Danish DRM Breaker Turns Himself In To Test Backup Law

coaxial writes "In Denmark, it's legal to make copies of commercial videos for backup or other private purposes. It's also illegal to break the DRM that restricts copying of DVDs. Deciding to find out which law mattered, Henrik Anderson reported himself for 100 violations of the DRM-breaking law (he ripped his DVD collection to his computer) and demanded that the Danish anti-piracy Antipiratgruppen do something about it. They promised him a response, then didn't respond. So now he's reporting himself to the police. He wants a trial, so that the legality of the DRM-breaking law can be tested in court."

Comments

this is brave

[mrvan]

This is really brave. Not just rant about how stupid a law is, or how unenforceable, and then just break it. But break it, deliberately turn yourself in, and show how stupid/unenforceable the law is.

From an egoistic short-term perspective this is probably seen as just stupid, but this is the way to actually enact some changes.

Bravo!

Re:this is brave

[MightyMartian]

I'd wager my left toe that absolutely nothing comes of it. The police aren't going to want to deal with it, and media companies and their government whores don't want that kind of a test case.

Re:this is brave

[dintlu]

Is selective enforcement of a law an effective defense against that law's application against an individual, in Denmark?

Re:this is brave

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Having the right to do something and being forbidden from doing the actions most commonly followed to accomplish this thing are in direct conflict. changing the DRM law to require some further infraction to be applicable would do a lot to resolve this conflict.

Re:this is brave

[zippthorne]

Recordable disks aren't writable in the part of the disk where the key is stored, so if you don't decrypt it when you make the backup, you won't be able to play the backup in your player.

Re:this is brave

[h4rm0ny]

I know this is hard, but sometimes you have to read the article. ;) Apparently, Danish law gives the individual the right to make a non-commercial backup for personal use. That isn't a law saying you may do something, it's saying you have a right to do so. In which case DRM infringes on that right.

Re:this is brave

[geminidomino]

My uncle got pulled over for being 10mph over the limit when he thought he was going the correct speed. The cop didn't ticket him, but pointed out that his obviously new tires weren't the same diameter as the factory ones. Then told him to get his odometer recalibrated for the new tires. Seems your speedometer and odometer are directly linked to the number of rotations of tires of a specific diameter, change that and they read the wrong values. That's just one example where violations occur because of stuff you don't know about. It happens to cops too.

Where the hell did this happen? Around here, that sort of knowledge would result in the cops making deals with the auto shops to sell people bigger tires!

Re:this is brave

[SoCalChris]

Montana code 61-8-303(2) allows you to speed up to 10mph over the limit on two lane highways to safely pass another vehicle.

"A vehicle subject to the speed limits imposed in subsection (1) traveling on a two-lane road may exceed the speed limits imposed in subsection (1) by 10 miles an hour in order to overtake and pass a vehicle and return safely to the right-hand lane."

Re:this is brave

[DamnStupidElf]

For consumer DVD drives, it's necessary to authenticate the software to the drive firmware before it will read encrypted sectors. You can test this by putting an encrypted DVD in a Linux box and typing 'dd if=/dev/dvd of=/dev/null' and watching the kernel message log for sector errors. The UDF directories are unencrypted so the OS can mount the disk, but the VIDEO_TS files are unreadable without authenticating the drive with a CSS key. See this quick explanation. At this point, DRM has already been broken and you're a horrible criminal, but you can still copy the entire encrypted DVD (e.g. dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso) and then you have a bit-for-bit copy of the readable portions of the DVD sectors. Not everything, because DVDs have 2054 byte sectors to include a per-sector 6 byte CSS key, but the drive firmware on consumer drives only returns the 2048 bytes of data. For all the DVDs I've ever seen, the CSS key is the same for every sector of a given file in the VIDEO_TS directory, so it doesn't really matter that the per-sector keys aren't copied. Once the encrypted copy of the DVD is made, it can still be decrypted by brute forcing the CSS key for each encrypted file at run time, which is made pretty quick by the broken cipher used for CSS. To make a long story short, you are correct that the DVD has to be decrypted before re-encoding or burning a new DVD. As others have pointed out, with consumer hardware you can't burn the per-sector keys to a DVD+/-R, which means that any re-encoded DVD will have to be burned as an unencrypted DVD.

