Brazil Forbids DRM On the Public Domain 258
nunojsilva writes "Cory Doctorow reports that the Brazilian equivalent of DMCA explicitly forbids using DRM-like techniques on works in the public domain. 'Brazil has just created the best-ever implementation of WCT [WIPO Copyright Treaty]. In Brazil's version of the law, you can break DRM without breaking the law, provided you're not also committing a copyright violation.' This means that, unlike the US, where it is illegal to break DRM, in Brazil it is illegal to break the public domain."
In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright laws work for the good of the people
What a funny turned upside down world. The first world nations are striving to work against the people, and the not so first world nations have this crazy idea to work for their people.
*sips coffee*
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Insightful)
Brazil burns a lot of ethanol (world's first sustainable bio-fuel economy), so they can be energy self-sufficient as well. How the hell will the enlightened world ever be able to embargo them into submission?
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Interesting)
They make their ethanol from sugar which is more efficient than corn.
Once an ethanol market is bootstrapped, one can switch to cellulose which uses no foodstuffs.
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We still import a lot of wheat from US.
And as usual with Brazil, you have to learn the good stuff about yout own country from outside. They end up doing good stuff, doesnt want anybody to know about it (I guess the only exception is breaking some med copyrights).
Since we're approaching the presidential elections, I would suspect this is a move to please someone with a little brains than people who enjoy carnavals. Or maybe it has something to do with the electronic voting machines...
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From sugar cane, you mean. In fact we have problems when the sugar price goes up in the international markets and it pays more to produce sugar from cane than ethanol. Ethanol prices goes up and they end up higher than petrol.
back on topic, I've seen nothing in the media here in Brazil regarding this. I'd like to know if this is a proposal or if has been approved already.
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Making the switch to Ethanol shouldn't be done for cost reasons, rather it should be done to gain independence from foreign oil "owners", and switch dependency to a resource that can be renewed as opposed to one t
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Once any of the companies in power can turn a better profit using anything else, they will switch to it. Whether that be corn, beets or switchgrass - somebody will plant it and produce fuel out of it. Currently however, there is a bigger profit to be made due to the scarcity of oil-based fuels which keeps fuel prices at the point where most of the market can bear it. If the costs rise any higher (as they experimented with a couple of years ago) their customers will stop using which is not good for them. Eve
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>They make their ethanol from sugar which is more efficient than corn.
(packs suitcase)
That's it. I'm moving to brazil. They have the right co copy the CD you buy to your iPod, they have renewable energy for cars (ethanol or biodiesel), and they have women that walk-around topless as often as the men do! This is definitely the country for me. One drawback - Their average internet speed is only 3.8 Mbit/s - about 6 megabits slower than the US or EU average. Oh well. (shrug). I think the topless ladies make up for it.
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They also have smokin' hot women.
Just saying.
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You have an odd definition of "enlightened". OK, I realise you're being sarcastic, but I'll bet some won't relaise it.
Re:is a / has a test (Score:5, Funny)
Just remember you have to call wait(568024668000) before doing anything with your new Brazilian.
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That's 18000 years... I don't think that's right
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well, the Age of Consent [wikipedia.org] in Brazil is apparently 14, anyway, so its still wrong, just differently so.
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I thought I had to call
8675 309
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Informative)
"What a funny turned upside down world." (Score:5, Funny)
yes, brazil is in the southern hemisphere (mostly)
this is their map they share with the other antipodeans:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Blank-map-world-south-up.png [wikimedia.org]
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What does the Men in Black movies have to do with this?
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Blank-map-world-south-up.png [wikimedia.org]
Wow! You found a map of Mondas!
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It's not crazy or upside down at all.
The United States Economy is built largely on IP law. We export research, science, art and knowledge to other countries which manufacture products based on that investment.
