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Author
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Topic: French court rules against copy protection.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-23-2005 03:26 AM
The June edition of the BKSTS magazine 'Cinema Technology', on page 6, carries a report that a French court of appeal has ruled against the use of copy protection on DVDs. The court reversed a previous ruling which had been in favour of Les Film Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, and found in favour of a man wanting to make a VHS copy of a DVD for his mother, who didn't have a DVD player. It's not clear where the DVD came from, whether he bought it for his mother, and just needed to convert the format, or if it was from his own collection, or borrowed, or what. Nor is it clear whether he could have just bought the material on VHS in the first place..
"The court also said that the defendants had failed in their duty to correctly inform their customers that their discs were copy protected.
Damages were awarded against the companies who were given a month to remove the Content Scrambling System (CSS) from their DVDs."
I'm not sure what this means; not use it on new releases? Re-master all existing releases without it? Replace any protected discs which customers have already bought?
The article says that "EU copyright laws allow for DRM systems so the ruling may cause conflict."
I have a feeling we have not heard the end of this one, watch for further developments.
[ 06-23-2005, 04:55 AM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-23-2005 07:07 AM
quote: Stephen Furley
The article says that "EU copyright laws allow for DRM systems so the ruling may cause conflict."
Not only does the 2001 European Union Copyright Directive (PDF) allow for DRM systems, but it also makes it an offence to circumvent them. The directive is effectively a carbon copy of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act in the US, and was implemented in UK law by an amendment to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in 2003. In other words, it's the law here, but I wouldn't mind guessing that the French government has ignored it. Yet again, this is a case of the French telling the British to do as they say and not as they do, where the EU is concerned - but for obvious reasons, I'll refrain from any further political remarks.
The EUCD has caused quite a controversy in recent years, especially its DRM provisions. Campaigners see them as an infringement of civil liberties. Personally I've always thought that it shouldn't be an offence for someone who has bought copyright audio, video or software to make further copies for their own use only. For example, I sometimes dupe audio CDs to play in the car, because the car has a slot loading CD drive which sometimes scratches discs. I never give or sell copies of those CDs to someone else. I've also got some software packages which I've installed both on my home PC and my laptop. But as those two copies are never both being used at the same time, I can't see how the copyright owners could morally claim that their rights are being infringed. They sold me a licence to use their products as a private individual, and whatever technical means I use to accomplish that is none of their business as far as I'm concerned.
Personally I can't help thinking that this man would have been better advised to learn how to download and use a program that strips out CSS and Macrovision from a DVD and then copies it, rather than dragging Studio Canal through the courts. Buying his mother a DVD player would have been another option, and one which would have been a lot cheaper than the lawyers' fees! On an ethical level I guess it all depends on whether he bought the DVD for his mother or whether he was trying to copy a DVD which was already owned and had been viewed by someone else. If the latter, then it appears that a court has openly given the green light to piracy - and I can't imagine that the big studios will sit around and put up with that for very long.
One techie point, though: according to the article summarised by Stephen, the French courts ordered the studios to remove CSS from their DVD releases. That won't help the plaintiff if he's trying to make a VHS copy. CSS prevents copying to a blank DVD, by placing an encryption key in an area of the disc which can be written to on a glass master pressing, but not a DVD+/-R. Since any home duping won't copy the key, the video data without it is useless. The system which prevents analogue duplication is Macrovision ACP. It adds a signal to the composite video stream which confuses the AGC on the VCR receiving the signal, thereby causing it to record garbage. So removing CSS from a DVD will enable him to make more DVDs, but if the release is also encoded with Macrovision AGP, he still won't be able to dupe it to VHS. So not only have the French courts made an unenforcable decision, the judge has failed to understand the technicalities, too! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-23-2005 08:58 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Not only does the 2001 European Union Copyright Directive (PDF) allow for DRM systems, but it also makes it an offence to circumvent them. The directive is effectively a carbon copy of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act in the US, and was implemented in UK law by an amendment to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in 2003. In other words, it's the law here, but I wouldn't mind guessing that the French government has ignored it. Yet again, this is a case of the French telling the British to do as they say and not as they do, where the EU is concerned - but for obvious reasons, I'll refrain from any further political remarks.
