Oh well, just the usual corruption associated with politics, coupled with the also-usual outright lies and attempts to suppress the understandably critical reaction from the citizens by blaming it on "outside forces". Finnish politicians at their finest indeed...