Publishers and Manufacturers just put data on disks and pages. Without IP laws standing in their way they could make DVDs for $0.01 each. They still make just as much profit as before (actually more since they can sell a DVD now for $1 and pocket $0.99 instead of $0.001 profit on manufacturing the
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>They're leading the way because they have no interest in protecting intellectual property.
Also, perhaps, because they have a "commie" at the helm?
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not crazy or upside down at all.
The United States Economy is built largely on IP law. We export research, science, art and knowledge to other countries which manufacture products based on that investment.
Publishers and Manufacturers just put data on disks and pages. Without IP laws standing in their way they could make DVDs for $0.01 each. They still make just as much profit as before (actually more since they can sell a DVD now for $1 and pocket $0.99 instead of $0.001 profit on manufacturing they would charge before.
They're leading the way because they have no interest in protecting intellectual property.
You seem to suggest that Brazil does no research at all, has no universities, no industry that does any inventions, that it produces no movies, no music, and has no culture.
You're right that it seems that Brazil has little interest to protect IP. But the reason is not because they don't produce any IP themselves. The reason is that they see the added value of sharing it.
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Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Insightful)
They can make DVD's for $0.01 each because that's how much they cost ... ...and they charge the same for a Movie that was made in 1950 where in the USA the stars, director, producer all get nothing, but the publisher still gets their cut of the pure profit, since the cost of making the movie was paid off years ago
The reason they can charge more than it's worth, is because people thanks to the US movie industry thinks that's how much they are worth ...
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Insightful)
What a funny turned upside down world. The first world nations are striving to work against the people, and the not so first world nations have this crazy idea to work for their people.
Funny indeed, if you haven't put a second thought into actually contrasting "nation" with "people"...
Who wants you to / how did you you allow yourself to forget that they are basically the same, or at the least the former is a reflection of the latter?
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Insightful)
No. A nation is different from people. Take one of the emirates at the persian golf: Large parts of their population are not part of the nation, but they are still people living there.
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Of course they are part of the nation. That they might not have citizenship or that the presence of individuals might be, in principle, temporary doesn't change it; they aren't detached from the society they live in, they are an integral part of what it is.
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Insightful)
"It's not us, it's THEM"... (Score:2)
That's mostly an excuse, shouting "it's their fault!" Two camps, battling.
I have a vivid local flavor of it, BTW (late EU member-state, was a place behind the Iron Curtain) - there's this myth that everything bad is the result of imposed reality, with "true %name_of_nationality" enduring due to unity, tradition and the Church; if they had their way, the place would be a shining beacon in almost every way.
Reality isn't / wasn't quite like that; apparently it's easy to ignore how basically whole regime was lo
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*sips coffee*
I hope that's Brazilian and not Java
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I can not help but wonder if a work is downloaded legally in Brazil and Americans receive copies from Brazil what effect that has on copyright protections within our borders.
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The blade falls on the neck of the importer.
Not the first. (Score:5, Informative)
Switzerland explicitly allows DRM breaking since 2007.
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been a quiet revolution going on in South America for at least the past decade. With countries moving to the Left and succeeding. We get to hear about Hugo Chavez and what a terrible man he is, but except for the North American corporate tools that still ply their trade down there, and right-wing thugs for hire, he's pretty much beloved. We don't hear about it because the corporate press in Venezuela (and Peru, and Bolivia, and Brazil) refuse to tell the story, but these South American countries have been succeeding not using an American-style, "free-market", corporations run everything system, but with a center-Left, enlightened form of Socialism that's a lot more like Northern European success stories like Sweden and Denmark. In Brazil, for example, there's this widespread belief that the rich natural resources (like the Public Domain) actually belong to the People instead of a banker or shareholder.
In fact, "European-style" Socialism can learn a lot from some South American countries. It's still far from perfect, and as you say they're not quite "First World" yet, but they're coming on strong and unlike other places, it's happening for everyone, not just the rich.
