This is interesting.

 A Norwegian court has just thrown out a case brought by the Motion
Picture Group concerning a 15 y.o. who had produced and distributed
via the net software that allowed him to view his DVD's (legally
purchased) on his computer this meant breaking the anti copying
software.

The charge was Digital Burglary, the MPG said that by bypassing the
codelocking on the DVD's he was guilty of theft.

The court in a 25 page judgement said this was nonsense as it is
impossible to steal your own property. They noted that the DVD's were
a legally made and sold and he had purchased the DVD's as in the same
way most people do and therefore the CD and it's contents were his
property. He made this program because the DVD locks prevented anyone
not using authorise equipment (that is DVD's players with the
appropriate country lock). He had made the 'hack' to enable him to
watch his DVD's on his computer that is running on Linux - Something
the court said was perfectly acceptable as the copyright holder was
in actual fact restricting the choice of the purchaser on how he
could use his property.

The Motion Picture people are considering an appeal.

As an aside there is a little publicly known law out here in Oz that
came into force Jan 1 2000, it was brought in after much lobbying by
Sony and to a lesser extent Nintendo. The law as written makes it
illegal to alter the contents of any electronic memory device (IE.
EEPROMS, RAM etc) commercialy sold. This was mainly aimed at
stopping the hacks to enable Playstations to play other country
software.

However as I understand it this would also include people who reburn
their car computer data tables or program - and other similar acts.

I wish I had enough money to try that one in court!

Colin

--
cdb, cdb@barnard.name on 31/03/2002

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