Hi there.
It seems there is currently several highly competent people working on the patents issue. It seems, then, that a good idea might be for some other people to start working, instead, on issues of copyright and especially the EUCD.
I am willing to take some responsibility for this. Is anyone else willing to help? Naturally, everyone is invited to contribute but having a few people to whom the main work is delegated may help structure the work better.
Good luck,
Malcohol.
This is my attempt to bring together some information on the EUCD and suggest some plans of action. I apologise for its length.
I am not especially up to date on this issue so please mail corrections and additions to the points I've made. It's just intended to be a launching platform for our work on this issue.
By the way, if we get any lawyers on board with respect to the patents stuff, we should also suggest they consider the copyright stuff as well.
Enjoy,
Malcohol.
====
WHY WE CARE: * Aspects of the EUCD restrict activities we, in the free software community consider legitimate. - Under the EUCD, some of these activities could become crimes and be punishable with prison sentences. - In particular, our ability to produce software which can read and manipulate date formats. * Bad for consumers - see problems with EUCD section below * The EUCD is just bad law. - see first point in the Problems with EUCD section below
GOALS: * Describe the problems with the EUCD. - there should be plenty of material on-line to leech from * Find out how copyright currently operates in Ireland and, more generally, Europe. - is there a useful document/book/website which explains why we have copyright in Europe, or the history of copyright in Europe? - In the US, they have an explicit position. Quoting the Stallman talk, Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Network:
"For the U.S. Constitution it was proposed that authors should be entitled to a copyright, a monopoly on copying their books. This proposal was rejected. Instead, a crucially different proposal was adopted, which is, that for the sake of promoting progress, Congress could optionally establish a copyright system that would created these monopolies. So the monopolies, according to the U.S. Constitution, do not exist for the sake of those who own them; they exist for the sake of promoting the progress of science. The monopolies are handed out to authors as a way of modifying their behaviour to get them to do something that serves the public."
I don't think this is the case in Europe where there may be more of an automatic right to copyright for authors. * What is the history of the EUCD? - knowing that the procedure which devised it was poor gives us another small argument against. - why was it drafted? o In response to the WIPO Copyright Treaty and possibly TRIPS, I guess o In response to pressure from <see next point> - who were the major players? o big media companies o big software companies - who, if anyone, address consumer issues during its drafting? * WIPO Copyright Treaty and TRIPS - WIPO obviously is important to the EUCD. What about TRIPS? - How many, if any, of the EUCD's restrictions is imposed by TRIPS and the WIPO Copyright Treaty? - Discover whether Ireland is a signatory to TRIPS or WIPO directly, or only indirectly by virtue of EU membership. * Find out what the legislative procedure in Ireland will be. - changes in Irish law currently being drafted by Tony McGrath? * Reinterpret Free Software arguments in terms of what we have learned about copyright. (Not EUCD specific but more general IFSO work) - Some of the FSF essays interpret the meaning of "copyright" to be the US meaning. We might want to provide more appropriate local arguments instead.
PROBLEMS WITH EUCD: This is from a brief and shallow reading of "Why the EUCD is Bad" (see links section). Most problems are with "Article 6" and some are with "Article 3". * Copyright Law is replaced by technology - it makes it illegal to circumvent protection measures. - therefore, protection measures can be used to define what people can and cannot *legally* do with a copyright work. - it is irrelevant how feeble the protection measure is. * Cryptographic Research - it may become illegal for cryptographic researchers to publish research since they might reveal how a protection measure can be circumvented. * Ethical Hacking - it may make the publishing of security holes illegal - this, and the above point, will remove an important force of quality control in cryptography and security. Both technologies will be severely weakened. * Competition in the Software Market - "the company that creates a digital format has complete control over how the players should behave, and also control over who should be allowed to create players for that format." * Libraries - protected works will make it difficult for libraries to perform the task of preserving material * No "first sale" for non-physical works - copies of a work can be tied to an individual buyer, making it impossible sell your individual copy * Censorship - copies can be make self-destructive or non-storeable - if we can't keep a fixed copy, it makes it difficult to determine what was actually "published" in the first place - (we can see this already on the web where the old content is silently updated) * Mass-market licenses (I'm not sure I understand this point fully) - the law does not give you any guarantee that you can't sign away important rights with a single click on an 'accept' button.