I spend a lot of time in Brazil and elsewhere in South America. I just got back from Campinas where I went to play my cavaquinho in a samba festival and hike a bit. I have friends down there at various socioeconomic levels and ethnic backgrounds, and they all tell me the same thing.
Seriously, there's a story to be told about the South American successes that's going to take a lot of people by surprise.
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Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Insightful)
Please understand a bit more before spouting this. A capitalist country with a consumer-based economy requires business protection. What's good for the company is often good for the people. Yes there are some areas in which businesses have benefitted at the expense of the individual, but there are many cases that go the opposite way. You just don't hear people complaining about them.
To digress a bit, it's like when you learn a word for the first time, and suddenly hear it everywhere. You think it's coincidence, but it's really just that you are paying more attention to it. So someone gives you an anti-consumer example, and then you're looking for it everywhere. That's what individuals complain about, and if you talk to enough individuals, that will be all you hear. A company that pays low wages is controlling costs, and is often preventing those jobs from being lost completely as they are sent overseas. It is a balance in which the individual decides whether to work for a company, and the company tries to woo the employees while not giving so much that the cost of the good or service is overpriced.
It is a difficult balance, and without business we have neither jobs nor products. So we must concede some points to them.
Before someone starts on about corporate pay and lobbyists and all that, remember that the "invisible hand of the market" takes a long time to act, and it is currently swinging in the direction of shareholders having input on pay packages (so they can determine whether profits go to a single guy who makes few decisions on his own or to dividends). And more importantly, if you owned a business, wouldn't you want to have some discretion as to what to do with your money? Subject to the whims of the market of course. We need business and business needs us, and if you don't like a business stop buying and educate your friends and neighbors.
I had a co-worker say that her daughter was caught in one of the mid-range RIAA lawsuits. I discussed some options found here, she decided to just settle. Hearing that decision, I asked her what her daughter was listening to these days (it was summer break). "All legal, paid for CDs, no downloading" she replied. By whom, I inquired, and some of the most radio-popular names spilled out. I told her, you know you're just giving more money to RIAA member companies, the same ones that just got thousands of dollars from you without going through the court system. She then told her daughter that her entertainment budget would be severely curtailed next school year and would have to make decisions about buying music in an informed manner. She was enabling anti-consumer tactics against herself, and had no idea. Ignorance, my point is, is more anti-consumer than any law or ruling or regulation could ever be, and we do it to ourselves.
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Informative)
actually, it was a court clerk, no the supreme court that said so. they just found it convenient to allow that to stand. someone should challenge this before the supreme court.
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Informative)
For those interested in reading the entire thing - it's available here [google.com].
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_copyright_length [wikipedia.org]
Brazil: Life + 70 years
It's a joke to talk about "a fine and balanced approach to copyright law" while ignoring life + 70 years of copyright protection.
They'll be doddering seniors before anything created in their lifetime is public domain.
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It's a rather dark humor to realize that this is, indeed, what passes as "fine and balanced" in modern copyright law.
But most stars you see nowadays still burn. That's an improvement, right?
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Re:In Soviet Brazil (Score:4, Informative)
one: official here don't usually leave office, with rare exceptions (like former president FHC). they just run to another office. it's not considered shamefull here to run again even after leaving presidency. of all the still living ex-presidents, only FHC didn't run for some other thing. sarney and collor are senators, itamar franco was governor of minas gerais untill 2003, and is running this year for senate. so offers of jobs have little value here.
two: we have a multi-party polical system, not a bi-partisan system. so, there's lots of interest from smaller and opposition parties to simply block proposals of rulling parties, specially in controversial stuff.
three: different than US, that only have right wing and FAR right wing parties (yes, the american democtratic partic _IS_ right wing), we actually have leftist parties. this includes real socialist, workers and communist parties. and DMCA style laws are anathema to their party lines.
four: populism and anti-americanism. both traits are very strong in basilian politics, which combined with 2 and 3 makes it very hard for foreign companies to simply bribe the government. unless you're a car manufacturer, like GM or volkswagen. but even in this case they have to _beg_ the government to get what they want. only civil construction contractors, banks, farmers and alcohol (AKA ethanol) producers have free pass to bribe the government here, but those are all local folks.