Re:this is brave

[Hatta]

I'd wager my left toe that absolutely nothing comes of it.

Which left toe? Or have you lost similar wagers so many times that you have only one left toe left?

Re:this is brave

[Taevin]

Do you actually have a point to make or are you just going to sit around repeating what we already know as if it added some value to the conversation?

Here's what we know:

1. Law 1 states that you can make a copy of a DVD.
   • The only way to do so is to decrypt the content
2. Law 2 states that you cannot decrypt the content of the DVD.
3. Since it is illegal to decrypt the contents of the DVD and that is the only way to make a copy, it is therefore impossible to legally create a copy of the DVD.

We quite understand that the legal system has not crashed as a result of this, and we understand that certain parties would like to be pricks and debate about whether there is even a conflict.

don't kid yourself that what this guy did wasn't illegal.

Which is the point of this whole article: No one is. The Slashdot article is entitled "Danish DRM Breaker Turns Himself In To Test Backup Law." He himself knows what he did is illegal and turned himself in to the authorities. This is also known as civil disobedience and its purpose is to test laws that are unjust or unclear.

Assuming this makes it to trial, the judge will give a ruling in which he will either uphold the laws as-is (providing clarity as in, "yes, the intention of law 2 was to covertly remove the right guaranteed by law 1") or will make an exception to allow the free exercise of the right provided for in law 1, removing the injustice.

Re:this is brave

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, I don't know about Denmark, but in the US at least, copyright involves several different exclusive rights. One of them is distribution, another one is reproduction. It is entirely possible to infringe on a copyright in the US by making copies without distributing them. It may be less likely to be noticed and litigated, but it is no less infringing.

Take a look at 17 USC 101 and 106 for useful definitions and the main exclusive rights compromising a US copyright, if you're interested.

Re:this is brave

[Taevin]

First off, there is no law 1 and law 2. Its two sections of the same law [www.kum.dk].

Great, even better. It's not a complex, unintended interaction between two disparate laws with different intentions, it's just a poorly written law that (apparently) contradicts itself.

Second, the law is the Danish implementation of the EU Copyright Directive [wikipedia.org] which mandates that subscriber countries implement it exactly as its been implemented, i.e. circumvention is illegal EVEN THOUGH it makes some other rights unexercisable.

Yes, the EU Copyright Directive says basically the same thing as the Danish implementation with regards to personal copies:

Article 5
(2) Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases:
(b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation which takes account of the application or non-application of technological measures referred to in Article 6 to the work or subject-matter concerned;

No Danish judge is going to repeal that.

The EU is not the same as the US Federal government. No, a single Danish judge is not going to repeal an EU directive, but a ruling could shed light on a troubling issue possibly eventually leading to a change in the wording.

Interestingly, however, the EU Copyright Directive states this in the preamble (my emphasis added):

Whereas:
(52) When implementing an exception or limitation for private copying in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), Member States should likewise promote the use of voluntary measures to accommodate achieving the objectives of such exception or limitation. If, within a reasonable period of time, no such voluntary measures to make reproduction for private use possible have been taken, Member States may take measures to enable beneficiaries of the exception or limitation concerned to benefit from it. Voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, as well as measures taken by Member States, do not prevent rightholders from using technological measures which are consistent with the exceptions or limitations on private copying in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), taking account of the condition of fair compensation under that provision and the possible differentiation between various conditions of use in accordance with Article 5(5), such as controlling the number of reproductions. In order to prevent abuse of such measures, any technological measures applied in their implementation should enjoy legal protection.

Since the rightsholders have never shown any intention of voluntarily doing anything, the judge could in fact do something about it: provide a recourse via exemption to Danish citizens. More likely though, I suppose, is that the judge would give the rightsholders the opportunity to "voluntarily" provide enabling measures for the beneficiaries. Sounds like a win-win to me, if I'm being objective (I actually think DRM is one of the most obscene abuses of law I've seen in my--admittedly short--adult life).