SOME LINKS: * These need to be annotated. Of course, first, they need to be read!!! I can't vouch for their quality yet. * http://www.ukcdr.org - UK campaign for digital rights * http://www.ipjustice.org * http://www.eurorights.org - essay: Why the EUCD is bad. * Audio files by Robin Gross, and Martin Keegan: http://media.april.org/audio/RMLL-2003/fixed/ * http://www.ivir.nl/publications/hugenholtz/opinion-EIPR.html * http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/eucd/eucd-fs.en.html * http://www.acm.org/usacm/IP/dmca.exemption.htm * http://www.eblida.org/topics/position/legaffa.htm
SOME PEOPLE WE KNOW ARE INVOLVED: * Tony McGrath is "the man in charge of producing the draft in consultation with the attorney general" * The Attorney General, the advisor to the government on legal matters, and therefore is the chief law officer of Ireland. * Teresa Hackett. Worked in Norway on behalf of EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Association) http://www.eblida.org. She will hopefully be talking to us at the meeting on 11/12.
NOTES FROM E-MAILS: * "The UK implemented a pretty bad interpretation recently": http://www.ukcdr.org/issues/eucd/ukimpl/ * "The EUCD is a particularly flexible EU directive. Virtually every article of import can be partially implemented or not implemented at all if the member state feels it (a) contradicts a legal tradition of the country (b) would damage their industry and a few other provisos." * > The gist of the EUCD is that it will be a criminal act to circumvent
encryption to gain access to copyrighted material.
It is however up to the state to decide where it becomes criminal. Most EU states have made large scale commercial piracy the criminal act which I think it was already. The UK has made individual acts - even finding a hole in the encryption and then reporting it - illegal, punishable by up to three years in prison. * "Fair dealing is unauthorised but lawful use of an authors work. A person does not need permission from the author if they want to quote a non-substantial portion of a work, parody the work, make a backup of the work, etc." * The UK implementation makes any reverse engineering of anything *containing* a protection device criminally illegal. This I [Niall] personally feel exceeds the bounds of the directive * The public also loses it's "first sale" rights. - if encryption is used to tie a work to one individual, it would be illegal to exercise these rights. * Do we have SMEs on our side, or is this a purely consumer issue. * Do we wait for legislation to be drafted and then oppose it or do we attempt to influence the drafting * In either case, whom would we address letters to? * Are there other consumer groups interested in these issues? What about the competition authority?... Do we have one?
QUESTIONS: * What are rights anyway? - there are things we are currently allowed do with a copyrighted work. A good example is lend it to a friend. But there is nowhere (that I know) in law where it actually says "You may lend copyrighted works to your friend". Rather, by not excluding such an activity it implicitly allows it. I would like to claim this lending works to friends as a right, but "non-exclusion in law" seems a rather weak support for this right. - As Niall hinted, it may be that many of the things we consider as rights are merely things that weren't illegal "yet"! - I mailed the list recently describing certain activities "guaranteed" by the Irish Copyright Act 2000. I'm no longer so sure, but I will try and make a definite statement soon. We really need a lawyer for this stuff!
Is all this stuff going on a website somewhere, or at least a Wiki? I seem to see a lot of State of the Onion posts on this list.
adam
-----Original Message----- From: fsfe-ie-bounces@fsfeurope.org [mailto:fsfe-ie-bounces@fsfeurope.org]On Behalf Of Malcolm Tyrrell Sent: 04 December 2003 11:53 To: fsfe-ie@fsfeurope.org Subject: [Fsfe-ie] Re: Copyright and the EUCD
This is my attempt to bring together some information on the EUCD and suggest some plans of action. I apologise for its length.
I am not especially up to date on this issue so please mail corrections and additions to the points I've made. It's just intended to be a launching platform for our work on this issue.