Including _fair use_! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a masterful inversion of the motivation behind the treaty which more or less makes it impossible to implement any kind of reasonable (in the eyes of the likes of **AAs) DRM --- because the DRM has to enable at least limited copying since fair use/dealing is one of the exceptions the DRM has to enable. If everyone can copy X seconds out of of a work (X > 0), then if enough people join forces, they can copy a work of any finite length.
Re:Including _fair use_! (Score:5, Insightful)
makes it impossible to implement any kind of reasonable DRM
any kind of reasonable DRM
reasonable DRM
Oxymoron detected.
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I think you're confusing the technical ability to break encryption with its legality. It seems that the new proposed legislation would allow you to legally break the DRM encryption to use something under fair use. It doesn't say that whoever put DRM must tell you how to break it or give you keys.
Besides, I don't see the point of your scheme. According to Article 46, paragraph II of the proposed law, fair use allows you to make a whole copy of a protected work to "ensure its portability or interoperability",
Re:Including _fair use_! (Score:5, Interesting)
>I think you're confusing the technical ability to break encryption with its legality. It seems that the new proposed legislation would allow you to legally break the DRM encryption to use something under fair use. It doesn't say that whoever put DRM must tell you how to break it or give you keys.
Actually, it DOES. It states that the DRM MUST allow you to exercise (any and all off) your fair-use rights. It makes it a criminal offense punishable with a fine to prevent them. This means that if a user demands the keys in order to make a backup copy of a piece of media, they would be committing a crime if they refused to provide them, unless of course, the DRM in question is built in such a way that it makes these fair use rights actively doable already (like e.g. steam's allowed-backup system).
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If there is a variable encryption key which cannot trivially be deduced from a "fair use" segment, then all the labels have to do is require that reviewers request a set of pre-generated keys for the specific segment they want to quote.
I'm not saying this would be sane or rational, merely that it would meet the objectives of fair use without eliminating DRM. There is no serious fear of a "secure" DRM ever existing - the companies aren't skilled enough to fix trivial flaws, so there's not the slightest possi
Re:Including _fair use_! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no serious fear of a "secure" DRM ever existing
True.
the companies aren't skilled enough to fix trivial flaws
But not for this reason. DRM that works is a logical impossibility, and no amount of skill can change that. DRM will always have the flaw that it only takes one successful effort to break it, and once broken it is broken for everyone, always. And that in order to be "consumed", content must be unlocked, and then it can be copied in any number of trivially easy ways. The media companies' real difficulty seems to be an unwillingness to acknowledge this.
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Simple. Release images to every single person who requests one, with "fair use" degraded quality, with a "degradation signature" based deterministically on the identity of the requesting party.
Viola: the resulting video is, from one frame to the next, a list of the "guilty". Maybe subsequent video compression will bury the telltale artifacts. Maybe not.
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That is nice to hear (Score:4, Interesting)
Fascinating (Score:3, Interesting)
How long will it be before US sanctions and pressure from other governments still controlled by the **AA pirates forces them to fall in line and adopt more conventional DMCA rules?
</p>
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That would be a bit hard to do without changing the constitution. Not impossible, but definitively not simple or easy.
The Brazilian constitution is some a short document, like the USA's. Think of how hard it would be for a corporation to actually change the constitution, and you get the picture.
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The Brazilian constitution is some a short document
I think it was a typo, meant to read something like:
The Brazilian constitution is not a short document
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Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Brazil has been plenty socking it to the (Gov't of the) USA lately, as part of one of the BRIC bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China) of large economy's that don't give a crap what the USA has to say about a lot of issues. Take for example Brazil hosting negotiations and setting up a deal between Turkey and Iran regarding uranium enrichment. USA was not pleased and made a lot of waa waa noises at the UN but as far as those three are concerned the USA can stuff off and get off their lawn, thank you.
