Re: Legal issues

On Monday, Dec 30, 2002, at 14:21 Europe/London, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 01:29:55AM +0000, Pete Bentley wrote:
>> Both the DMCA (for those in the US) and the EU Copyright Directive 
>> (for
>> those in the UK) outlaw reverse engineering to a large extent.
>
> Not really.  I have not checked the EU Copyright Directive,

http://www.fipr.org/copyright/eucd.html
Search down (about 75% of the way through) for:-
CHAPTER III
PROTECTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES AND RIGHTS-MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

The wording is pretty much the same as the DMCA (hmm, wonder where
they drew their inspiration).

There's some critique of the proposed UK implementation of it at
http://ukcdr.org/issues/eucd/ukimpl/critique_uk_impl.html

Scroll down a short way to "Effect on the common practices of
professional music studios"

(Sorry, I have no information on the proposed German implementation)

> but the DMCA
> outlaws reverse engineering for a specific purpose.  And that is
> "circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that
> effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title
> in a work or a portion thereof;"

One could argue that what we are doing is exactly that: After all,
if people are not forced to use Open MG then they can download MP3
files from the Internet and make as many copies to minidisc as they
like.

In return, I would argue that that is not the primary purpose of what
we are doing, the primary purpose is to provide a means for people
to download material they own on platforms not supported by the
vendor. Secondly, the rights management of Open MG is ineffective
anyway... People can still download MP3 files and copy them to up
to 3 minidiscs (which I would assume is plenty). Further, if they
can "borrow" a CD from a friend they can copy direct to minidisc
via Simple Burner with no rights management at all.

So in fact, we're doing Sony a favour by making their products
more desirable and what we're doing does not make piracy any
easier than it was before...

Sadly, in such an argument the side with the biggest lawyers is
probably the one that would win.

Pete.