Submission + - Finnish appeal court: breaking CSS now illegal (google.com) 1
Thomas Nybergh writes: "Due to an appeal court decision from a couple of days back, breaking the not very effective CSS copy protection used on most commercial DVD-Video discs is now a criminal act in Finland.
The verdict is contrary to what a district court thought of the same case last year when two local electronic rights activists were declared not guilty after having framed themselves by spreading information on how to break CSS . Back then it was to the activists' benefit has CSS been badly broken and inneffective ever since DeCSS came out.
Lawyer Mikko Välimäki of the law firm Turre legal, which represents the activists, expresses surprise over the appeal court's explanation which includes implications along the lines of Linux users not being able to watch dvds without knowingly download cracking software.
For now, there aren't really any proper sources in English, but for those willing to do some guesswork, Google's translation tool can help, see Tietokone (translation), Digitoday (translation), Turre Legal's blog with the court decision as an enclosed PDF (translation)."
The verdict is contrary to what a district court thought of the same case last year when two local electronic rights activists were declared not guilty after having framed themselves by spreading information on how to break CSS . Back then it was to the activists' benefit has CSS been badly broken and inneffective ever since DeCSS came out.
Lawyer Mikko Välimäki of the law firm Turre legal, which represents the activists, expresses surprise over the appeal court's explanation which includes implications along the lines of Linux users not being able to watch dvds without knowingly download cracking software.
For now, there aren't really any proper sources in English, but for those willing to do some guesswork, Google's translation tool can help, see Tietokone (translation), Digitoday (translation), Turre Legal's blog with the court decision as an enclosed PDF (translation)."