The USA is still the most powerful nation on earth, but they're at a tipping point and it's not just the BRIC countries that are coming to realize that they can do whatever the hell they like and the USA can just shut up
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Funny)
Next time you're trying to talk up Brazil, maybe avoid the part where they help facilitate Iran getting its hands on enriched uranium
With Liberty and Justice for all (Score:5, Insightful)
Take that, USA.
not unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
Really not surprising. When the US was a small, backwater english colony, it was also famous for its piracy (of books, in that time).
It is the countries with the massive content industries that have the strict copyright regimes. Brasil isn't home to Hollywood or very many international music superstars.
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If you mean that Brazil don't have Hollywood paying off politicians, you are right on spot there.
Music labels, on the other hand, are pretty strong (ie: giving politicians money) here, tho.
Re:not unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
And when it was a slightly larger, less backwater independent nation, it was famous for its piracy of other art forms [wikipedia.org]...
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Really not surprising. When the US was a small, backwater english colony, it was also famous for its piracy (of books, in that time).
It is the countries with the massive content industries that have the strict copyright regimes. Brasil isn't home to Hollywood or very many international music superstars.
Actually, it was infamous for its piracy into the 1940's for music and well into the 1980's for technology. It is still infamous for pirating/"adapting" movie plots (this is possible to do in large scale since Americans never look at forreign movies and never read forreign books). E.g. during the Korean and Vietnam war, US companies pirated many Swedish weapon, positioning and communication systems (according to Swedish law at the time, it was illegal to export those systems to US as it was an aggressor in
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Really not surprising. When the US was a small, backwater english colony, it was also famous for its piracy (of books, in that time).
It is the countries with the massive content industries that have the strict copyright regimes. Brasil isn't home to Hollywood or very many international music superstars.
Yep. Copyright (and patents) is imperialism carried out by means other than tanks. The tanks are just there in case some punk country STILL doesn't pay its tribute (aka copyright and patent licence fees).
Every little country realises that "intellectual property" is intellectual imperialism (a.k.a "we thought of it first!"). Every big country has forgotten that lesson from its past, and just goes around trying to figure out new ways to make the rest of the world pay it more tribute.
Re:not unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, apparently these days one has to spell out everything on /. instead of being able to rely on basic intelligence in the reader.
I'm sure Brasil has a comparative pool of creativity to the US, Europe, Burma, Greenland or any other place on earth. There are some local differences depending on whether or not creativity is valued in a culture or not so much, but as it's a basic human trait, they are pretty small.
However, Brasil does not have a massive industry based on copyright. And copyright is, first and foremost and no matter what they try to tell you, an economic law. It gives you you a monopoly on commercial use of your works.
So, without an industry that is strong in copyright, the country has no major incentives to be a strong proponent of copyright. On the contrary, turning a blind eye to the use of foreign copyrights is a reasonable thing to do (less money flowing out of the country for goods with no tangible value).
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Seems like it breaks the public domain to me. (Score:2)
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What if you want to make open source software that uses DRM as an integral part of its function? Like maybe, personal encryption?
You, sir, clearly do not understand what DRM is.
Re:Seems like it breaks the public domain to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Then it's no longer DRM, which is basically a program that has both lock and key yet tries to hide the key from the user except in "allowed" circumstances. Personal encryption doesn't include both the lock and the key; instead, you have the key and you use it to prove to the lock program that you have (unlimited) access to the encrypted volume/whatever.
Besides, it stands to reason that what you're encrypting is meant to be private, thus, since it's not released, it doesn't fall within the domain of copyright. You're not distributing anything, so limits to distribution don't apply.
