German Court: Open Source Project Liable For 3rd Party DRM-Busting Coding 178
Diamonddavej writes "TorrentFreak reports a potentially troubling court decision in Germany. The company Appwork has been threatened with a 250,000 Euro fine for functionality committed to its open-source downloader (JDownloader2) repository by a volunteer coder without Appwork's knowledge. The infringing code enables downloading of RTMPE video streams (an encrypted streaming video format developed by Adobe). Since the code decrypted the video streams, the Hamburg Regional Court decided it represented circumvention of an 'effective technological measure' under Section 95a of Germany's Copyright Act and it threatened Appwork with a fine for 'production, distribution and possession' of an 'illegal' piece of software."
Re:Does the copyright need an owner? (Score:4, Informative)
"(3) In the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works, the term of protection granted by this Convention shall expire fifty years after the work has been lawfully made available to the public. However, when the pseudonym adopted by the author leaves no doubt as to his identity, the term of protection shall be that provided in paragraph (1). If the author of an anonymous or pseudonymous work discloses his identity during the above-mentioned period, the term of protection applicable shall be that provided in paragraph (1). The countries of the Union shall not be required to protect anonymous or pseudonymous works in respect of which it is reasonable to presume that their author has been dead for fifty years."
Virtually everyone is a Berne Convention signatory; but actual implementation in domestic law has been both spottier and more...complex... than the convention text itself. It seems unlikely that something of clearly recent authorship would find itself presumed to be uncopyrighted merely because an author could not be found; but I'd imagine that, in practice, the more risk-averse would be very, very, jumpy about taking 'anonymous coward' at his word that they are authorized to use a given piece of code under the terms of whatever license, that he is even the author, and so forth. That might hinder adoption.
Hamburg regional court (Score:5, Informative)
is known for its cowtowing to the intellectual property holders. That is why they try to go to that particular court if they sue for copyright infridgement.
Re:"effective technological measure" (Score:5, Informative)
The law is a direct result of the WCT or WIPO Copyright Treaty. The judge is likely interpreting "effective" within respect to that. It is under article 11 I think but i'm on my phone right now and it is a bit hard to check.
Anyways, i believe effective would mean anything non trivial or ancillary at the time of creation. So if a cipher is so easy to break that they teach doing so as part of security lessons, using that couldn't be effective. But requiring something that isn't known or readily done could be if it isn't blatently obvious.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hamburg regional court (Score:2, Informative)
Or to put it differently: Hamburg is the East Texas of Germany.