AfterDawn hamstrung by new law
p2p news / p2pnet special: As some of you might remember, Finnish Parliament approved a new copyright legislation in October, 2005 and that new legislation will come into force on 1st of January, 2006. As AfterDawn Ltd is a company based in Finland, we have to play along with the new law, however vague and draconian it is.
We tried to find alternative solutions and have asked our lawyers to evaluate various options that would have allowed us to continue our operations as they used to be. Unfortunately, none of these options were solid enough to escape the new restrictions.
Thus, we’ve made our own analysis of the law and come to a conclusion that yes, we can continue running our site, but need to make some adjustments to the content. The law is extremely vague and leaves thousands of questions open, mostly leaving media corporations very free hands to sue whoever they wish to. Despite this, we decided to remove the content that most obviously violates the letter of the law, but decided to leave some breathing room for other areas.
The law has phrases like “Offering commercial services that allow circumventing technical copy protections … is illegal.” But doesn’t provide any guidelines on what is considered to be “commercial” and what type of service the law is talking about. Our and our lawyers’ analysis is that as we’re a commercial company, having ads on our site, and providing guides — written by our paid staff members — and tools that help breaking protections like extremely weak CSS found on virtually all DVD-Video discs, we can be sued. And for those of you suggesting “move!”, I can tell you that we evaluated that option with our lawyers as well and it would have required not just moving our company and servers, but all individuals involved with the site’s day-to-day business as well.
Law also makes it illegal to distribute tools, even for free, that allow circumventing copy protections. However, in the reasong that the Ministry of Education submitted alongside the new law text to the Parliament, they stated that only tools whose main function is, or can be considered to be, to break copy protections, are illegal. Again, the text — and the reasoning — are extremely vague.
But as a summary, here are the changes that will take effect on 1st of January or shortly after that date:
Forums
No changes. The law states that “organized discussion about breaking copy protections” will be illegal, but as nobody on our forums is planning to develop tools that break copy protections, we don’t think it applies. Additionally, as everybody knows, our forums aren’t exactly very organized
And moderators aren’t our staff members, our admins don’t participate in threads discussing about how to break copy protection methods, ever.
Guides
References how to use tools that allow circumventing copy protections will be removed
This means that guides converting AVIs to DVD, etc will remain intact.
This means that guides converting copy-protected DVDs to other formats will stay on our site, but the detailed instructions on how to use tools like DVD Decrypter, etc will be removed from those guides
Guides considering just how to break copy protections, will be removed (AFAIK, only one guide applies here)
Software section
Major changes. All tools meant solely for DVD ripping and/or ripping copy-protected music CDs will be removed.
This is a major blow to us, as our site has one of the largest DVD ripping software collections on Earth. But the law is very clear with this one, tools like SmartRipper serve really only one main function — ripping copy-protected DVDs — and are therefor illegal from 1st of January, 2006.
Other site areas
No changes. Stuff like glossary, FAQ section, etc will continue operating as they do now.
Yes, we know, this sucks. But stuff like relocating to other country doesn’t work out, unless all of our staff moves there as well..
Additionally, we’ve decided to set the guides that need removal under the Creative Commons license that allows free distribution of the guides, providing that they aren’t altered. The specific license can be read here. The list of guides that will be removed is:
- Copy DVD to DVD-R using DVD Decrypter (DVDs smaller than 4.36GB)
- Backing up a protected CD – an Alcohol 120% guide (not owned by AfterDawn Ltd, therefor this guide is not under Creative Commons license, but instead will be simply removed)
- Copy DVD-9 to DVD-R using DVD X Copy XPRESS
- Defeating Cactus Data Shield (not owned by AfterDawn Ltd, therefor this guide is not under Creative Commons license, but instead will be simply removed)
- Bypassing DVD copy protections
- Copy DVD to DVD-R using DVD Decrypter (DVDs smaller than 4.36GB) (the Finnish version of the guide)
And the list of guides that will be edited (please note that due various rights issues, these guides can’t be distributed freely without our written permission and aren’t licensed under Creative Commons license) in order to remove specific instructions on how to circumvent copy protections:
- Copy a DVD-9 to DVDR with DVDXGold
- Copy a DVD-9 to DVDR with DVDXPlatinum
- Copy a DVD-9 to DVDR with DVDXPress
- Copy DVD-9 movie to a single DVD-R with DVD2One
- Copy DVD-9 to DVD-R using DVD X Copy XPRESS
- Copy entire DVD-9 movie to a single DVD-R using DVD Shrink
- Copy full DVD movie disc to a DVDR using CloneDVD
- Extract, process and burn a DVD under MacOS X.2.2 or higher
- High quality DVD-9 backups with DVD Rebuilder and CCE Basic
- How to copy multiple DVD movies to 1 DVDR with DVD Shrink
- Split a DVD-9 to 2 DVDRs with DVDXGold
- Split a DVD-9 to 2 DVDRs with DVDXPlatinum
- DVD to SVCD with TMPGEnc
- Convert DVDs to SVCD or CVD using DVD2SVCD
- DVD to VCD with SmartRipper, DVD2AVI and TMPGEnc
- Convert DVD movies to AC3 DivX using Gordian Knot
- Copy your DVD into DivX format – Guide for 4:3 movies
- Copy your DVD into DivX format – Guide for 16:9 anamorphic movies
- Copy your DVD to XviD with AC3 surround sound
- Compressing your DVDs with ratDVD
- Video Vault: Introducing an all-in-one video conversion package
And here are the software tools that will be removed from our site on 1st of January, 2006:
- Alcohol 120%
- Alcohol 52%
- AnyDVD
- AoA DVD Ripper
- CloneCD
- ClonyXXL
- DVD Extractor
- DVD Region Free
- DVD43
- DVD Backup
- DVDX
- DVDFab Decrypter
- DVDFab Express
- DVDFab Gold
- DVDFab Platinum
- DVDIdle Pro
- Easy CDDA Extractor
- Easy DVD Copier
- Exact Audio Copy
- FlaskMPEG
- Free DVD
- Gordian Knot System Pack
- Gordian Knot
- ImTOO CD Ripper
- ImTOO DVD Ripper
- Mac DVD Ripping Tutorial
- MacTheRipper
- OSeX
- SmartRipper
- Streambox VCR Suite
- Streambox VCR
- Streambox VCR plus SMF update
- Topee CD Ripper
- WinDAC
- WinAVI DVD Copy
- Xilisoft DVD Ripper
That’s it… Seems rather long list, but then again, two alternatives left are either to close the site or face upto 1 year in prison. We’re currently supporting several campaigns in Finland that aim to amend the copyright legislation, but don’t hold your breath for success, as it seems that the Ministry of Education and main parties have been fully brainwashed by large media corporations who are the only ones gaining something from this law.