The EUCD has caused quite a controversy in recent years, especially its DRM provisions. Campaigners see them as an infringement of civil liberties. Personally I've always thought that it shouldn't be an offence for someone who has bought copyright audio, video or software to make further copies for their own use only. For example, I sometimes dupe audio CDs to play in the car, because the car has a slot loading CD drive which sometimes scratches discs. I never give or sell copies of those CDs to someone else. I've also got some software packages which I've installed both on my home PC and my laptop. But as those two copies are never both being used at the same time, I can't see how the copyright owners could morally claim that their rights are being infringed. They sold me a licence to use their products as a private individual, and whatever technical means I use to accomplish that is none of their business as far as I'm concerned.
What we need is a licence which clearly and concisely states what you may or may not do under that licence. I think that things have been getting better recently, the Apple iTunes licence being a good example; it allows you to do reasonable things, does not allow you to do unreasonable thngs, and does not interfere with you doing anything which it does allow you to do. I've seen copyright notices on Laserdiscs and DVDs which, if interpreted literally, would not allow the recording to be played at all.
Once you have a reasonable licence, and it is clear what is allowed then I don't thnk you can really object to a rights management system which prevents you from doing what you are not permitted to do by the licence. On the other hand, if such a system prevents you from doing what you are licenced to do, or in any way interferes with you doing so, e.g. by degrading picture quality, then I thing you've very good grounds for complaint.
quote: Leo Enticknap
Personally I can't help thinking that this man would have been better advised to learn how to download and use a program that strips out CSS and Macrovision from a DVD and then copies it, rather than dragging Studio Canal through the courts. Buying his mother a DVD player would have been another option, and one which would have been a lot cheaper than the lawyers' fees! On an ethical level I guess it all depends on whether he bought the DVD for his mother or whether he was trying to copy a DVD which was already owned and had been viewed by someone else. If the latter, then it appears that a court has openly given the green light to piracy - and I can't imagine that the big studios will sit around and put up with that for very long.
Agree that buying a DVD player could have been a good option, if this was genuine. I cannot help wondering if this was just used as an excuse to bring a test case to try to overturn the use of CSS. The article does say that the consumer group 'UFC-Que Choisir' backed the case through the courts. I think there is more to this than one man wanting to run off a VHS tape for his mother.
I think it is almost certain that the studios will try to get this ruling reversed. If this case had been brought in Britain it is very likely that they would have won. Rather than try to overturn the decision in France, and then possibly face similar actions elsewhere in Europe, they might try to find a way of overturning it at a EU level. CSS has always been an integral part of the DVD Video standard; it is mandatory for all players to support it, though obviously its use on a disc is optional. If the studios were to accept this ruling their options would be for them to abandon CSS altogther, or to make special non-CSS releases just for France. I can't see them wanting to do this. France, like the rest of Europe, is in region 2, so I can see people from all over Europe ordering discs from France to get a non-protected version. I suppose they could try to discourage this by putting only french language audio streams on the disc, but I don't think this is going to happen.
It seems somewhat odd they the studios were held to have 'failed in their duty to correctly inform customers that their discs were copy protected'. Just about every commercially-produced DVD that I've ever seen clearly states that copying is prohibited. Given this, it seems a bit odd that there should be a requirement to inform people that you are preventing them from doing something that you have prohibited them from doing in any case.
Copying material from an audio CD for use on MP3 players now seems to be recognised as being legitimate. Such use is specifically allowed in the iTunes licence, as is the use on several computers, and the making of a limited number of audio CDs. It will be interesting to see what happens when the video equivilent of an iPod appears, and people want to load films onto it from DVDs.
quote:
One techie point, though: according to the article summarised by Stephen, the French courts ordered the studios to remove CSS from their DVD releases. That won't help the plaintiff if he's trying to make a VHS copy. CSS prevents copying to a blank DVD, by placing an encryption key in an area of the disc which can be written to on a glass master pressing, but not a DVD+/-R. Since any home duping won't copy the key, the video data without it is useless. The system which prevents analogue duplication is Macrovision ACP. It adds a signal to the composite video stream which confuses the AGC on the VCR receiving the signal, thereby causing it to record garbage. So removing CSS from a DVD will enable him to make more DVDs, but if the release is also encoded with Macrovision AGP, he still won't be able to dupe it to VHS. So not only have the French courts made an unenforcable decision, the judge has failed to understand the technicalities, too!
Quite.
As I said, I don't think we have heard the end of this.
I do not know if the article is accurate. The two quotes in my first post are from the CT magazine, though I re-typed them as I don't have a OCR scanner handy, and it didn't seem worth using one anyway for such a small amount of text.
I think there is more reason to object to Macrovision than there is to CSS; it can interfere with perfectly reasonable use of the DVD, e.g. by preventing it from being watched on a DVD player connected to certain combined television/VCR machines.
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