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I know what DRM is. Now if you want to talk semantics, imagine you own a work that you want to put on your website, so you encrypt it so that only your friends and family can view it, with your special viewer. This is personal encryption, and it is DRM. Now, my niece goes to jail for uploaded Shakespeare.
Not distributed enough for you? Imagine a Linux based computer like OLPC targeted f
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Not distributed enough for you? Imagine a Linux based computer like OLPC targeted for kids. Your company distributes Open Source/Public Domain works under DRM to ensure that your users only run software that's up-to-date, reviewed, and covered under your support contract.
Under OLPC Bitfrost [laptop.org], the user can assign privileges to an app, either through the installer package or later. Some privileges may only be assigned later; for example, an installer cannot simultaneously request network access and the ability to scan the user's home directory. But the user always has the ability to assign these privileges, apart from a couple privileges related to the recovery image that require a developer key. These keys appear to be available upon the child's request with a two-week turnar
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I know what DRM is. Now if you want to talk semantics, imagine you own a work that you want to put on your website, so you encrypt it so that only your friends and family can view it, with your special viewer.
This is not DRM. If you want to make the information accessible to selected group of people, you can just share the encryption key with them. DRM starts when you want to simultaneously allow your friends to access the content, but also not allow them to copy it and upload to some other site. And this cannot be done. The friend in question can always point a camera at the screen and then upload the recorded video. Hollywood tries to come up with an unbreakable DRM, see how successful they are...
Also, if this
All cracking legal? (Score:5, Informative)
If it is legal to crack/circumvent DRM when you are "not committing a copyright violation", it seems that it is also OK to crack DRM on other works, as long as you do not redistribute it. A few comments up someone posted the actual Brazilian fair use rules, and those seem pretty fair, and explicitly allow a.o. for creating a copy for personal use.
This would make it legal to say strip DRM from your legally bought iTunes songs, in order to make your personal copy.
It would be legal to rip BluRay discs and removing the DRM in the process, again to make your own personal copy.
Redistributing said material with or without DRM in place would be a copyright violation, and rightful so.
It would presumably be legal to create tools to do this - it seems reasonably to expect that to distribute such tools would even be legal.
Now the real fun can start: Brazilian programmer produces tool that removes DRM from material with US-owned copyrights. Fully legal in his native country. Would this person be liable to prosecution in the US? And indirectly by producing such a tool banning himself from visiting the US for the rest of his life?
Re:All cracking legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Now the real fun can start: Brazilian programmer produces tool that removes DRM from material with US-owned copyrights. Fully legal in his native country. Would this person be liable to prosecution in the US? And indirectly by producing such a tool banning himself from visiting the US for the rest of his life?
Ever heard of Dmitry Sklyarov [wikipedia.org]?
Re:All cracking legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes I have (I recall the gist of it at least), and that was what I was thinking of indeed.
Most countries have the power of the courts strictly limited to crimes committed within their own country. Other countries limit their jurisdiction to crimes committed within their borders, and crimes committed outside those borders by their own citizens.
It seems though that the US has no such limitations: certain acts committed by foreigners in a foreign country where such act is fully legal, but which is illegal in the US, may be prosecuted under US law when that foreigner is in the US. And I recall even reports of US agents abducting foreign citizens in a foreign country, taking them to the US, and prosecuting them there.
Scary.
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I suspect that in cases like this, the logic is that although the tool was produced overseas, it was made available in the US itself, and thus there may have been a case to answer.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but if you piss a nation off too much don't be surprised if they're not too welcoming should you ever try to enter the country. (Much like with people - piss me off, don't expect me to welcome you into my house)
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Most countries have the power of the courts strictly limited to crimes committed within their own country. Other countries limit their jurisdiction to crimes committed within their borders, and crimes committed outside those borders by their own citizens.
