Is it criminal to even talk about CSS contained in a DVD? Apparently, with respect to circumvention, that’s what Finland wants to do through a controversial court case. As a result, the case is moving to the EU court of Human rights.
At issue is a Finnish EU copyright directive which came into force in 2006 which criminalizes the act of merely talking about circumventing DRM. Mikko Rauhala had started a web discussion forum to also talk about the downfalls of the directive as well.
EDRI has more details:
However the Police started its investigation with the public prosecutor who was supported strongly by the Finnish Anti-Piracy Association which arranged the “expert” testimonies for the prosecutor. Soon thereafter, the case was referred to the Helsinki District Court which decided in Rauhala’s favor; that CSS was not a type of protection measure covered by the Directive and therefore the ban did not apply. The district attorney appealed to the Helsinki Appellate Court, which stated that Mr. Rauhala was guilty of illegally circumventing a technological protection measure and of providing an illegal service for the circumvention of protection measures. The Supreme Court of Finland denied Mr. Rauhala’s application.
Since all of the court decisions that were involved in the case wouldn’t touch freedom of expression as defined in the Finnish constitution, Rauhala had to take his case to European Court of Human Rights.
Given that this is a free speech issue, it’s extremely difficult to see what the Finnish authorities hope to accomplish here. If the mere act of talking about a DRM is banned, people will simply move to a website hosted and operated outside of the borders of Finland – not to mention using proxies to cover their trails in the process. Any punishment Rauhala would face is not immediately clear in this or other past reports.
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Fuck Finland! Not the citizens, but rather the government!
That speech cencorship law is already passed in Finland. Rauhala is testing how effective it will be.
There is too expensive forum hosting that it makes sense to host them outside of Finland anyways. Poor/slow finnish hosters
Have you imagined how long it takes russian authorities force offline anti-putin website in Finland than how long it takes finnish authorities take down same like site in Russia.
I can tell that it takes few hours for russians and months for finnish authorities.
10 – 1 for Russia.
Terrible…but to be honest I can’t picture it holding up in the EU court. If it does then it is just further proof that we were doomed from the beginning. Hopefully the people of Finland will fight back if this gets out of hand.
Terrible…but to be honest I can’t picture it holding up in the EU court. If it does then it is just further proof that we are doomed.
if this law pass in Finland, then they are no different than the Chinese communist in 5-6 years ago
Time to take your nations back from the greedy corporate pigs & their lackeys, ladies and girls.
The copyright cartel have always pressed hard for the silencing of speech. Copyright in itself is a restriction on speech and culture. Society is sick and tired of these antics, and its clear that we need to once again liberate our culture, and slap the copyright collective in the face by severely lowering the scope of copyright. Otherwise the alternative is an increasingly restrictive ability for society to express itself.
This is silly. Talking about a crime is not the same as committing a crime. Nobody should outlaw thinking, or speech.