Civil disobedience can be used to force a test of a law, or to call attention to an unjust law.

Yes, I believe that's exactly what I said.

The latter is what is happening here, but there are any number of asshats here on Slashdot that seem to be implying that because the laws seem to conflict, one of them is going to get struck down. I'm just saying thats not the case. The only thing this guy is doing is making

Kudos

[overshoot]

Civil disobedience done right. The world would be a better place if more of us (and I'm specifically pointing to empty-nest geezers like that one in the mirror) had the cojones to do similarly rather than constantly bitching.

Re:Kudos

[hansamurai]

I don't know what the repercussions are in Denmark but here in the US when you see FBI warnings before a movie stating you'll be fined $150,000 and 10 years in a PMITA prison... I'd rather just keep my mouth shut and let someone who actually got caught challenge the system.

Re:Kudos

[h4rm0ny]

What's sad is how that act can terrify others around you. I carried out the similar but actually real behaviour of cutting the stupid labels attached to the leads of some new keyboards at a place I worked - I refuse to believe that any of us need to be instructed by it to read the three paragraphs of safety information on the bottom of the keyboard. One of my staff was horrified and thought that it might be breaking the rules.

I tell you this: A society that is afraid to cut labels off keyboards is fucked. Oh, and good luck to the Danish guy. I bet he's not afraid to tear labels off things.

Re:First

[Jaysyn]

I'm very glad civil-rights leaders in the 60's weren't so cowardly.

Re:law vs. law

[OzPeter]

If we lived in a true democracy (for the people), DRM would never exist

If you lived in a true democracy you would get the laws that people voted for - this may or may not include DRM

To quote Men In Black

A person is smart, but people are stupid

Re:law vs. law

[runyonave]

DRM solely exists to provide corporations more control over the products they sell. It in no way is beneficial to the average user.

So therefore the average users, or the people who provide the majority of votes, would never vote for DRM.

Re: Probably not that high fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Being from scandinavia (not Denmark though, but laws are likely quite similar), I can say that I would be really surprised if the fine was any more than a couple of thousand euros. Fines/damages here are meant to be payable and any unreasonable fines/damage will be cut down to a level that's feasible payable for the person in question. That's one of the things you learn in the introductory law courses here.

That Dude is My Hero!

[MarkvW]

He's not a whining sniveling cowardly hypocrite like the Pirate Bay defendants.

This guy's putting it on the line. Does he have a defense fund that can be contributed to?

Re:Won't Loving Work.

[Kjella]

Dude, this is Scandinavia. We don't award insane damages here, in fact we generally give way too little IMO. People that have had their lives completely ruined, like 20 years innocent in prison get less than a million dollars. Murderers are often only required to pay 100-200k$ in damages. That is one of the reasons the TPB case became such a big deal in Sweden, for Americans a little over 4 million dollars is not that unusual, around here it's unheard of. There was for example here in Norway just recently about a 16 year old who got the biggest insurance payout ever after a traffic accident - 11.6 MNOK = 2.08 million USD. Still not much when he's probably got another 60 years to live and will need special care for the rest of his life.

Re:Won't Loving Work.

[thisnamestoolong]

We need that in America. It is completely absurd that if Bill Gates and I committed the same criminal offense, we would incur the same fine. Bill would pull the money out of his wallet in much the same manner that I buy a pack of gum and go about his day, whereas I would be financially devastated. In this case, while the actual dollar amount of the fines were equal, the punishment absolutely was not. The fine should be adjusted so that the punishment is equal in both cases -- it is completely absurd that this is not the case already.

