[Sussex] DeCSS / ughhh

[The ol' tealeg]

Chaps,

Ho - hum, off work today... any input in the last 18 hours has caused my
digestive process to core dump :(  I think I've been ill more in the
last 12 months that at any time in my life.  hopefully this isn't an
indication of how 2003 will continue...

Anyhow, having just woken up again, (with a killer headache I might
add..), I just hecked out Slashdot and found some good news.

I guess most of you know that the the courts in the US overturned the
restrictions on a guy in Texas hosting DeCSS on his web site
and reinforced the decision that he should not have to stand trial in
California for doing something in Texas (crucially a Texas court will
almost definitely rule that hosting DeCSS is _not_ a criminal act, where
as California is home to the film industry and almost definitely would
act in there favour).

Anyhow, the follow up today is that the Norwegian supreme court has
ruled that Jon Johanson (the guy who wrote DeCSS originally) was not
acting illegally in 'cracking' the encoding of a DVD he owned in order
to write a new decryption algorithm.  This is important because it
reestablishes the basic rights of a person who purchases copyright
material to use that material in any means he/she sees fit so long as he
does not breach the copyright.

What we see here is both the US courts and the Norwegian court
supporting what the law of those lands dictates (in the US for instance
it is established (post the elcomsoft/Dimitri Skylarov case) that the
older Copyright law establishes certain rights that cannot be overturned
by the DMCA).  It's a shame Norway isn't in the EU (so the court ruling
has no effect on UK precedent) but it is notable that under current EU
law there is no problem with distributing and using DeCSS anyway - the
major stumbling block is the USA and the belief that things like the
DMCA are retroactively applicable to anyone, doing anything in any
country - thankfully the US courts seem to be turning against this point
of view.


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geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk 
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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