[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
>>         
>>         “(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.”.
>> 
>> 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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