EUCD.INFO : Menace sur la copie privée : désir de monopole

Extrait :

« En 1878, lors de son discours d’ouverture du congrès littéraire international, Victor Hugo contribuait à fonder le droit d’auteur avec ces mots : "Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l’auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient - le mot n’est pas trop vaste - au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l’un des deux droits, le droit de l’écrivain et le droit de l’esprit humain, devait être sacrifié, ce serait, certes, le droit de l’écrivain, car l’intérêt public est notre préoccupation unique, et tous, je le déclare, doivent passer avant nous". Ses vues ne plaisaient guère au cercle des libraires qui s’opposait, en particulier, à son idée du domaine public en prétendant qu’elle nuirait au commerce et donc à toute la profession littéraire. Et nous voici, deux siècles plus tard, confrontés à une volonté de changement du droit d’auteur dont on nous dit qu’elle permet de réduire le manque à gagner des commerçants. Le cercle des libraires a certes disparu mais les majors du disque et les éditeurs tiennent son rôle. Le temps n’a pas atténué l’influence des commerçants ni, fort heureusement, la force du discours Hugolien. »

The Draft IPR Enforcement Directive : A Threat to Competition and to Liberty

« Political Summary

The EU’s draft Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights sets out to make it dramatically easier to enforce copyrights, patents, and trademarks in Europe, and to punish people who tamper with technical mechanisms designed to prevent copying or counterfeiting. The directive has been welcomed by the music and film industries. But it divides the computer industry - Microsoft is for, while Sun is against - and the telecomms industry is strongly opposed. Supermarkets also stand to lose. Resistance is building, for example in the European press. Online liberties are also at risk, as well as commercial interests. The law on `intellectual property’ - copyrights, patents and trademarks- has always been a difficult balance between protecting incumbent companies and fostering competition. The Directive seeks to shift the balance strongly in favour of the incumbents and against competitors. This will create winners and losers. The winners will mostly be large companies, such as Microsoft and Disney ; the losers will include some large companies (such as phone companies) but also a lot of small firmsand civil society interests. »

Robin Gross : Why America’s Mistake is Europe’s Future

Extraits :

« II. The US Experience with Circumvention : "DMCA Horror Story"

Ironically, the US copyright industry continues to impose a restrictive intellectual property regime on the rest of the world despite the abuse and controversy such measures created in the US. Since enactment in 1998, the DMCA has become the target of significant opposition in the US (and abroad) from groups as diverse as cryptographers, librarians, journalists, scientists, civil liberties and other public interest organizations. Widely regarded as overbroad in its prohibitions, Americans are now seriously reconsidering the circumvention measures and several efforts to amend the law’s harshest provisions have been introduced in the Congress. While the DMCA survived an early court battle in the US, more recent legal challenges to the DMCA’s circumvention measures give little confidence that its broad prohibitions will withstand further Constitutional challenges.

[...]

B. DMCA Useful as Powerful Weapon Against Competitor

While proponents of banning circumvention claim the laws are necessary as a shield to protect against copyright infringement, in practice, circumvention laws have proven far more useful as a powerful sword to prevent competition and silence critics. Since the DMCA’s ban on circumvention tools is so broad, anyone who tries to build a home-made device or software capable of playing a DVD or other digital media violates the prohibition against circumvention. Thus the circumvention prohibitions effectively create a monopoly over who can build devices capable of reading digital entertainment

[...]

C. DMCA Chills Freedom of Speech and Scientific Research

A common criticism of the DMCA in the US is its ability to allow private power to chill freedom of speech and censor scientific research. The circumvention prohibitions are so broad, they outlaw providing software or other technical information that could assist bypassing digital controls. Even information that discusses a technology’s vulnerabilities has been outlawed by the DMCA’s ban on providing circumvention tools. EU lawmakers in particular, are now faced with pressure from the US copyright industry to import this policy of censorship over technical information, despite the chill felt by the scientific community in the US. While not shown to have any effect on infringement, withholding information about technological vulnerabilities only serves to diminish public security in computer systems.

D. Americans Reconsider Circumvention Prohibitions

US lawmakers have begun to respond to the growing public opposition to the DMCA’s circumvention prohibitions in the US. Efforts have begun to revise the DMCA in the US Congress, the Copyright Office, and the courts. Even executive branch officials have become publicly uncomfortable with the DMCA’s extreme ban on consumer circumvention. While the US public was not paying attention to digital copyright matters when the legislation was before Congress in 1998, the public is beginning to demand change to the law’s broad curtailment of consumer rights now that it’s enforcement has begun.  »