[Fsfe-ie] EU direcitves being rushed into Ireland before presidency
Justin Mason
jm at jmason.org
Wed Dec 10 18:55:06 CET 2003
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James Heald writes:
>David O'Callaghan wrote:
>> On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 16:09, Ian Clarke wrote:
>>
>>>Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
>>>
>>>>It defines a "protection defeating device" as being one "which has only
>>>>a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to
>>>>circumvent any rights protection measure"
>>>
>>>There is another dangerous ambiguity here. What if the device's purpose
>>>is to "circumvent any rights protection measure" for the purpose of
>>>allowing fair use/dealing?
>>
>>
>> Perhaps I'm being naïve, but this seems to be covered by the following:
>>
>> 5. The Act of 2000 is amended by substituting for section 374
>> the following:
>>
>> Rights Protection Measures and Permitted Acts
>>
>> â(1) Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed as operating to
>> prevent any person from undertaking the acts permitted -
>>
>> (a) in relation to works protected by copyright under Chapter 6
>> of Part II,
>> (b) in relation to performances, by Chapter 4 of Part III, or
>> (c) in relation to databases, by Chapter 8 of Part V.
>>
>> (2) Where the beneficiary has legal access to the protected work
>> or subject-matter concerned, the rightsholder shall make
>> available to the beneficiary the means of benefitting from the
>> permitted act.
>>
>> (3) In the event of a dispute arising, either party may apply to
>> the High Court for an order requiring a person to do or to
>> refrain from doing anything the doing or refraining from doing
>> of which is necessary to ensure compliance by that person with
>> the provisions of these Regulations.â.
>>
>> I haven't followed the references but this suggests to me that the
>> permitted acts that a person may perform cannot be arbitrarily denied by
>> rights protection measures.
>>
>> But, perhaps a film studio would claim that I don't have a legal right
>> to watch the contents of a region 1 (American) DVD on a region 2
>> (European) player because I implicitly agreed to their licensing terms
>> when buying the DVD.
>>
>
>Also, you may not be legally licensed to play a game written for console
>X on a modded-for-the-purpose console Y -- or to play a DVD on a
>linux-based OS.
>
>The notion of "legal access to the protected work" is quite slippery, ie
>what you can or cannot infer you have an "implied licence" to do, and
>what presumed rights the content-owner is or is not allowed to withhold.
> My suspicion is that the exact boundary has not yet been marked out by
>test-cases in court, and the EUCD/InfoSoc Directive pretty much
>sidesteps past the issue.
>
>But that's just off the top of my head.
>
>It's something that almost certainly *is* worth discussing with friendly
>experts/lawyers.
If someone can put together a short-but-coherent question on that, I'll be
happy to pass it on... ;)
- --j.
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