Germany bans all music and video copying, including personal use -- UPDATED
AV sez, "Germany's parliament on Friday approved a copyright law, which makes it all but illegal for individuals to make save and make copies of television, films and music, even for their own use. It goes into effect in 2008."
Nice going, Germany -- between this and the new anti-hacker laws, you've managed to criminalize every productive member of the information society. Enjoy the caves and flint axes.
Germany's upper house of parliament on Friday approved a controversial copyright law, which makes it all but illegal for individuals to make copies of films and music, even for their own use.Link (Thanks, AV!)The Bundesrat pushed aside criticism from consumer protection groups and passed the law, which makes it illegal for anyone to store DVDs and CDs without permission. The law also covers digital copies from IPTV and TV broadcasts.
Update: Variety's reporting of this story seems to have gotten the story wrong. Check out the comments for this post, especially Sonja's, for more.
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This is a wild (and unrealistic) overreaction to a real problem. The fact that it's an overreaction doesn't mean that there isn't a problem (piracy).
I wonder if they realize that everything they see in a browser window is a copy for personal use.
And how do they plan to stop it? Ban the sale of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs? Can you go over the border to, say, Austria and just buy them there? Are they going to do home inspections to make sure you haven't made personal copies? How can they insure those copies weren't legitimately burned from an iTunes purchase? How about iPods in general? Is putting your CD collection onto your iPod an illegal copy?
What about older tech- can you tape a TV series with your VCR? Record music with a cassette?
I have no idea how they could even begin to impliment this.
I just checked a couple of german news sites (it was hard to find anything on this) but found something on the site of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (which is quite liberal).
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/deutschland/artikel/306/134053/4/
the story there has a bit more details on the new law. the law still allows people to make copies of CDs and DVDs for personal use as long as those media do not have any protection mechanism on them. what makes this illegal is the cracking of a protection mechanism. this seems to be a bit different than what the variety article is writing.
Carsten- That is different, yes. Wasn't it illegal in the U.S. to crack macrovision for a while? (Maybe it still is?)
This is SO rude!
German parliament has not the smallest sense for technological matters.
We have a general TV tax on computers now, since one theoretically has the possibility to equip a tv card or watch programs via internet. But these things are but so negligible against their actions in restricting personal freedom.
Just recently they made government surveillance of home PCs legal. They wasted millions on a piece of software 'Bundes-Trojaner'(federal trojan) which is highly inappropriate, if not useless.
However, useless or not, that suspicious home surveillance law is carved in stone now.
I do feel helpless. Their actions get worse and worse, it reminds me of some communistic regime administration, or of some regime we had some 50 years earlier.
'Copying verboten' - and I like that special meaning of this headline ;)
oh, and btw, the article that i linked to earlier says that the part of the new copyright law which says that breaking copy protection or encryption is illegal is actually not new, this was already the case before.
new parts of the law address how companies have to work with creators and how creators of content get more rights for their products for any possible new devices in the future.
"Media loves to create a big sensation with misleading information and it's always much less interesting when we actually dig down and find the real story."
Actually, that's what it is to be human, innit?
Should you get really bored and want to brush up your German here's a huge list of links at Heise (one of the biggest IT News sites in Germany) on the topic:
http://www.heise.de/ct/hintergrund/meldung/68064
There's a lot of discussion and information available here. They also have an English site, but there doesn't seem to be much (if anything) about the copyright reforms.
The law covering most of what is mentioned above is actually in place since 2003 when "stage 1" was approved. The part approved today is "stage 2" of reforms to the "Urheberrecht" (that's German for Copyright Law) to "adapt it to the digital age".
Another stage is yet to come.
Like everyone already said, the private copy for personal use is not illegal at all. We have to pay a (small) extra fee on media and hardware used for copying, which is sort of problematic in its own way but hardly the same as making copying illegal.
One thing that changes: The private copy becomes illegal if it's made from an illegal source - meaning stuff you steal on the internet. The original (heh) plan was to include a bagatelle clause that would keep the law from cracking down on kids burning a few CDs, but the Conservatives were against this, regarding it a weakening of copyright.
What I regard the real problem is the restricitve way the law deals with library making electronic material available for readers and students, but that's a different topic...
Here is a good article (in German, sorry) which links some other stuff regarding the law.
Thanks for outlining the actual change by this new law, Sonja. When I first read the headline, I was baffled. Germany always seemed to be quite sensible in its solution to the "home taping is killing the industry" scare - performing rights society GEMA just collects a tariff on all blank media sold and distributes it to its members, right?
Queensilly - sort of. *g* The tariff is on blank media and "devices" that can be used for copying - PCs, scanners, printers, ...
One aspect of the new law is that the tariff will no longer be collected by the state but by the industry itself, which is sort of worrying...
"This is just poor reporting." (#11 posted by CantStopTheSignal)
Feel free to write your own blog and do better. We promise not to visit often and complain about the quality in an abusive, condescending tone.
