U.S. copyright protection law conflicts with laws in Russia, Germany and Scandinavian countries which require software makers to provide a way for users to create a backup copy,
Norwegian copyright law says that it is legal to make a backup copy of a computer program if needed. However, it does not say that software makers are _required_ to provide a way for creating backups.
So no, Adobe software is not illegal in Norway.
/.'ers capable of reading norwegian can find the relevant paragraph here:
http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19610512-002-029.ht ml
In the MPAA vs 2600 and DVDCCA vs the entire world, the media companies chose the fighting ground. The issues in both cases are not perfect if you want to challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA.
However, the Felten case goes directly at the DMCA stifling academic research. See the complaint, where they do a good job of pruning away all issues not related to the publishing of the research material. This could be the case that blows the DMCA out of the water. It could just carve out a more sensible exemption for encryption research, though. Or Felten could loose, and we have a bad case of precedence to fight the next time.
So, anyone think that Adobe does, or might someday, trademark the concept of vector graphics and/or teh concept of vector graphics drawing software and/or the name of any vector graphics software or sub-component or feature of any vector graphics software and/or the "look and feel" of any vector graphics software or the above regarding any other aspect of any other Adobe product... etc. etc. etc.
No. IP law doesn't work like that.
IP is four different things:
Trademarks. Protects the right of a company to register a name and sell goods under it, and drag others to court if the use the same or a similar name for a similar product (the key here is to prevent market confusion and fraud). Unlike other IP, a trademark has to be actively defended to be valid.
Copyright. Protects the right of the author to publish or give public performance of a work/expression. Time limited (generally life+70). Fair use applies (time and space shifting, satire, quoting, etc).
Patents. Protects a novel idea for a limited time. The bargain is that the idea is described in a patent application, and is freely available once the patent expires. Even if someone discovers the same idea independently, the patent is valid. Can be invalidated by prior art.
Trade secrets. Protects against illegal discovery of a secret (breaking an NDA, etc). Independent discovery of the secret is legal, and so is reverse-engineering in most countries.
So, Adobe would have to patent vector graphics. Which would be difficult given the amount of prior art.
The second thing is related to sovereignty: a French court does not have jurisdiction to resolve questions of my rights unless I am within France's borders or have established some kind of contact with France that makes France's jurisdiction over me reasonable.
But that all changes with the 'Net, doesn't it?
There are already several court-cases around the world where the claim of jurisdiction is based on the argument that the act of publishing a webpage happens at the browser and not at the webserver. The consequence if that claim is valid is staggering - once you publish some material on the web, you grant any country in the world jurisdiction over you personally.
And what about software? If someone in France download a piece of software I wrote, would that "[establish] some kind of contact with France that makes France's jurisdiction over me reasonable"?
How about a listserv? Do I have to deny french citizens access to my mailinglist to avoid french jurisdiction?
A single object travelling ~800 knots would stand out, however a stealth bomber wouldn't appear as a single object, rather a series of seemingly unrelated, extremely small objects - ie. noise.
What about the doppler effect? A moving object will slightly alter the frequency of the reflected radar wave.
I wonder if the specs for DAG will be open so that code can be compiled directly to it, optimized, and then distributed, saving the first two steps in the process. I can see commercial software vendors being all over this idea.
Target CPU neutral binary formats have been around for a while. OSF has ANDF (Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format). Also check SDE (Semantic Dictionary Encoding).
A hardware neutral distribution format is not the complete solution, though. The target platform that you want to run the executable on has to provide the software environment and APIs that the executable needs.
So, it is only suitable for distributing CPU-neutral but OS/environment-dependent user-space applications. What it really does is to save you the job of recompiling an application for PPC/x86/SPARC/whatever-Linux. This would certainly make life easier for non-x86 Linux users, but it is not a general solution for making applications platform-independent.
If you want a run-anywhere solution you also need to define a runtime environment, which is exactly what Java does.
How about footprint? From the article it sounds like this emulation will require a couple of MB.