Actually quite a few, if not indeed most countries have provisions in their laws to prosecute for crimes committed outside their territory, in particular crimes committed not only by but also against their citizens (although typically with caveat that the it must be criminal also in the country where it occurred), some crimes are often prosecutable no matter what (genocide, airplane hijackings, child abuse being common). And often there's a proviso that prosecution is possible in any case if decided high e
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Hell, ask Marc Emery [wikipedia.org]. Sold pot seeds in Canada where it is legal to do so (even to the point that the Canadian government directed medical marijuana patients to him). Some went across the border, the DEA didn't like that, and they pressured the Canadians in to arresting and extraditing one of their own citizens for doing something that wasn't a crime there.
Really shows how fucked our "justice" system can be (and how weak-willed the Canadian authorities apparently are).
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I'd not heard of such abductions, but if there is any truth in this, it is indeed scary.
There is some truth in it, certainly. One glaring example is Manuel Noriega: he was not only foreign citizen but head of state, abducted by force by the US and flown to USA for trial. (Yeah, he was a thug and deserved what he got, but that's beside the point here.)
One has to wonder then, what is it about the U.S. that the feel they have the right to effectively violate the sovereignty of another nation to protect their own interests?
Because they're powerful enough to get away with it. I suspect everybody else would do it, too, if they could, and sometimes do. Israeli abduction of Eichmann is a good example: they got away with it not because of their military power but because
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Well, the whole reason DRM exists is because the legal system doesn't scale to the number of law violators that exist. If copyright violation could be prosecuted quickly and efficiently enough to target everyone who did it, you wouldn't need DRM. You could just rely on the law as is. However there are too many violators and the law is too slow and heavy to do that, so you get DRM, and then it kind of makes sense to make breaking DRM illegal because not many people do that, so the law scales to it.
Of course,
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Interes
They Can Aprove Whatever They Want (Score:5, Interesting)
There is something you all need to know about Brasil (do you prefer New York or Nova Iorque?), and I can tell, I'm not any proud of it.
The congress can aprove whatever law they want in Brasil, even DMCA-like, which I think it's very unlikely. Once aproved there are no grantees that the law will be respected.
Many laws in Brasil exists only on paper, and has't any kind of regulation nor enforcement. People simply ignore them, and even police, or official fiscalization, does nothing about it, the law is completely ignored by all sectors of society.
For example. Rip a CD or a DVD is not legal in Brasil. But everybody does it, and nothing is done about it. I have discovered about this a couple of month ago.
Another example. It's not legal to sell pirated CDs or DVDs. But in any city, even the smaller ones, it's possible to buy illegal copied CDs and DVDs for as much as US$ 2,50 each movie, US$ 1,50 each CD. It's very easy to buy a XBox 360 game for US$ 10. And as easy as find someone selling this CDs and DVDs on streets is to find a policeman buying from them.
This kind of attitude is not only found in copyrighted material. It's easy for a minor to buy alcoholic beverages or cigars.
So, the congress can even aprove a DRM-like legislation, but it will certainly not leave the paper. USA hungry for copyright protection will be pleased, but the society will ignore the law and thigs will remain the same as they are today.
Try to discuss something more practical about Brasil.
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In the USA it is legal to break DRM... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus the activity must be such that some other provision of Title 17 would be violated and the copyright owner must object. Material in the public domain is thus not covered. The DMCA "circumvention" provision is execrable, but Slashdot regularly grossly exaggerates its breadth.
It's a proposal still (Score:2)
Important provisions for fair use (Score:3, Interesting)
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Basically they're codifying fair use so its not up for debate anymore, as opposed to arguing that any copy isn't fair use, or that you can have 1743091749719417 copies and resell them as fair use, as some here like to argue (obviously im exaggerating).
Putting it on paper once and for all is a pretty good idea.
