more on French Supreme Court bans copying of legally owned DVD]

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [IP] French Supreme Court bans copying of legally owned DVD
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 11:06:29 +0100
From: Patrick Sinz <patrick_sinz () yahoo com>
To: dave () farber net
References: <4404D26B.1040005 () farber net>

The "Cour de Cassation"'s decision is bad, but not that bad.
First you have to understand that calling it "French Supreme Court" is a
misnommer.
The role of the "Cour de Cassation" is NOT to evaluate the merit of any
judgements nor check it in regard to the constitution, but only check
if the law process has been correctly applied.

In the case that is of interest to us the "Cour de Cassation" said that
when the lower court sided with the plaintif (the people who wanted to
copy DRM protected DVDs to have a "personal backup copy") it did not
stated how it wold take in account the potential "economical loss" that
the removal of the DRM would create for the accused (the Major).
The law stating that the "right to a personal backup copy" is a "lesser"
right than the "copyright", and that the "exception" should not hurt
the copyright holder.

Now the issue is brought back to the lower court, and obviously the
"battle" will be between the plaintif and the defender around "who is
hurt the most".
And this is certainly not a garantied win for the majors (since their
reasons to want DRMs are most probably not really linked to the
protection of their copyrights but all about market control, and since
the end of feodality market control is not an universally legally
protected right).

Le Mardi 28 Février 2006 23:44, Dave Farber a écrit :
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [IP] French Supreme Court bans copying of legally owned DVD
> Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:05:50 +0100
> From: Laurent GUERBY <laurent () guerby net>
> To: dave () farber net
> CC: ip () v2 listbox com
> References: <p06230949c02a28e0518e@[192.168.0.142]>
> <5440528A-106F-4BB4-9201-0FE241E454B2 () farber net>
>
> Even as the European DMCA, called EUCD, is not transposed yet in
> France (second debate planned in early march, see http://eucd.info/),
> the french supreme court ("cour de cassation") just landed a strongly
> worded opinion reversing the appeal court decision to make illegal
> the prevention by technological measures of private copying of
> legally owned digital content.
>
> Judgment in french available here:
> http://www.courdecassation.fr/agenda/agenda_new/I-2006-02-28-0515824-
> 0516002-Decision-civ1.htm
>
> The private copying levy is a few hundred millions euros a year in
> France, but it looks like the corresponding right to copy no longer
> exists since the EUCD vote according to the court.
>
> And of course, french citizens no longer have the right to watch a
> legally owned DVD under Linux. Looks like in a few days, given the
> current government & IP lobbies law proposal, french citizen won't
> even have the right to talk about software in the area without facing
> jail...
>
> Laurent GUERBY
> Paris, FRANCE
> http://guerby.org/blog/
>
>
>
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