[Ecommerce] EU Copyright directive

[James Love]

Subject: FYI: EU Copyright directive, common position published
   Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 10:34:40 +0100
   From: "Stefan Bechtold" <stef@n-bechtold.com>
     To:  Multiple recipients of list <cni-copyright@cni.org>

On September 28, 2000, the Council of the European Union adopted a Common
Position concerning the draft of a copyright directive. This common position
is now officially published in the Official Journal of the EU, no. C 344 of
December 1, 2000, pp. 1-22 and is available on the WWW at
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/dat/2000/c_344/c_34420001201en00010022.pdf.

Amongst other things, it contains an anti-circumvention regulation in art.
6. As in the U.S. DMCA, one of the main problems is the relationship between
the protection of technological measures and copyright limitations (like
fair use). In the version of the common position, it is fairly easy to
override copyright limitations by using a combination of technological
measures and contracts; art. 6 (4) (4) says

"The provisions of the first and second subparagraphs [which limit the
protection of technological measures in order to preserve several copyright
limitations] shall not apply to works or other subject-matter made available
to the
public on agreed contractual terms in such a way that members of the public
may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them."

If the copyright directive gets adopted in its current version, it is my
feeling that we'll get the same problems in Europe as they occured in the
U.S. with the DMCA and ProCD... (There are other things which are at least
problematic with the anti-circumvention provision; there is no "right to
hack" as in the U.S. DMCA; there are several cases where copyright law is
limited but there is no equivalent limitation to the protection of
technological measures in art. 6 (4) etc.).

Stefan
--
#    Stefan Bechtold    stef@n-bechtold.com    Tuebingen, Germany    #
#              http://www.jura.uni-tuebingen.de/~s-bes1              #
#      Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.      #


-- 
James Love  <love@cptech.org>  http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 200036
voice 1.202.387.8030 fax 1.202.234.5176