In case you’re interested, here are some of my personal thoughts about this law.
dRD – AfterDawn
December 27th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
There are torrents of the whole set of forbidden stuff, including guides and software. See this thread: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1/276433
December 27th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Sounds like Finnish politicians are completely out of touch with a number of things. One is obviously the people and how they might feel about this, considering how much has been legal up until now. The other is obviously the current state of technology (are they even aware of the internet perchance?). It also would seem that none of them have been keeping tabs on all the latest developments regarding the entertainment companies and their shady practices that keep coming to light time and again. How such a slipshod piece of legislation could become law is beyond me. Did they even know what it was they were passing? To pass a law so far reaching and broad with no limitations was completely and utterly reckless. I hope news like this isn’t the norm for most governments, but alas I fear that it may indeed be so.
Canada has yet to adopt more stringent laws regarding copying similar to what we’ve seen with the likes of the DMCA in the USA. I can only hope that when the time comes, they don’t give into the FUD that the corporate lobbyists are always dishing out and create laws that are carefully thought out from every possible angle, with the publics interest coming first and foremost. I know that won’t happen if the Liberals stay in power, so voting for them is out of the question. The Bloc is also out of the question for obvious reasons. Still trying to figure out whom to vote for. So far Steven Harper and his Accountability Act seem like the best bet, although I never thought I would see myself voting Conservative. If what he plans regarding lobbying comes to pass, then there may yet be hope for us Canadians. By the way, I’ve never really cared for politics, nor do I usually bother to vote. It never seems to matter. I certainly will this time though, and I hope all the others out there just like me do too since it’s so gravely important this time around. We need all the people who don’t normally vote to come out and do their part for once, as I think this is what may be what is needed to tip the scales. Ah screw it, whats the point. Were all going to hell in a hand basket.
December 30th, 2005 at 4:42 am
I remember a while back reading a post on the afterdawn website on how they did not give give a hoot and a holler and ” did not give a damn “about people in the united states hollywood and the dmca.
I hate playing the devils’s advocate in saying it only would have been a matter of time the country of finland would have moved closer to the united states and great britain in thought and position about piracy ang copyright issues and resulting draconian changes in the finnish copyright law.
FAIR USE RIGHTS IS JUST A MYTH.
EVENTUALLY THIS HAPPEN IN CANADA LUMP IT OR LEAVE IT……………..
If one isn’t careful arrogance and ignorance can be bliss and one could easily get fooled.
There was a lot of misquided young people who thought that unlimited fair use rights would never end in finland and finland will have to join in the united states’ miserable concepts about copyright and patent law where it is ILLEGAL to copy a prerecorded dvd.
AGAIN THIS IS WHAT IS IN STORE FOR CANADA WHERE THIS WEBSITE IS HOSTED…………..
The only thing i could say is you can never say that people did not try to say ” i told you so ……”
December 30th, 2005 at 4:44 am
I remember a while back reading a post on the afterdawn website on how they did not give give a hoot and a holler and ” did not give a damn “about people in the united states hollywood and the dmca.
I hate playing the devils’s advocate in saying it only would have been a matter of time the country of finland would have moved closer to the united states and great britain in thought and position about piracy ang copyright issues and resulting draconian changes in the finnish copyright law.
FAIR USE RIGHTS IS JUST A MYTH.
EVENTUALLY THIS HAPPEN IN CANADA LUMP IT OR LEAVE IT……………..
If one isn’t careful arrogance and ignorance can be bliss and one could easily get fooled.
There was a lot of misquided young people who thought that unlimited fair use rights would never end in finland and finland will have to join in the united states’ miserable concepts about copyright and patent law where it is ILLEGAL to copy a prerecorded dvd.
AGAIN THIS IS WHAT IS IN STORE FOR CANADA WHERE THIS WEBSITE IS HOSTED…………..
The only thing i could say is you can never say that people did not try to say ” i told you so ……”
December 31st, 2005 at 3:28 am
Yes…but here is the rub. The movie industry is putting itself out of business. DVD sales are down so are movie ticket sales. When DVD’s first came out everyone wanted them. they went out and replaced their collections or started their own new collections. One of the srtong pulls to this new technology was the ability to play a dvd anywhere. In the car, on the computer, portable dvd players laptops, tv’s etc. After people started doing this it became apperant that the dvd’s where not very hardy and many were ruined easily so people wanted to back up their dvds and play the copies now they can’t do that easily and we have stopped “wasting” money on a product that breaks easily and has so many obstacles to playing your movie the way you want. I have not bought a dvd in a year because of DRM and I have not bought MUSIC CD in that long either. The last time my 50.00 xbox game got scratched was the last time I wasted money on a game either. As of now there are no DRM on books and I buy them all the time.