French court bans DRM
p2pnet.net News:- In a decision sure to reverberate loudly throughout the international music industry, France’s Paris Court of Appeals has decided embedding digital rights management (DRM) software in DVDs is incompatible with an individual’s right to make copies for his/her private use.
Now, Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal have one month to strip copy-protection technology from their DVDs, says 01.net.
On top of that, Alain Sarde and Universal Pictures Video France have been ordered to financially recompense a man who’d copied David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and French consumer rights association UFC-Que Choisir, who’d defended him.
In a case involving French consumer rights association UFC-Que Choisir and Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, UFC-Que Choisir acted for a movie lover who wanted to copy Mulholland Drive (produced by Alain Sarde and Studio Canal) to watch with his mother, who doesn’t have a DVD player.
"In France, people are authorized to make copies of works as long as they’re only for private use," says Ratiatum’s Guillaume Champeau. "French copyright law is quite clear on that."
In its decision, the appeals court also ruled that DVD producers have failed to fully inform customers in that the indication "CP" for copy protected was found to be so small size as to make it hard to see.
"As a result of the judgement … Alain Sarde and Universal Pictures Video France must pay the individual concerned 100 euros in reparation and they and Studio Canal have to pay him a further 150 euros, as well as 1,500 euros to UFC-Que Choisir," says 01.net, adding that the Syndicat de l’édition vidéo is considering, "taking the case to the next level of the judiciary".
Confused landscape
On February 2nd, 2005, the district court of Pontoise found a 28 year old teacher ‘guilty’ of ’sharing’ 614 mp3 albums via Direct Connect, says Champeau, going on:
"On March 10th, 2005, the Appeal Court of Montpellier held that it’s legal to copy DVDs for your own use, wherever these DVDs come from. In this case, a 22 year old man had copied 488 movies both from friends’ discs and from files downloaded on the Internet. Yet he was acquited by the court under the private copying exception.
"This made it clear that someone who downloads is fine, but anyone who uploads is in trouble.
"And on April 21, five people were found guilty of copyright infringement by the District Court of Meaux. Four of them had set up an FTP account with access to copyright-protected mp3s. The fifth person was found guilty of having three mp3s on his hard drives, and about 900 tracks CD-Rs.
"The court made no distinction between the five, and the last person – who’d merely copied music – was found guilty on the basis that he said he used p2p networks to download the tracks, and that therefore he was deemed to have uploaded the music."
It gets even more confusing when DRM enters the poicture, says Champeau.
"On April 14th, UFC-Que-Choisir lost a trial where it asked for copy-protected audio CDs to be banned. The court said UFC had not proved copy-protection systems were illegal.
"But now we have the latest case which UFC-Que-Choisir won !"
However, Champeau adds, "This won’t last long. The European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) will soon be implemented in France. It will uphold copy-protection systems, but will leave the right to copu for uour own use intact."
Stay tuned.
(Thanks for the translation, Liz, and thanks also to Guillaume and Dela)
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See:-
01.net – “La justice interdit de protéger les DVD contre la copie, April 22, 2005
April 25th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
How come the courts in the united states could not amend the dmca so that people can make up backup copies of their LEGALLY BOUGHT movie dvds ?
There is a supreme court decision pending about the legality of p2p issues.
Would this be related to this issue or would personal movie backups under the fair use principle would be a seperate issue ?
They tried to amend the dmca in the united states congress by H.R. 107 .
This piece of legislation has been in the united states congress for over a year and the last time i heard the MPAA was bragging how they defeated it in congress.
I really don’t have any faith in the us congress to do the right thing because they as a whole are corrupt to the bone and they take kickbacks and bribes from the MPAA and RIAA.
I have extremely good luck with dvdfab slysoft dvd shrink and dvd decyrpter .
After the MPAA ran 321 studios out of business last year the MPAA and their corrupt bought off cronies in congress would never agree to legalizing movie copying with decss utilties in them in the united states.
April 25th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
There are some serious issues with DRM. Because of these issues DRM is ultimately on the butchers block, question is when, not if.
The idea of a successful business modification is that it enhances the users experience. In this, DRM is exactly backwards and doomed to failure, simply by non-acceptance from the public. DRM doesn’t enhance the experience at all, in fact it hinders the experience to the point that it isn’t worth the money.
A good case can be made that DRM is unconstitutional. The idea of a copyright, as I have mentioned before is that at some point the copyrighted item becomes public domain. When it becomes public domain, anyone can use it. However, DRM has no termination date. By that alone at some point it must become illegal when the work becomes public domain.
As has been the core of this article, DRM hinders the obtaining of a legal backup or even the changing of formats to use it as you see fit. It is and should be of no interest to the maker of a movie or a song as to how the user wishes to use it. Be it computer, tv unit, or home stereo. Most home stereo’s don’t support the Apple format of ACC as an example. No consumer is going to go out and buy a new player just because that is the only way he can get the song to play on the home unit. Instead, like any cost aware person he will look to modify it to fit what he has and not the other way around.
I shake my head everytime I hear of our legislature and their lockstep support of the RIAA. It is readily apparent that some of these folks are certainly in the pocket of the majors, just by what they say and do. More what they do than what they say. It is a certainty that those have forgotten that this is to be a government for the people and by the people. When I look to Washington it seems I see the finest legal structure money can buy. Nothing to me speaks louder of the need for a valid and viable third party.