Boing Boing: French court bans DRM for DVDs

Saturday, April 23, 2005

French court bans DRM for DVDs

Emmanuel sez, "A French appeal court just issued a ruling preventing the inclusion of anti-copying measure on DVD. This is after a man who was not able to copy a DVD he purchase to a VHS cassette so he can watch it at his mother's place. Which is considered private copying and is a consumer right in France. He got the help of a consumer protection group to sue the Film Studio that produced the DVD. Film studios have one month to unprotect DVDs (I assume it is not for DVD that you already own)." French Link (Thanks, Emmanuel!)

Update: Hal sez, "Here's an automatic English translation. It's a little rough, but you get the gist. It sounds as though the judgment only applies to one specific movie: 'The Films Alain Sarde and Studio Channel have one month to unbolt the DVD.' And is it just me, or is the idea of watching Mulholland Drive with your Mom just a tad uncomfortable?"

Update 2: Seb sez, "1) The guy didn't want to watch the DVD with his mother, but in his mother's house and 2) The ruling applies to all DVDs. The SEV (Video producers' syndicate) will probably appeal."

Update 3: Matthew sez, "Unfortunately, the automatic translation is characteristically lacking, in particular the implication that the decision applied only to a single movie (it didn't). So I made a proper manual translation of the original article and posted it on my blog."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:14:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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