I'm in no way an embedded expert, but I was of the impression that RAM is expensive in the embedded and small form-factor world.
I can see that this technology might be a time-to-market saver if you have a load of assembler written for one embedded CPU and want to move it quickly to a new platform.
Hmm, how about the interface with support and I/O chips? This thing is, from what I understand, only a cpu emulator/translator. If you change the platform you will probably have to write new drivers for the other chips.
The DMCA give large publishers the power to erect licensing regimes on content players. Protected/encrypted media is just a hook to force manufacturers to sign a license. Don't like the licensing terms? Too bad for you, since RE'ing the protection would be illegal under the DMCA.
Macromedia'ed analog output, no digital output, region locks and no fast forward are not part of CSS, they are part of the DVDCCA license.
What is scary, is that this license can be kept secret from the general public. That is, they can force-feed us use control technology without disclosing the terms.
If the EU would follow the Australian example (which is not unthinkable)
The EU Directorate General for Competition is currently examining this issue. I don't have high hopes, though, since they are only examining price differences. i.e., they won't bother with first sale, fair use or the difference between private and commercial conduct.
"In this regard, I should inform you that the Directorate-General for Competition is currently examining the issue of DVD regional coding, and in particular whether this causes significant price differences to occur between DVDs from different regions. If any price differences cannot be explained by differing tax régimes, production costs etc., but are instead facilitated by the regional coding system, it would be our intention to examine whether such a system was a violation of EC competition rules."
Both the DMCA and the EU copyright directive go above and beyond the requirements set forth in the WIPO treaties. The WCT and WPPT are actually quite sensible.
The companies didn't buy the WIPO treaty. They bought the Green and White paper on the NII.
Buy Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright" for the whole story.
European? Join Eurorights.org to fight the EU copyright directive.
(And as a suggestion, change the ID to the computer's MAC address. These things change a lot less frequently [How often does a hardware hacker completely change his ethernet card? Not often.])
An eth card is one of the better solutions if you _must_ do this sort of thing.
However, I know that WinME will be the last ever version of Windows I'll buy. If they don't honour the concept of first sale, they won't see my money.
Although there's not mutch there yet. I urge every European (actually everybody) to subscribe to the mailing list.
Sorry about that. The directive has already been accepted by the EU Parliament, and from my understanding it will be hard to make wide-ranging amendments to the directive without public outcry. We're short on time, so we have to get started asap.
This is not necessarily because I share the RIAAs moral values, or microsofts ideas about business ethics, but for media, see above and for software, it could wreck my business and ultimately me.
This is an important point. Noone is seriously claming that piracy is good, or that creators should not be paid for their works. However, these laws and technical restrictions will kill fair use and give the publisher the power to control how we use works we buy.
To mention a few:
Your right to give or lend a book to someone.
Your right to watch your DVD movie on a laptop.
Your right to preserve and keep the books you buy.
Europe is not exactly divided on software patents.
You have a small, but powerful, group of lawyers that want to see business and software patents. They tried to get this approved before any real studies could be done on the effects of sw/b patents.
These studies are now starting to show up, and it seems like we're winning.
The latest available draft of the law (which has the short and wonderful name "Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society"), from 14 September 2000, is available here.
There have been a few changes to the draft, but I unfortunately don't have a complete list available. Official news about the law should be available here and here.
The draft is in many respects very similar to the DMCA, and has many of the same problems. Legal protection of TPMs that deny fair use, is computer code protected speech or illegal tool, legality of encryption research, etc.
Article 5
Exceptions and limitations
1. Temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental, which are an integral and essential part of a technological process whose sole purpose is to enable:
(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary or
(b) a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2.
2. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases:
(a) in respect of reproductions on paper or any similar medium, effected by the use of any kind of photographic technique or by some other process having similar effects, with the exception of sheet music, provided that the rightholders receive fair compensation;
(b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made for the private use of a natural person and for non-commercial ends, 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;
(c) in respect of specific acts of reproduction made by publicly accessible libraries, educational establishments or museums, or by archives, which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage;
(d) in respect of ephemeral recordings of works made by broadcasting organisations by means of their own facilities and for their own broadcasts; the preservation of these recordings in official archives may, on the ground of their exceptional documentary character, be permitted;
(e) in respect of reproductions of broadcasts made by social institutions pursuing non-commercial purposes, such as hospitals or prisons, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation.
3. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the rights provided for in Articles 2
and 3 in the following cases:
(a) use for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research, as long as, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated and to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose to be achieved;
(b) uses, for the benefit of people with a disability, which are directly related to the disability and of a non-commercial nature, to the extent required by the specific disability;
(c) reproduction by the press, communication to the public or making available of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics or of broadcast works or other subject-matter of the same character, in cases where such use is not expressly reserved, and as long as the source, including the author's name, is indicated, or use of works or other subject-matter in connection with the reporting of current events, to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and as long as, whenever possible the source, including the author's name, is indicated;
(d) quotations for purposes such as criticism or review, provided that they relate to a work or other subject-matter which has already been lawfully made available to the public, that, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated, and that their use is in accordance with fair practice, and to the extent required by the specific purpose;
(e) use for the purposes of public security or to ensure the proper performance or reporting of administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings;
(f) use of political speeches as well as extracts of public lectures or similar works or subject-matter to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and provided that, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated;
(g) use during religious celebrations or official celebrations organised by a public authority;
(h) use of works, such as works of architecture or sculpture, made to be located permanently in public places;
(i) incidental inclusion of a work or other subject-matter in other material;
(j) use for the purpose of advertising the public exhibition or sale of artistic works, to the extent necessary to promote the event;
(k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche;
(l) use in connection with the demonstration or repair of equipment;
(m) use of an artistic work in the form of a building or a drawing or plan of a building for the purposes of reconstructing the building;
(n) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, to individual members of the public by dedicated terminals on the premises of establishments referred to in paragraph 2(c) of works and other subject-matter not subject to purchase or licensing terms which are contained in their collections;
(o) use in certain other cases of minor importance where exceptions or limitations already exist under national law, provided that they only concern analogue uses and do not affect the free circulation of goods and services within the Community, without prejudice to the other exceptions and limitations contained in this Article.
4. Where the Member States may provide for an exception or limitation to the right of reproduction pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3, they may provide similarly for an exception or limitation to the right of distribution as referred to in Article 4 to the extent justified by the purpose of the authorised act of reproduction.
5. The exceptions and limitations provided for in paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4 shall only be applied in certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or other subject-matter and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder.
Article 6
Obligations as to technological measures
1. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.
3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression "technological measures" means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed "effective" where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
4. Notwithstanding the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1, in the absence of voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, Member States shall take appropriate measures to ensure that rightholders make available to the beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(a), (2)(c), (2)(d), (2)(e), (3)(a), (3)(b) or (3)(e) the means of benefiting from that exception or limitation, to the extent necessary to benefit from that exception or limitation and where that beneficiary has legal access to the protected work or subject-matter concerned.
A Member State may also take such measures in respect of a beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), unless reproduction for private use has already been made possible by rightholders to the extent necessary to benefit from the exception or limitation concerned and in accordance with the provisions of Article 5(2)(b) and (5), without preventing rightholders from adopting adequate measures regarding the number of reproductions in accordance with these provisions.
The technological measures applied voluntarily by rightholders, including those applied in implementation of voluntary agreements, and technological measures applied in implementation of the measures taken by Member States, shall enjoy the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1.
The provisions of the first and second subparagraphs shall not apply to works or other subject-matter made available to the public on agreed contractual terms in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
When this Article is applied in the context of Directives 92/100/EEC and 96/9/EC, this paragraph shall apply mutatis mutandis.
Floppy disks have been around for piracy for _years_. I was copying games on floppies using my disk drive on my Apple 2 in the early- to mid-80s. Same goes for audio tapes. What's new that suddently requires a tax? Not copyrights. Not digital media.
