European DMCA

[Claus Färber]

Alessandro Rubini <rubini at gnu.org> schrieb/wrote:
> Claus:
>> Huh? Reading a book is typically none of the author's exclusive
>> rights, you I don't need a license to read it.

> Because someone got a license to publish it. Distribution of the work
> is an exclusive right of the author (who can sell that right).

No, only _public_ distribution. You can, however, give the book to  
anyone privately. In addition, even the right of public  
distribution is typically (I don't know all legal systems)  
exhausted once the book has been sold publically with the  
copyright holder's consent.

> No, you can't. Since copying is "reading and writing", and the
> protection is applied on the "reading" part, you can write a
> free-software program that allows reading without breaking the
> protection.

According to the EU-DMCA, breaking the encrpytion alone need not  
be restricted (and I beleive it's very unlikely that any EU member  
would implement it that way), only breaking the encryption if it  
makes copyright infringment easier or possible.

> Anyone can modify the program to also write (in addition to
> "speak" or what else; the tool is therefore helping
> circumvention of copy protection.

That's a bit far-fetched. Of course, everything that contains some  
information on how the copy protection works, makes breaking it a  
bit easier. But I don't think you can blame the author of a  
reading programme if it's rewritten into a copy tools.

Claus
-- 
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