ACTA Violates Fundamental Human Rights
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 4th Oct 2011 13:31 UTC
Legal A few days ago, several countries signed ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. As you are probably aware, ACTA was drafted up in secret, and is basically Obama/Biden's attempt to impose the US' draconian pro-big business/big content protection laws on the rest of the world ('sign it, or else'). The European Parliament still has to vote on it, and as such, Douwe Korff, professor of international law at the London Metropolitan University, and Ian Brown senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, performed a 90-page study, with a harsh conclusion: ACTA violates fundamental human rights.
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RE[6]: Call me contrarian...
by lemur2 on Fri 7th Oct 2011 02:54 UTC in reply to "RE[5]: Call me contrarian..."
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

While it is true that the DMCA does not provison the locking out or collection of license fees, it enforce any digital rights management included on digital media. The DMCA is a pain in the ass, but well as serveral other things that are included in the DMCA, it does provide companies with anti-circumvention of their encryption methods. http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/ You might want to read up on what the DMCA actually allows you to do. That site is what google uses when they have takedown notices for search results. Remember it only applies to members of the USA - its not enforable anywhere else in the world, as such and like I said, is why the VideoLAN (who are in France - that outside of world America) people were able to create the libs and thus why VLC player works without a takedown notice. If the libs or VLC was created in the USA, then it'd have been removed long ago.


http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/02/4636.ars

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/10/4352.ars

"To the extent compatibility requires that a particular code sequence be included in the component device to permit its use, the merger and 'scenes a faire' doctrines generally preclude the code sequence from obtaining copyright."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_fai...

VLC software is not a copy of any other software. VLC does not use the software from the DVD consortium. The actual CSS algorithm is effectively a "scene that must be done" in order to play a DVD. Playing a DVD does not copy its content in a way that violates copyrights. As long as the VLC software in question is being used to play videos, and consumers legally bought DVDs and a DVD drive, then essentially it would seem there is no case for VLC to answer. Even under the DMCA.

When actual illegal content (i.e. content which violates a copyright, even a copyright held by an American interest) is hosted on download sites, such as Rapidshare, anywhere in the world, copyright owners (even American ones) are able to use the DMCA and issue a "takedown notice" to get that content removed.

There have been no takedown notices issued for VLC. Playing a DVD using VLC is not illegal.

Edited 2011-10-07 03:07 UTC

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