Re: [dvd-discuss] Geeks in government: A good idea?

[Lars Gaarden <larsg(at)eurorights.org>]

Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 02:45:58AM +0200, Lars Gaarden (larsg@eurorights.org) wrote:
> 
>>It would however be interesting to see how they are able to argue
>>that selling region free/multiregion players is illegal.
> 
> Protection of technological measures. Article 6.

A technological measure is only protected by law if it protects the
rightholder's rights according to copyright.

Parallel import laws and community exhaustion both give the rightholder
the right to control commercial import from outside EU, but it does not
give the rightholder the right to control personal import. If it is
impossible for me to legally buy a region free player, the effect is
that the rightholder's right to control import has been extended to also
cover personal import - which they should not be entitled to.

..but I digress. With the batting average of the courts so far, we will
probably see the copyright police marching in the streets of Europe
hunting down region free players early next year.


I have been playing with the thought that it might be possible to
stop this crazy extention of copyright scope on a constitutional basis.
Does anyone know whether any of the EU countries have something similar
to the US copyright clause ("to promote the progress..")?

At the EU level, you don't really have a constitution. You have the
treaties that EU is founded on, and you have the European Convention
on Human Rights.

-- 
LarsG