[ILUG] copyright law in ireland...

[Conor Daly]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2000 at 12:57:01PM +0000 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Garret thought:
> 
> I think this mainly relates to pirate cable and satellite decryption
> boxes.
> 
> With regards to linux DVD players .I *think* it maybe ok , 
> rights protection measures are there only there to uphold the copyright
> laws. 
> not to grant copyright holders extra powers not covered by the law.
> 
> : ``rights protection measure'' means any process, treatment, mechan-
> : ism or system which is designed to prevent or inhibit the unauthor-
> : ised exercise of any of the rights conferred by this Act;
> 
> So it would follow that if you are not doing anything that is not
> unauthorised by the law then it should be ok.
you mean "authorised by the copyright holder".  I as author of a work may
authorise use of that work beyond the "normal" copyright rights (eg. the
Open Documentation License or whatever it's called).

> If this is ture then use your rights under 'fair dealing' allow you to
> play it on linux.
> 
> : 50.-(1) Fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic
> : work, sound recording, film, broadcast, cable programme, or non-
> : electronic original database, for the purposes of research or private
> : study, shall not infringe any copyright in the work.
> 
However, if the playing of such a DVD under linux under "fair dealing"
involves the *unauthorised* (eg. DeCss which has not been licensed with
the relevant people) then you're infringing on the copyright by using
something designed to *defeat* a rights protection measure (assuming that
a court upholds the view that the DVD encryption is a copyright protection
measure rather than a customer/viewer control measure.  I'd imagine that
one could prove in court that the DVD encryption does *not* in any way
prevent piracy of the work (a copied DVD will work on any *authorised* DVD
player whether Windows or the Sony standalone) then it would be viewed as
something *other* than a "rights protection measure").
> 
> -Garret
>
> P.S. These are just my thoughts on the matter and maybe wrong.  so don't
> bank on anything I said as being correct.
> 
ok

Don't assume from the above that I do or don't support the copyright 
legislation, I haven't enough detail to make such a choice.  I don't (and
won't) buy either DVD Drives or discs.  Partially as a philosophical
objection to the whole business of "customer control" but mostly 'cos I
won't waste the cash on such stuff yet.  I see the PC mags are giving out
DVDs now instead of CDROMs (Now you get ~2Gb of crap instead of 640Mb of
crap.  Oh, I know there's some good stuff to be had but that's what
sourceforge.net and tucows.com are for...).
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)