If any country has the expertise required to enforce such a law effectively, it is Germany. Perhaps they can rebuild the Stasi as a branch of GEMA?
One more to chime in -- translating from the SZ article:
The copyright bill reform that was definitely approved by the Bundesrat without further debate had been preceded by months of discussions. Now it is official: private copying of non-protected CDs and DVDs remains permitted. It remains forbidden to crack copy protection.
(To me, it sounds as if the EU-directive that DMCA-like forbids the circumvention of DMR had already been part of copyright law in Germany. This may be wrong.) The article goes on about the most controversial point: the reform of the levy system on copy devices, which had been obsolete.
One more point, "copyright law" is a particularly misleading translation, even if the best possible, of "Urheberrecht": "Urheber" means "creator". When considering copyright law systems that are NOT based on the Anglo-American conceptualization of the issue as basically a utility-based decision of who may copy what, please remember that other cultural areas frame this in a "moral rights of the creator" approach.
Not that it makes for any better laws.
[Der vom Bundesrat ohne weitere Aussprache endgültig verabschiedeten Reform des Urheberrechts waren monatelange Diskussionen vorausgegangen. Jetzt ist es durch: Privatkopien von nicht geschützten CDs und DVDs bleiben erlaubt. Weiterhin verboten ist es, den Kopierschutz zu knacken.]
In an age where images and vicarious experience is perceived as more "real" than reality or direct experience, the concept of the worship of graven images takes on a new meaning. I think I'll go and fly a kite.
Book of Copyright
1.1 And the Capitalist did speak unto the Empress and he did say.
1.2 'Lo, it is so that all that is good flows from me. Without me no work would be done, no music would be sung, no pages would be writ. There would be no scientists, nor engineers, nor doctors.
1.3 And the Empress, in her ignorance, did bow down to the Capitalist.
1.4 And she spake 'Good sir, how can I serve thee.'
1.5 So the Capitalist smiled and said unto her 'All the people of this land shall be my slaves. The men and women shall be beholden to me and the children shall be taught my wisdom'
1.6 The Empress, full of her own arrogance, agreed.
1.7 But then the prophet of the Lord did appear. And mighty was his wrath.
1.8 And he did cast the Capitalist out of the palace. To the Empress he decreed.
1.9 'Oh foolish woman. Our Lord did not create music to be the property of men. And he did not create words so that the Capitalist could pile high his gold.'
1.10 'And science exists so that man may better understand our Lord's creation.'
1.11 'These things he created for all humanity.'
1.12 And fearing the anger of the prophet, the Empress did grovel before the Lord.
1.13 'Please forgive me. I was arrogant and believed that these things were in my power to give away. Now I see this is not so.'
1.14 And the prophet did nod. 'These things can no more be owned than the air we breathe. Now you must earn forgivness.'
1.15 But the Empress did weep. 'Oh Lord. I do not know what to do. I am weak and foolish - so it is that the Capitalist fooled me.'
1.16 And the prohpet was filled with pity, for he knew that all leaders of the day were week and foolish.
1.17 'Empress.' He did say unto her 'Take the music and the books from your palace library and give them freely unto the people.'
1.18 'But how shall we make new music without the Capitalist?' She did ask.
1.19 And the prophet did laugh.
1.20 'And such is your foolishness! Musicians are as trees - they need protection only from woodcutters, and do not need cultivation. They must weather the storms to grow strong and study. A tree inside a barn will grow bent and withered.'
1.21 Upon hearing these words the Empress ceased her weaping.
1.21 'Greatly am I indebted to you, for you have saved my people a great injustice.'
1.22 And she did command her servants to amass the great works of civilization and she saw to it that each citizen was given free access to these.
1.23 'In this way.' The Empress declared to all 'we shall all become wiser and happier'.
1.24 So it came to pass that her land was revered throughout the world, and many traveled from afar to read the books and hear the music of her great land.
Gah, this comments section needs a rating system. +5 for Osiris7.
[Boring moderation notice: Sorry about the holes that just appeared in this conversation. The commenter who posted here as "CantStopTheSignal" is actually another user who's been temporarily suspended for misbehavior in another thread. CantStopTheSignal's comments, here and elsewhere, have been unpublished because he's the sockpuppet of a suspended user. For the record, this had nothing to do with the content of his comments. -tnh]
In France there are taxes included in price of CD-DVD disks that meant to compensate material losses of owners of copyrights.
After reading the comments, especialy SONJA's I have a question. If the copying is forbidden from illegal sources, how it's defined what sources are legal, and what aren't. Or internet is illegal as all? :)
And an also important - how it can be prooved from what source you made your copy, and that this source is illegal by itself, and that you know it's an illegal source? Because I hope, the one who made the copy is not the one who need to prove he made the copy from a "legal" source /in which case it would be a violation of the presumption of innocence/.