James Delahunty
11 Sep 2005 17:51
The Bundesverfassungsgericht, the federal constitutional court in Germany has rejected a complaint by a consumer that copy protection mechanisms on DVDs and CDs are a major disadvantage to consumers and conflict with private copying rights. The court didn't recognise a disadvantage to consumers because of copy protection on DVDs and CDs so gave no decision before the consumer would have to follow normal civil procedure against the manufacturer.
However, the worrying part is that the court also commented on fair-use rights of entertainment products purchased; it doubted that the constitution provides a right which would make home copying of movies legal. The problem is that in most countries, copying for private use is considered legal, but circumventing copy protection mechanisms isn't. For this reason, both conflict in many situations as most of the DVDs you buy are copy protected.
The consumer was contesting about provision 95a German Copyright Law which gave rightsholders the right to include copy protection on their products and also prohibits the circumvention of such protections. However, just back in April a French court came to a completely different decision and ruled copy protection measures on DVDs were incompatible with private use and were prohibited, overturning an earlier decision that denied private copying was a right.
Source:
CoCo