A tax on blank audio tapes is not new. Most european countries have a tax like that.
On a related note, the music industry tried to make 'double decker' cassette players illegal.
However, I can't see where this is going to end, and I don't like where it looks like it's heading.
It is a slippery slope. Once recordable digital media is taxed, what is going to stop them adding an xDSL and Cable tax? Or taxes on general network equipment.
The main argument against a copyright tax on digital recordable media is that a CD-R or a hard drive can be used for many different purposes, not just storage of music and movies. Which is very different from blank VHS and audio tapes.
I would, however, be willing to accept a tax like that if the alternative was a draconian TPM-law like the DMCA. The problem is that the media monopolies want it both ways.
PROSA, EFN (www.efn.no) and other european organizations need to get in touch. The EU-DMCA is up for a vote Feb 14th, and this is a fight we really don't want to lose.
Slashdot Mirror
U.S. copyright protection law conflicts with laws in Russia, Germany and Scandinavian countries which require software makers to provide a way for users to create a backup copy,
t ml
Norwegian copyright law says that it is legal to make a backup copy of a computer program if needed. However, it does not say that software makers are _required_ to provide a way for creating backups.
So no, Adobe software is not illegal in Norway.
/.'ers capable of reading norwegian can find the relevant paragraph here:
http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19610512-002-029.h
Encryption research is legal. However, publishing this research can be considered trafficing. Nice, huh?
(This is BTW the core issue in the Felten case)
From the complaint it sounds like the russian is charged under the DMCA because he wrote the Adobe eBook unprotector, sold by his russian employer.
Adobe contacted FBI, which performed the arrest.
The complaint can be found here and the US DOJ press release about the case is here
The Felten case is very interesting.
In the MPAA vs 2600 and DVDCCA vs the entire world, the media companies chose the fighting ground. The issues in both cases are not perfect if you want to challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA.
However, the Felten case goes directly at the DMCA stifling academic research. See the complaint, where they do a good job of pruning away all issues not related to the publishing of the research material. This could be the case that blows the DMCA out of the water. It could just carve out a more sensible exemption for encryption research, though. Or Felten could loose, and we have a bad case of precedence to fight the next time.
So, anyone think that Adobe does, or might someday, trademark the concept of vector graphics and/or teh concept of vector graphics drawing software and/or the name of any vector graphics software or sub-component or feature of any vector graphics software and/or the "look and feel" of any vector graphics software or the above regarding any other aspect of any other Adobe product... etc. etc. etc.
No. IP law doesn't work like that.
IP is four different things:
Trademarks. Protects the right of a company to register a name and sell goods under it, and drag others to court if the use the same or a similar name for a similar product (the key here is to prevent market confusion and fraud). Unlike other IP, a trademark has to be actively defended to be valid.
Copyright. Protects the right of the author to publish or give public performance of a work/expression. Time limited (generally life+70). Fair use applies (time and space shifting, satire, quoting, etc).
Patents. Protects a novel idea for a limited time. The bargain is that the idea is described in a patent application, and is freely available once the patent expires. Even if someone discovers the same idea independently, the patent is valid. Can be invalidated by prior art.
Trade secrets. Protects against illegal discovery of a secret (breaking an NDA, etc). Independent discovery of the secret is legal, and so is reverse-engineering in most countries.
So, Adobe would have to patent vector graphics. Which would be difficult given the amount of prior art.
The second thing is related to sovereignty: a French court does not have jurisdiction to resolve questions of my rights unless I am within France's borders or have established some kind of contact with France that makes France's jurisdiction over me reasonable.
But that all changes with the 'Net, doesn't it?
There are already several court-cases around the world where the claim of jurisdiction is based on the argument that the act of publishing a webpage happens at the browser and not at the webserver. The consequence if that claim is valid is staggering - once you publish some material on the web, you grant any country in the world jurisdiction over you personally.
And what about software? If someone in France download a piece of software I wrote, would that "[establish] some kind of contact with France that makes France's jurisdiction over me reasonable"?
