7 ms·

Portugal Bans Use of DRM to Limit Access to Public Domain Works

247 points by DiabloD3 9y ago

icebraining 9y ago
As a side note, in my opinion, this is a result of our current governmental situation, which is unprecedented: the center-right party won a relative majority, but the center-left party got the Communist Party and the Left-Bloc (an anti-capitalist left-wing party but without just a single guiding ideology) to support it in Parliament and allow it to form government. This has had many effects, but this bill in particular was introduced by the Left-Bloc, and then voted favorably by all the left (and by the single representative of the party "People, Animals and Nature", which doesn't consider itself left- or right-wing).
- dark_ph0enix 9y ago
  Fun fact: current governmental situation has been dubbed `Geringonça` (something akin to a Rube Goldberg machine) due to its complicated and convoluted structure.
  - pdpi 9y ago
    “Contraption” roughly captures the spirit of it
- rspeer 9y ago
  When you say "relative majority", do you mean a plurality (50% or less, so not a majority, but more than any other party), or is this situation more complicated than it seems?
  - tftfmacedo 9y ago
    The right wing party (actually a coalition of 2 right wing "mainstream" parties) was the most voted party but fell way short of a majority (they control 102 seats out of 230) and failed to get parliamentary support.
  - sergiosgc 9y ago
    It's a plurality. "Relative majority" is a direct translation from the Portuguese expression "maioria relativa" .
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Curiously, I actually searched for the term rather than directly translate. Seems it's (at least somewhat) used in the UK, even if not in the US.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- masklinn 9y ago
  > As a side note, in my opinion, this is a result of our current governmental situation, which is unprecedented: the center-right party won a relative majority, but the center-left party got the Communist Party and the Left-Bloc (an anti-capitalist left-wing party but without just a single guiding ideology) to support it in Parliament and allow it to form government. In Portugal? It seems to be a pretty common result in central and northern europe, it's also the result of the very recent NZ elections (the right-wing Nationals got 44.45%, Labour 36.89, NZ First 7.2% and the Greens 10.7%, NZF announced a coalition with Labour with confidence and supply from the Greens).
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Yes, in Portugal. We're a pretty young democracy for an European country, and historically there was a lot of bad blood between the left-wing parties.
realusername 9y ago
That sounds a reasonable law to me, I wish this would be implemented EU-wide.
- nusq 9y ago
  It is reasonable but it's kinda against an EU directive. The problem was that it was shown that the means to unlock drm were not being provided to authorities thus were not available for users upon request. So we took our own mesures.
627467 9y ago
"If there's a shortcoming to the law, it's that it doesn't include any new exceptions to the ban on creating or distributing (or as lawmakers ludicrously call it, "trafficking in") anti-circumvention devices. " Sounds very similar to the approach Portugal has taken with drugs: de-criminalize the use but not the (large scale) distribution.
phjesusthatguy3 9y ago
My local library uses Overdrive/Libby, and they appear to have sucked in all of Project Gutenberg and wrapped the books in DRM. Completely unformatted, just a straight text dump, and it's still going to disappear in 21 days.
shmerl 9y ago
Good, they should ban DRM in general.
zokier 9y ago
I'm not completely convinced that this is such a good thing. Main idea behind PD is that you can do basically anything with PD work. Now suddenly PD works can become liability when used if not cleared specifically, which seems counter-intuitive.
- shakethemonkey 9y ago
  I don't think this case comes up in the Venn diagram of realistic scenarios. If the work is yours, you can use DRM. If the work isn't yours and it's copyrighted and you know who the author is, you ask permission to use the work, and permission to apply DRM. If the work is public domain, you don't apply DRM. The scenario you describe is works for which you don't know the copyright status. Your choice is to either go ahead and use the work without DRM, or apply DRM and potentially face consequences. In this last case, the case you seem so concerned about, what purpose would DRM serve? It isn't your work, you should not care if anyone copies it.
  - diggernet 9y ago
    And if you don't know the copyright status, you've got bigger problems.
xnyhps 9y ago
I highly doubt anyone will be able to answer this, but I'm curious if this law would also apply to iOS apps. Of course, copyright on an app can't have expired, but it could be developed or sponsored by the Portuguese government. If Apple were forced to not apply DRM to one app, how far would they have to go? Allow sideloading of just those apps? That would open a can of worms. I highly doubt they'd do all that work, they'd probably just pull those apps and ban them just like how GPL licensed code is.

