Petteri Pyyny
15 Jul 2003 2:07
Friday, 11th of July, was truly a sad day for Europe, free speech and fair use rights. The largest European Union member country, Germany, passed its own implementation of draconian DMCA-like law called as European Union Copyright Directive.
The law, that is now in effect in five member states (Germany, Austria, Greece, Denmark and Italy) makes it illegal to distribute (even for free), sell, manufacture, develope or advertise tools or software utilities that allow circumventing copy protections. This applies to all copy protection mechanisms, including cracking the CSS that's found on most DVD-Video discs, circumventing audio CD copy protections, etc.
German implementation of the law went even further than what the EUCD itself required -- German version of the EUCD implementation makes it illegal to even discuss about circumventing copy protections in public (as on Net pages).
The chilling effects of the German law can already be seen here and there -- most obvious is the fate of the Linux DVD ripper, dvd::rip. The new versions of the software don't include settings for cracking the CSS code at all as the software is being hosted and developed in Germany.
Rest of the Europe should follow the suit within next couple of months -- United Kingdom has already published its draft of its own implementation and other member states are preparing (or have done so already) to do so very shortly.
Public activity at this stage can't prevent the EUCD to become a law anymore as that action should've been done in 2001 when the European Parliament voted for the EUCD. At the moment, only action that public can do, is to prevent the remaining member states from making their own additions to the law that would make it even worse for the public. Also, the EUCD allows member states to add special cases to the law which could allow using copy protection circumvention tools in specific cases (research, etc).
More information:
Privatkopie.net
AEL.be
EUCD.org
Slashdot