By the way, if we get any lawyers on board with respect to the patents stuff, we should also suggest they consider the copyright stuff as well.
Enjoy,
Malcohol.
====
WHY WE CARE:
- Aspects of the EUCD restrict activities we, in the free software community consider legitimate.
- Under the EUCD, some of these activities could become crimes and be punishable with prison sentences.
- In particular, our ability to produce software which can read and manipulate date formats.
- Bad for consumers
- see problems with EUCD section below
- The EUCD is just bad law.
- see first point in the Problems with EUCD section below
GOALS:
- Describe the problems with the EUCD.
- there should be plenty of material on-line to leech from
- Find out how copyright currently operates in Ireland and, more
generally, Europe.
is there a useful document/book/website which explains why we have copyright in Europe, or the history of copyright in Europe?
In the US, they have an explicit position. Quoting the Stallman talk, Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Network:
"For the U.S. Constitution it was proposed that authors should be entitled to a copyright, a monopoly on copying their books. This proposal was rejected. Instead, a crucially different proposal was adopted, which is, that for the sake of promoting progress, Congress could optionally establish a copyright system that would created these monopolies. So the monopolies, according to the U.S. Constitution, do not exist for the sake of those who own them; they exist for the sake of promoting the progress of science. The monopolies are handed out to authors as a way of modifying their behaviour to get them to do something that serves the public."
I don't think this is the case in Europe where there may be more of an automatic right to copyright for authors.
- What is the history of the EUCD?
- knowing that the procedure which devised it was poor gives us another small argument against.
- why was it drafted? o In response to the WIPO Copyright Treaty and possibly TRIPS, I guess o In response to pressure from <see next point>
- who were the major players? o big media companies o big software companies
- who, if anyone, address consumer issues during its drafting?
- WIPO Copyright Treaty and TRIPS
- WIPO obviously is important to the EUCD. What about TRIPS?
- How many, if any, of the EUCD's restrictions is imposed by TRIPS and the WIPO Copyright Treaty?
- Discover whether Ireland is a signatory to TRIPS or WIPO directly, or only indirectly by virtue of EU membership.
- Find out what the legislative procedure in Ireland will be.
- changes in Irish law currently being drafted by Tony McGrath?
- Reinterpret Free Software arguments in terms of what we have learned about copyright. (Not EUCD specific but more general IFSO work)
- Some of the FSF essays interpret the meaning of "copyright" to be the US meaning. We might want to provide more appropriate local arguments instead.
PROBLEMS WITH EUCD: This is from a brief and shallow reading of "Why the EUCD is Bad" (see links section). Most problems are with "Article 6" and some are with "Article 3".
- Copyright Law is replaced by technology
- it makes it illegal to circumvent protection measures.
- therefore, protection measures can be used to define what people can and cannot *legally* do with a copyright work.
- it is irrelevant how feeble the protection measure is.
- Cryptographic Research
- it may become illegal for cryptographic researchers to publish research since they might reveal how a protection measure can be circumvented.
- Ethical Hacking
- it may make the publishing of security holes illegal
- this, and the above point, will remove an important force of quality control in cryptography and security. Both technologies will be severely weakened.
- Competition in the Software Market
- "the company that creates a digital format has complete control over how the players should behave, and also control over who should be allowed to create players for that format."
- Libraries
- protected works will make it difficult for libraries to perform the task of preserving material
- No "first sale" for non-physical works
- copies of a work can be tied to an individual buyer, making it impossible sell your individual copy
- Censorship
- copies can be make self-destructive or non-storeable
- if we can't keep a fixed copy, it makes it difficult to determine what was actually "published" in the first place
- (we can see this already on the web where the old content is silently updated)
- Mass-market licenses (I'm not sure I understand this point fully)
- the law does not give you any guarantee that you can't sign away important rights with a single click on an 'accept' button.
SOME LINKS:
- These need to be annotated. Of course, first, they need to be read!!! I can't vouch for their quality yet.