247 points by DiabloD3 9y ago

As a side note, in my opinion, this is a result of our current governmental situation, which is unprecedented: the center-right party won a relative majority, but the center-left party got the Communist Party and the Left-Bloc (an anti-capitalist left-wing party but without just a single guiding ideology) to support it in Parliament and allow it to form government. This has had many effects, but this bill in particular was introduced by the Left-Bloc, and then voted favorably by all the left (and by the single representative of the party "People, Animals and Nature", which doesn't consider itself left- or right-wing).

dark_ph0enix 9y ago
Fun fact: current governmental situation has been dubbed `Geringonça` (something akin to a Rube Goldberg machine) due to its complicated and convoluted structure.
- pdpi 9y ago
  “Contraption” roughly captures the spirit of it
rspeer 9y ago
When you say "relative majority", do you mean a plurality (50% or less, so not a majority, but more than any other party), or is this situation more complicated than it seems?
- tftfmacedo 9y ago
  The right wing party (actually a coalition of 2 right wing "mainstream" parties) was the most voted party but fell way short of a majority (they control 102 seats out of 230) and failed to get parliamentary support.
- sergiosgc 9y ago
  It's a plurality. "Relative majority" is a direct translation from the Portuguese expression "maioria relativa" .
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Curiously, I actually searched for the term rather than directly translate. Seems it's (at least somewhat) used in the UK, even if not in the US.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
masklinn 9y ago
> As a side note, in my opinion, this is a result of our current governmental situation, which is unprecedented: the center-right party won a relative majority, but the center-left party got the Communist Party and the Left-Bloc (an anti-capitalist left-wing party but without just a single guiding ideology) to support it in Parliament and allow it to form government. In Portugal? It seems to be a pretty common result in central and northern europe, it's also the result of the very recent NZ elections (the right-wing Nationals got 44.45%, Labour 36.89, NZ First 7.2% and the Greens 10.7%, NZF announced a coalition with Labour with confidence and supply from the Greens).
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yes, in Portugal. We're a pretty young democracy for an European country, and historically there was a lot of bad blood between the left-wing parties.

realusername 9y ago

That sounds a reasonable law to me, I wish this would be implemented EU-wide.

nusq 9y ago
It is reasonable but it's kinda against an EU directive. The problem was that it was shown that the means to unlock drm were not being provided to authorities thus were not available for users upon request. So we took our own mesures.

627467 9y ago

"If there's a shortcoming to the law, it's that it doesn't include any new exceptions to the ban on creating or distributing (or as lawmakers ludicrously call it, "trafficking in") anti-circumvention devices. " Sounds very similar to the approach Portugal has taken with drugs: de-criminalize the use but not the (large scale) distribution.

phjesusthatguy3 9y ago

My local library uses Overdrive/Libby, and they appear to have sucked in all of Project Gutenberg and wrapped the books in DRM. Completely unformatted, just a straight text dump, and it's still going to disappear in 21 days.

shmerl 9y ago

Good, they should ban DRM in general.

zokier 9y ago

I'm not completely convinced that this is such a good thing. Main idea behind PD is that you can do basically anything with PD work. Now suddenly PD works can become liability when used if not cleared specifically, which seems counter-intuitive.

shakethemonkey 9y ago
I don't think this case comes up in the Venn diagram of realistic scenarios. If the work is yours, you can use DRM. If the work isn't yours and it's copyrighted and you know who the author is, you ask permission to use the work, and permission to apply DRM. If the work is public domain, you don't apply DRM. The scenario you describe is works for which you don't know the copyright status. Your choice is to either go ahead and use the work without DRM, or apply DRM and potentially face consequences. In this last case, the case you seem so concerned about, what purpose would DRM serve? It isn't your work, you should not care if anyone copies it.
- diggernet 9y ago
  And if you don't know the copyright status, you've got bigger problems.

xnyhps 9y ago

I highly doubt anyone will be able to answer this, but I'm curious if this law would also apply to iOS apps. Of course, copyright on an app can't have expired, but it could be developed or sponsored by the Portuguese government. If Apple were forced to not apply DRM to one app, how far would they have to go? Allow sideloading of just those apps? That would open a can of worms. I highly doubt they'd do all that work, they'd probably just pull those apps and ban them just like how GPL licensed code is.