Re: [Drm-elimination-crew] DRM in Portugal

[Marcos Marado]

On Monday 17 June 2013 20:45:28 Zak Rogoff wrote:
> http://blog.1407.org/2013/06/14/drm-will-be-fixed-in-portugal/
> 
> This looks interesting, Marcos, but I'm having trouble finding good
> information about it in English, and this post has a lot of acronyms I
> can't identify. Do you have any more resources about this decision?

My (more lengthly) summary, feel free to ask any questions at all:

2001's European Directive 2001/29/EC says that member states must legally 
protect DRM measures, making it illegal to circunvent them[1]. But it also 
states that they must ensure that it doesn't prevent uses permitted thanks to 
copyright exceptions (for instance private copy).

The transposition of that directive to the Portuguese Law (CDADC) was made in 
2004[2], but the way that CDADC ensures that copyright exceptions is protected 
doesn't work. CDADC states that you can't circunvent DRM, but since you must 
be able to exercise the copyright exceptions, it states that in those cases 
you have to request the means to achieve your objective to IGAC (a state 
administration service). The problem is that if you request those means to 
IGAC, they won't hand them over to you because they don't have it[3]. 

Well, that is now going to change. Two Portuguese parties submitted to the 
Parliament a couple of bills with the same basic objective: to change CDADC, 
changing the way the law ensures the right to copyright exceptions by simply 
stating that if the DRM in question prevents any of those exceptions from 
being exercised, then you can circunvent them in order to exercise them. 
Simple and effective, right?

These two bills were debated in the parliament[4], and then approved[5] in 
generality. Now they follow it's natural path, to a comission[6] that will 
merge both bills and do amendments (amendments that will not change the 
essence of the bills, I hope), and the final text will be again voted in the 
Parliament, who can turn it into Law, finally giving back users the rights 
that were taken from them nine years ago.

Timeline:
2001 - 2011/29/EC EU directive is published
2004 - EU directive is transposed to Portuguese Law
2013-06-12 - general discussion about two bills aiming to fix the Law
2013-06-14 - both bills approved in general
2013-06-26 (10:00) - Comission meeting scheduled to discussion and vote of 
both bills in speciality

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive
[2] https://ciist.ist.utl.pt/docs_da/codigo_direito_autor_republicado.pdf
[3] https://drm-pt.info/2013/04/27/be-quer-resolver-problema-do-drm-com-
projecto-de-lei/
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsiyqjiktVU
[5] https://blog.1407.org/2013/06/14/drm-will-be-fixed-in-portugal/
[6] http://www.parlamento.pt/sites/com/XIILeg/1CACDLG/Paginas/default.aspx

-- 
Marcos Marado
ANSOL.org