I do live in Denmark

[nielsdybdahl]

I do live in Denmark. The danish copyright laws are based upon the copyright rules from the european union, that all member states have to implement in their national laws. One of these rules state that it is allowed to circumvent the copy protection schemes if it is necessary to use the media. That is probably intended to make it possible for Linux users to play DVDs, but in this case it might also be used because if the user has a PC without a DVD drive, then it is necessary to rip the DVD with a different PC. Another european rule states that temporary copies that are necessary for using the media are always allowed. Again in this case if the user has a PC without DVD-drive, then it is legal to store the DVD content on a harddrive (which is not a permanent copy).

What I want to know is

[lanadapter]

How does he fit through his door with such massive balls?

Re:Won't Loving Work.

[Zarhan]

Wasn't there a $100,000 speeding ticket in Finland a few years back?

Yes. That happened to the current CEO of Nokia (back then he was VP or something). The fines are scaled according to your income (the idea being that if the fine were a fixed sum it would just give richer people a reason to consider it 'fun tax' instead of a real punishment) so a guy making tons of money gets a big ticket too. If you have no income, it goes down to a few hundred euros (depending on crime).

WHAT?

[Kingrames]

This Danish guy just... Turned himself in? My god, someone save him! Doesn't he know that cops EAT DANISHES?

at the risk of beating a quote into the ground

[sammy baby]

"In Denmark, it's legal to make copies of commercial videos for backup or other private purposes. It's also illegal to break the DRM that restricts copying of DVDs. Deciding to find out which law mattered, Henrik Anderson reported himself for 100 violations of the DRM-breaking law (he ripped his DVD collection to his computer) and demanded that the Danish anti-piracy Antipiratgruppen do something about it. They promised him a response, then didn't respond. So now he's reporting himself to the police. He wants a trial, so that the legality of the DRM-breaking law can be tested in court."

Something is awesome in the state of Denmark. And it's Anderson.

How to support Henrik Anderson

[jonaskoelker]

If you read the comments to the article, you'll note a link to Henrik's home page, http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/ (which is in danish).

If you click "Sådan støtter du op om digitale kopier" (how to support digital copies), you'll see a page telling you to click the paypal link on the right hand side (of his home page) to donate any amount "for the running of enfrustreretforbruger.dk".

That would be an obvious way to support him. There may be laws against collecting money under a false pretence (A Time To Kill says there are such laws in the US, fwiw ^_^), so you may want to add a note to the paypal transfer saying "Hi. Here's some money for whatever purpose you like. You might want to spend them on lawyers etc." (although I suspect that if you give him money without saying that he can spend them for whatever he likes, you're the only one who can sue him for having taking your money under a false pretence. IANAL, TINLA, ask a ninja, etc.)

The support page at http://enfrustreretforbruger.dk/home/?p=882 also lists putting banners on your web page, reading his twitter feed, writing to the Danish ministry of culture ("minicult"? :D), and joining a project that Ekstra Bladet (a Danish tabloid news paper) is running where you can submit your own digital copying stories.

You can also send him an email and ask how you might help. Click on the "kontakt" (contact) link in the upper-right corner.

(I'm not going to post his email address here on slashdot since he'd get, well, slashdotted with mail. If you really want to get in touch with him, you can take the time to click a few links. Also, he posts his street address and phone number there, but encourages people to comment on his blog articles where relevant.)

I hope this helps, and that Google Translate can get you the rest of the way.

Re:Won't Loving Work.

[loshwomp]

and isn't a hidden income redistribution effort.

Now that is amusing, although I suspect you were being serious. A system that extracts money from filthy rich scofflaws? I'd welcome it.

It's wrong to give a rich guy a harsher punishment because he's rich just like it's wrong to give a poor guy a harsher punishment because he's poor.

That was the whole original point -- an $XX fine is a harsher punishment to me than it is to Bill Gates.

Re:How does that work?

[DaleSwanson]

There is no civil case here as there has been no copyright infringement. Rather in Denmark it is illegal to break DRM. He broke DRM and thus broke the law. The issue is that in Denmark there is the legal right to make copies, and in order to do that you must break the DRM.

Re:Won't Loving Work.

[loshwomp]

So where is the incentive to earn?

Your incentive to earn (which I'm sure is alive and well) doesn't trump the intended incentive to keep you from breaking laws.