- http://www.ukcdr.org - UK campaign for digital rights
- http://www.ipjustice.org
- http://www.eurorights.org - essay: Why the EUCD is bad.
- Audio files by Robin Gross, and Martin Keegan: http://media.april.org/audio/RMLL-2003/fixed/
- http://www.ivir.nl/publications/hugenholtz/opinion-EIPR.html
- http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/eucd/eucd-fs.en.html
- http://www.acm.org/usacm/IP/dmca.exemption.htm
- http://www.eblida.org/topics/position/legaffa.htm
SOME PEOPLE WE KNOW ARE INVOLVED:
- Tony McGrath is "the man in charge of producing the draft in consultation with the attorney general"
- The Attorney General, the advisor to the government on legal matters, and therefore is the chief law officer of Ireland.
- Teresa Hackett. Worked in Norway on behalf of EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Association) http://www.eblida.org. She will hopefully be talking to us at the meeting on 11/12.
NOTES FROM E-MAILS:
- "The UK implemented a pretty bad interpretation recently": http://www.ukcdr.org/issues/eucd/ukimpl/
- "The EUCD is a particularly flexible EU directive. Virtually every article of import can be partially implemented or not implemented at all if the member state feels it (a) contradicts a legal tradition of the country (b) would damage their industry and a few other provisos."
- "Fair dealing is unauthorised but lawful use of an authors work. A person does not need permission from the author if they want to quote a non-substantial portion of a work, parody the work, make a backup of the work, etc."
- The UK implementation makes any reverse engineering of anything *containing* a protection device criminally illegal. This I [Niall] personally feel exceeds the bounds of the directive
- The public also loses it's "first sale" rights.
- if encryption is used to tie a work to one individual, it would be illegal to exercise these rights.
- Do we have SMEs on our side, or is this a purely consumer issue.
- Do we wait for legislation to be drafted and then oppose it or do we attempt to influence the drafting
- In either case, whom would we address letters to?
- Are there other consumer groups interested in these issues?
What about the competition authority?... Do we have one?
QUESTIONS:
- What are rights anyway?
- there are things we are currently allowed do with a copyrighted work. A good example is lend it to a friend. But there is nowhere (that I know) in law where it actually says "You may lend copyrighted works to your friend". Rather, by not excluding such an activity it implicitly allows it. I would like to claim this lending works to friends as a right, but "non-exclusion in law" seems a rather weak support for this right.
- As Niall hinted, it may be that many of the things we consider as rights are merely things that weren't illegal "yet"!
- I mailed the list recently describing certain activities "guaranteed" by the Irish Copyright Act 2000. I'm no longer so sure, but I will try and make a definite statement soon. We really need a lawyer for this stuff!
Fsfe-ie mailing list Fsfe-ie@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-ie
Hi,
Is all this stuff going on a website somewhere, or at least a Wiki?
Until somethings up, your welcome to use http://testers.mkdoc.com/ for publishing and storing stuff.
-- Adam
Hi,
Is all this stuff going on a website somewhere, or at least a Wiki?
I've cut Malcolm's email up in to 7 bits and put it here http://testers.mkdoc.com/hidden-fsfe-ie/
Hope this helps
-- Adam
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Malcolm Tyrrell writes:
By the way, if we get any lawyers on board with respect to the patents stuff, we should also suggest they consider the copyright stuff as well.
I've just sent a mail to a copyright lawyer I know, I'll let you know how I get on.
- --j.
Malcolm Tyrrell wrote:
It seems there is currently several highly competent people working on the patents issue. It seems, then, that a good idea might be for some other people to start working, instead, on issues of copyright and especially the EUCD.
and later also wrote:
This is my attempt to bring together some information on the EUCD and suggest some plans of action. I apologise for its length. [...excellent summary of current situation with Ireland/EUCD...]
I think Malcolm's point is a good one --- there does seem to be a good body of people hammering away on the patents. I'll put my hand up as being very happy to do what I can in terms of helping draft letters etc. to try to get Ireland to implement a sensible interpretation of the EUCD.
Ben.