Maybe some of our readers that are French speaking can verify this story from a few more sources other than this original French one 01.net. But here is a translation provided by All Peers blog website on a page called Peer Pressure. This news is just too good to be true! The jist of it is, that the UFC-Que Choisir (a French consumer protection organization) has been granted a prohibition on DVD copy protection devices by the Paris Court of Appeal, as they have been judged to interfere with fair use for individual copying purposes.
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Two companies, Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, thus suffered a serious setback after having won the case in the Court of First Instance at the end of April 2004. UFC-Que Choisir latched onto the case of a consumer who was unable to copy a DVD of Mulholland Drive, a David Lynch film produced by Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, onto a video cassette. This person wanted to watch the film at his mother's, who did not have a DVD player. The strict familial context mandated for the exercise of private copying rights was therefore applicable. |
This is very hard to beleive, yet at the same time seems
so logical. It is probably "ok" to make backups of your purchases depending on what country you live in, but it is illegal to bypass protections that prohibit the task. This doesn't seem fair to the consumer at all. Let's hope this story is true, lets also hope that it can help to overturn the same laws in other countries. Since this happened last Friday, it should be big news, yet we can't see very many stories about this yet.
Source: Allpeers