How about a listserv? Do I have to deny french citizens access to my mailinglist to avoid french jurisdiction?
A single object travelling ~800 knots would stand out, however a stealth bomber wouldn't appear as a single object, rather a series of seemingly unrelated, extremely small objects - ie. noise.
What about the doppler effect? A moving object will slightly alter the frequency of the reflected radar wave.
I wonder if the specs for DAG will be open so that code can be compiled directly to it, optimized, and then distributed, saving the first two steps in the process. I can see commercial software vendors being all over this idea.
Target CPU neutral binary formats have been around for a while. OSF has ANDF (Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format). Also check SDE (Semantic Dictionary Encoding).
A hardware neutral distribution format is not the complete solution, though. The target platform that you want to run the executable on has to provide the software environment and APIs that the executable needs.
So, it is only suitable for distributing CPU-neutral but OS/environment-dependent user-space applications. What it really does is to save you the job of recompiling an application for PPC/x86/SPARC/whatever-Linux. This would certainly make life easier for non-x86 Linux users, but it is not a general solution for making applications platform-independent.
If you want a run-anywhere solution you also need to define a runtime environment, which is exactly what Java does.
How about footprint? From the article it sounds like this emulation will require a couple of MB.
I'm in no way an embedded expert, but I was of the impression that RAM is expensive in the embedded and small form-factor world.
I can see that this technology might be a time-to-market saver if you have a load of assembler written for one embedded CPU and want to move it quickly to a new platform.
Hmm, how about the interface with support and I/O chips? This thing is, from what I understand, only a cpu emulator/translator. If you change the platform you will probably have to write new drivers for the other chips.
That's one of the important points here.
The DMCA give large publishers the power to erect licensing regimes on content players. Protected/encrypted media is just a hook to force manufacturers to sign a license. Don't like the licensing terms? Too bad for you, since RE'ing the protection would be illegal under the DMCA.
Macromedia'ed analog output, no digital output, region locks and no fast forward are not part of CSS, they are part of the DVDCCA license.
What is scary, is that this license can be kept secret from the general public. That is, they can force-feed us use control technology without disclosing the terms.
The REAL issue, is whether the MPAA has a right to enforce the region coding buggery they've insisted that DVD players implement.
:)
MPAA vs 2600 does unfortunately not touch this issue.
However, there is certainly material for a class-action or antitrust lawsuit regarding the licensing regime forced on DVD player manufacturers.
The probe by the EU competiton directorate seems to be going nowhere. The australians have been making some noise, though.
I've heard that some twisted offspring of the MPAA are suing the companies that import region 1 DVD's though
I believe they just passed a law in France making import of non-region2 DVDs illegal.
MPAA offspring in Norway are suing DVD importers. The latest rumour is that they want to drag this issue in front of EFTA. (www.efta.int)
If the EU would follow the Australian example (which is not unthinkable)
The EU Directorate General for Competition is currently examining this issue. I don't have high hopes, though, since they are only examining price differences. i.e., they won't bother with first sale, fair use or the difference between private and commercial conduct.
See here and here
"In this regard, I should inform you that the Directorate-General for Competition is currently examining the issue of DVD regional coding, and in particular whether this causes significant price differences to occur between DVDs from different regions. If any price differences cannot be explained by differing tax régimes, production costs etc., but are instead facilitated by the regional coding system, it would be our intention to examine whether such a system was a violation of EC competition rules."
The various member nations haven't yet signed them into law, but in theory they have to at some point.
The directive has to be implemented within 18 months.
For those interested, an unofficial version of the final EU directive is available here
the MPAA should have the ability to enforce the CSS licenses and prevent the sale of region-free machines ("circumvention devices").
Not exactly. You could make an argument that the DVDCCA license is overbroad, since it bundles piracy protection with region coding and macrovision.
No. A laserdisc is analog just like an LP is.
Both the DMCA and the EU copyright directive go above and beyond the requirements set forth in the WIPO treaties. The WCT and WPPT are actually quite sensible.
The companies didn't buy the WIPO treaty. They bought the Green and White paper on the NII.
