Re: Legal issues

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 05:06:21PM +0000, Pete Bentley wrote:
> 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).

That wording is even broader than the DMCA.  It's awful, and we have to try
our best to try to stop this from becoming implemented in the EU member
states.  The wording is so broad that it could in fact apply to what we do,
although only in a very twisted understanding (not that I rule that out: If
you look at patent law, twisted minds seem to be in charge of jurisdical
positions at times).

The DMCA is more specific about which technological measures are affected. 
The EU directive is worse from a first glance.
 
> >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.

You can do this already, it is even documented in the manual.  If you want
to check out a title more than three times, then you can reimport it from CD
or MP3 for another three times.  The three times comes from the SDMI rule
that only four copies of a work without further specification about
authorship are allowed to exist at any time in the system (one copy on hard
disk + three copies on external media).

I don't have enough four letter words to describe how I feel about SDMI and
how it restricts me in doing things I am perfectly allowed to (like, copying
my own recordings as often as I want).  However, it's not as if we do
anything that has an effect on the OMG system as it exists (as our data
comes from other sources than EMDs).
 
> 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.

Indeed.  There is a compatibility clause in the DMCA, but it seemed to me it
is of rather limited value (have to check again).

> 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.

The "logic" behind this is SDMI.  For external data without copyright
information, SDMI allows four copies, an arbitrary number.  "Ideally"
everybody could only ever get the data in encrypted, personalized form, with
restrictions like "user can copy it once", "user can listen to it 10 times"
or "user can listen to it for two weeks".  What we are experiencing here is
that a restriction management system like SDMI totally inconveniences the user.

> 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...

Yes, that is my original point.  We are not evading SDMI at all, we are just
trying to find a way to enter it from a free operating system.  Even that is
not possible yet.
 
> Sadly, in such an argument the side with the biggest lawyers is
> probably the one that would win.

Well, if we give up on doing something that is legal, will probably stay
legal and does not even deserve to be made illegal by all intentions of
Sony and other DMCA supporters, then "the other side" has already won and we
have already lost (our freedom).  But first things first ;)  Maybe the
directive can be stopped.  It's probably an easier fight than the software
patent fight, probably it isn't.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    [email protected]
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
[email protected]
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/