Silicon.com: Digital copyright clampdown to jump the Atlantic

[Owen Blacker]

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> HEADLINE: Digital copyright clampdown to jump the Atlantic
> PUBLISHED: 6:30pm on Friday 26th October 2001
> CHANNEL: Government & law
> AUTHOR: Ben King
> SERVICE: http://www.silicon.com
> 
> TEXT OF STORY FOLLOWS:
> 
> The Dmitri case could soon be repeated here...
> 
> While US campaigners are up in arms about the US's notorious 
> Digital Millennium Copyright Act, few people realise that 
> even more extreme legislation is coming to the UK via Brussels.
> 
> The directive goes by the snappy title of 2001/29/EU, and 
> when it becomes part of UK law next year, it will take away 
> many of the rights UK citizens currently enjoy to use or 
> reproduce copyrighted materials.
> 
> It will make it a criminal offence to break or attempt to 
> break the copy protection or access control systems on 
> digital content such as music, videos, eBooks, and software.
> 
> If the European directive is applied in European law without 
> modification, it will open the door for similar cases to the 
> Dmitri Sklyarov prosecution in the US, where a programmer is 
> facing a jail sentence for demonstrating a means of 
> circumventing the copy protection on Adobe's eBooks.
> 
> Simon Stokes, head of IP and digital media at law firm Tarlo 
> Lyons, said: "Encryption research tends to be quite close to 
> the line of what is legal. But this could well pose a problem 
> for legitimate encryption research."
> 
> Other legitimate copying activity, such as teachers copying 
> materials for their students or blind people making Braille 
> copies of their work, could also become illegal.
> 
> The directive provides for some exceptions to the Draconian 
> copyright rules, but the legal experts we spoke to felt they 
> were little more than a fig leaf.
> 
> Thomas Vinje, European copyright law expert at Morrison and 
> Foerster Brussels, said: "They're just a political compromise 
> to make these issues go away. No one has any idea how to 
> implement them, or whether they will work."
> 
> He continued: "I think it is very sad that a piece of 
> legislation that has major public importance was passed 
> without real public debate.
> 
> "The legislative progress was dominated by the big rights 
> holders and their well-paid lobbyists, and EU legislators 
> were led around by their noses. I don't think they realised 
> what they were passing."
> 
> Stokes at Tarlo Lyons agreed: "The safeguards in this law are 
> vague to the point of obscurity. It's a very one-sided piece 
> of legislation, which goes too far to protect the rights of 
> content providers."
> 
> The national governments of the EU have 18 months to 
> incorporate the directive into national law.
> 
> A spokesman for the Patent Office, which has responsibility 
> for implementing the directive into UK law, said draft 
> legislation is currently being prepared, which would be put 
> out to consultation in the New Year.
> 
> For related news, see:
> Free Dmitri protesters strike again
> http://www.silicon.com/a46959 
> Freedom in the air for Dmitri?
> http://www.silicon.com/a46768 
> Dmitri gets breathing space
> http://www.silicon.com/a46743 
> Princeton Dons do a Dmitri to defy music giants
> http://www.silicon.com/a46592 
> 
> 
> STORY ENDS
> 
> For more information on silicon.com go to http://www.silicon.com.
> 
> silicon.com - the who, what, when, where and why of ebusiness

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