Buy Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright" for the whole story.
European? Join Eurorights.org to fight the EU copyright directive.
Even if the protocol is eventually made public, they can still force you to use their servers.
.localnet initiative. That is, your private server is the 'cloud'.
I would really love to see a
Is B&W actually OUT
Yes. Got my preordered copy in the mail yesterday, and I'm in Norway.
I expect that most of the larger brick-and-mortar game shops have received their shipments.
(And as a suggestion, change the ID to the computer's MAC address. These things change a lot less frequently [How often does a hardware hacker completely change his ethernet card? Not often.])
An eth card is one of the better solutions if you _must_ do this sort of thing.
However, I know that WinME will be the last ever version of Windows I'll buy. If they don't honour the concept of first sale, they won't see my money.
Although there's not mutch there yet. I urge every European (actually everybody) to subscribe to the mailing list.
Sorry about that. The directive has already been accepted by the EU Parliament, and from my understanding it will be hard to make wide-ranging amendments to the directive without public outcry. We're short on time, so we have to get started asap.
This is not necessarily because I share the RIAAs moral values, or microsofts ideas about business ethics, but for media, see above and for software, it could wreck my business and ultimately me.
This is an important point. Noone is seriously claming that piracy is good, or that creators should not be paid for their works. However, these laws and technical restrictions will kill fair use and give the publisher the power to control how we use works we buy.
To mention a few:
Your right to give or lend a book to someone.
Your right to watch your DVD movie on a laptop.
Your right to preserve and keep the books you buy.
Your right to record a tv broadcast.
I don't see where they are blaming the DMCA. They are most certainly blaming the CoS, and giving them a lot of exposure to boot.
/. liable if they don't remove the infringing material.
They are merely pointing out that the DMCA makes
Europe is not exactly divided on software patents.
You have a small, but powerful, group of lawyers that want to see business and software patents. They tried to get this approved before any real studies could be done on the effects of sw/b patents.
These studies are now starting to show up, and it seems like we're winning.
Check the UK patent office conclusion on sw/bm patents.
Just like the DMCA, the 'EU-DMCA' is a new copyright law that is required to comply with the WIPO Copyright Treaty and Performances and Phonograms Treaty
The latest available draft of the law (which has the short and wonderful name "Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society"), from 14 September 2000, is available here.
There have been a few changes to the draft, but I unfortunately don't have a complete list available. Official news about the law should be available here and here.
The draft is in many respects very similar to the DMCA, and has many of the same problems. Legal protection of TPMs that deny fair use, is computer code protected speech or illegal tool, legality of encryption research, etc.
Article 5
Exceptions and limitations
1. Temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental, which are an integral and essential part of a technological process whose sole purpose is to enable:
(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary or
(b) a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2.
2. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases:
(a) in respect of reproductions on paper or any similar medium, effected by the use of any kind of photographic technique or by some other process having similar effects, with the exception of sheet music, provided that the rightholders receive fair compensation;
(b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made for the private use of a natural person and for non-commercial ends, 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;
(c) in respect of specific acts of reproduction made by publicly accessible libraries, educational establishments or museums, or by archives, which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage;
(d) in respect of ephemeral recordings of works made by broadcasting organisations by means of their own facilities and for their own broadcasts; the preservation of these recordings in official archives may, on the ground of their exceptional documentary character, be permitted;
(e) in respect of reproductions of broadcasts made by social institutions pursuing non-commercial purposes, such as hospitals or prisons, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation.
3. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the rights provided for in Articles 2
and 3 in the following cases:
(a) use for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research, as long as, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated and to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose to be achieved;
(b) uses, for the benefit of people with a disability, which are directly related to the disability and of a non-commercial nature, to the extent required by the specific disability;
(c) reproduction by the press, communication to the public or making available of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics or of broadcast works or other subject-matter of the same character, in cases where such use is not expressly reserved, and as long as the source, including the author's name, is indicated, or use of works or other subject-matter in connection with the reporting of current events, to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and as long as, whenever possible the source, including the author's name, is indicated;
(d) quotations for purposes such as criticism or review, provided that they relate to a work or other subject-matter which has already been lawfully made available to the public, that, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated, and that their use is in accordance with fair practice, and to the extent required by the specific purpose;
(e) use for the purposes of public security or to ensure the proper performance or reporting of administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings;
(f) use of political speeches as well as extracts of public lectures or similar works or subject-matter to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and provided that, whenever possible, the source, including the author's name, is indicated;
(g) use during religious celebrations or official celebrations organised by a public authority;
(h) use of works, such as works of architecture or sculpture, made to be located permanently in public places;
(i) incidental inclusion of a work or other subject-matter in other material;
(j) use for the purpose of advertising the public exhibition or sale of artistic works, to the extent necessary to promote the event;
(k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche;
(l) use in connection with the demonstration or repair of equipment;
(m) use of an artistic work in the form of a building or a drawing or plan of a building for the purposes of reconstructing the building;
(n) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, to individual members of the public by dedicated terminals on the premises of establishments referred to in paragraph 2(c) of works and other subject-matter not subject to purchase or licensing terms which are contained in their collections;
(o) use in certain other cases of minor importance where exceptions or limitations already exist under national law, provided that they only concern analogue uses and do not affect the free circulation of goods and services within the Community, without prejudice to the other exceptions and limitations contained in this Article.
4. Where the Member States may provide for an exception or limitation to the right of reproduction pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3, they may provide similarly for an exception or limitation to the right of distribution as referred to in Article 4 to the extent justified by the purpose of the authorised act of reproduction.
5. The exceptions and limitations provided for in paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4 shall only be applied in certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or other subject-matter and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder.
Article 6
Obligations as to technological measures
1. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.
3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression "technological measures" means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed "effective" where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
4. Notwithstanding the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1, in the absence of voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, Member States shall take appropriate measures to ensure that rightholders make available to the beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(a), (2)(c), (2)(d), (2)(e), (3)(a), (3)(b) or (3)(e) the means of benefiting from that exception or limitation, to the extent necessary to benefit from that exception or limitation and where that beneficiary has legal access to the protected work or subject-matter concerned.
A Member State may also take such measures in respect of a beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), unless reproduction for private use has already been made possible by rightholders to the extent necessary to benefit from the exception or limitation concerned and in accordance with the provisions of Article 5(2)(b) and (5), without preventing rightholders from adopting adequate measures regarding the number of reproductions in accordance with these provisions.
The technological measures applied voluntarily by rightholders, including those applied in implementation of voluntary agreements, and technological measures applied in implementation of the measures taken by Member States, shall enjoy the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1.
The provisions of the first and second subparagraphs shall not apply to works or other subject-matter made available to the public on agreed contractual terms in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
When this Article is applied in the context of Directives 92/100/EEC and 96/9/EC, this paragraph shall apply mutatis mutandis.
Floppy disks have been around for piracy for _years_. I was copying games on floppies using my disk drive on my Apple 2 in the early- to mid-80s. Same goes for audio tapes. What's new that suddently requires a tax? Not copyrights. Not digital media.
A tax on blank audio tapes is not new. Most european countries have a tax like that.
On a related note, the music industry tried to make 'double decker' cassette players illegal.
However, I can't see where this is going to end, and I don't like where it looks like it's heading.
It is a slippery slope. Once recordable digital media is taxed, what is going to stop them adding an xDSL and Cable tax? Or taxes on general network equipment.
The main argument against a copyright tax on digital recordable media is that a CD-R or a hard drive can be used for many different purposes, not just storage of music and movies. Which is very different from blank VHS and audio tapes.
I would, however, be willing to accept a tax like that if the alternative was a draconian TPM-law like the DMCA. The problem is that the media monopolies want it both ways.
PROSA, EFN (www.efn.no) and other european organizations need to get in touch. The EU-DMCA is up for a vote Feb 14th, and this is a fight we really don't want to lose.