Wrong about US' DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
Doctorow says
but DMCA [cornell.edu], in 1201(a)(1)(A), the part that prohibits playing DRMed works, says:
"This title" is Title 17; the title that creates copyright protection. If there's a public domain work that has DRM, you are allowed to defeat the DRM. You don't need to use any of the exemption clauses that come later, use any of the rules created by the librarian of congress, etc. DMCA never applies to you in the first case.
1201(b)(1), the part that prohibits creating and transacting in tools that play DRMed works, says:
Same as above. If there are public domain DRMed works out there, you are allowed to create software that plays them and sell a billion copies of it openly. (There might be some fighting over (B) there, but .. well, we can talk about that in another thread.)
DMCA very explicitly only applies to copyrighted works and the rights of the holders of those works. And AFAIK there hasn't been any case law that contradicts the plain reading of these parts. If you know of any, give references.
Furthermore, Doctorow says
but DMCA 12(A)(3) says
If you are the copyright holder, just grant authorization. You (not Amazon!!!!) are the authority that the law is speaking about. You can grant it to yourself, or anyone else and under any conditions. This part of the law is utterly critical to the industries that bought this law and they can never safely repeal it without screwing themselves. If copyright holders couldn't grant permission, then there would be zero legal DVD or Blu-Ray players. Every single unit, even ones licensed by DVDCCA or whatever the Blu-Ray equivalent is, would be violations. It's implicit and hidden, but there's some legal mechanism where the movie makers grant authorization to the public to use these devices, and grant authorization to the electronics manufacturers to make them.
RTFL, Doctorow. Oh, and if you want to fuck around with DMCA, then start thinking about what document(s) you may have signed which authorize Kindle users to read you
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I wish I had mod points, because you're right and it's a fact that has not been sufficiently exploited. Suppose I want to break DRM technique X. At least in theory, all I have to do is arrange for a public domain work to be protected by technique X, without that particular instance of X covering any copyrighted works. Now I can write and publish a tool for breaking technique X, and even demonstrate it on the public domain work, without (theoretically) falling afoul of the DMCA.
I doubt the courts would ac
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I assume it simply meant it is illegal to move public domain works into a form that gives IP rights over it.
Re:At odds with hardware? (Score:4, Insightful)
> but isn't it at odds with modern hardware?
It's "at odds" with the concept of DRM, itself, actually, because the DRM system has to enable limited copying (for fair use --- see my comment above [slashdot.org]).
This is just a proposal for the law, because of its incompatibility with the status quo of global commerce (as you point out one of many problems) I think it has very, very little possibility of actually becoming law in its proposed form. Unfortunately....
Re:Nice trice - but who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Here I am with MP's yet I feel compelled to respond to you...
If you RTFA you would see that it explicitly sites making a personal copy for use on whatever player you desire. But if you give a copy to a friend with the DRM broken then you are still committing a crime and that is fair since it is NOT fair use.
Now having said that, I certainly expect a flood of torrents to start comming from Brazil if this gets enacted into law because people still think that if they buy a DVD and then rip it to make a copy to "should be able to rip it and use on a portable player, media server etc." they somehow have the right to give it away to their pals and put it on a web server for everyone to have a copy.
That is why this begins with, "I - reproduction by any means or process of any work legitimately acquired, if made in one copy and by the copyist, for his private use and not commercial;" [emphasis is mine] because in point of fact doing anything other then making a copy for personal, non commercial use is a copyright violation even under these terms and is in point of fact illegal and that is as it should be
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3D makes it harder to copy movies in the theatre with a camera. High def was their attempt to make things hard to copy by inflating the content size by an order of magnitude. 3D doesn't even double the data size required because you can get good compression from the commonality between left and right fields.
It does actually add value though. It had a shaky start but I've genuinely started enjoying certain movies in 3D more than I would have done in 2D.
On the other hand, all the recent stories about bullshit
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It won't, since that's not DRM. DRM restricts what you can do with what you get access to. SSL restricts what other people can see of what you're doing but you can do whatever you want with what was encrypted after you decrypt it (which is part of the transfer process).