Re: [LUG] European Copyright Directive Reminder

[Simon Waters <Simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> if cd's both music and software were not such a rip off then piracy would
> not be a problem

RMS would have us note that piracy tended to involve stealing
things on the high seas, and a lot of killing people, and isn't
much like "copyright infringement", but then RMS is careful in
his choice of words.

I make an effort to respect copyright, it is the law, and my
objections to this legislation is not that it makes copyright
infringement harder (certainly not on commob Digital media), but
that it is likely to make it harder to work on Linux readers for
new (or bastardised) media formats.

If Adobe have used encryption or other technology to restrict
access to a documents content, this effectively make it illegal
to make interoperable programs.

As a law it contradicts the interoperability, and reverse
engineering rights already under European, and UK law. Now it
may well be the case that these rights are found to be more
important than Copyright law, but I don't want to be the test
case....

I agree CD's and DVD are overpriced, and the DVD regionalisation
is a typical example of the kind of tricks we can expect from
big publishers which will find greater protection under this law
(software to read multiregion DVD would have to prove it is
Commercial Significant uses, and likely to get sued out of
existence).

We are left having to rely on the Secretary of State to give us
back our normal fair dealing rights in copyrighted material.

Seems an attempt to use Copyright, to make barriers to
interoperability, because they can't patent software in Europe.

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the
message body to unsubscribe.