[Ecommerce] Finland bans DRM fiddling in all its forms

[Michelle Childs]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/finlands_drm_law/
Finland bans DRM fiddling in all its forms
Even 'organised discussions' thereof
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Thursday 6th October 2005 15:09 GMT

The Finnish government voted yesterday to make it illegal to copy media,
even for personal use, if you have to subvert copy protection to do so.
The legislation was passed by 121 votes to 34. Forty-four MPs were absent.

The updated copyright protection laws have been criticised for ignoring
consumers' rights, and the bill itself has been branded confusing and
badly worded.

Until now, Finland had allowed copying for personal use, and had a blank
media levy in place to compensate authors.

But under the new laws, not only will copying for personal use become
illegal, so will possessing, distributing or advertising tools that break
copy protection. P2PNet points out that the law prohibits even "organised
discussion" of such things.

The Finnish president does have the right to veto the new legislation, but
this right is very rarely exercised.

According to Finnish News Agency STT, the government appended a note to
the legislation asking content producing industries to voluntarily agree
not to prosecute individuals for making a few copies for their own use.

Based on the track record of these same industries, we at El Reg are sure
that Finns wanting to transfer to a few tracks from a newly purchased
(copy protected) CD over to their MP3 players will be absolutely fine. =AE



--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
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