
Portugal Pushes Law to Partially Ban DRM, Allow Circumvention - unhammer
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170411/08055537122/portugal-pushes-law-to-partially-ban-drm-allow-circumvention.shtml
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icebraining
For context, the current government is composed of a center-left party
supported by two "far-left" parties, which have the majority despite the
center-right party having come out on top in number of votes. The bill comes
from one of the far-left parties (Left Block).

That said, it's fairly mild: only says one can't use DRM to prevent users from
enjoying their legal rights, and there's no penalty, except that the DRM
breakers won't get fined by our (EU-mandated) anti-circumvention laws, if I'm
reading it correctly. And they haven't revoked the bill passed by the previous
right-wing government, which forced ISPs to block access to a bunch of
"piracy" related sites (TPB, Kickass, etc).

Also, the private copying exception that they mention (and which already
existed) doesn't come from free: we have an extra tax on storage devices that
gets pooled into a fund to "compensate" authors for that exception.

~~~
fao_
> we have an extra tax on storage devices that gets pooled into a fund to
> "compensate" authors for that exception.

That's... a surprisingly (and refreshingly) pragmatic way to deal with that
percieved problem, to be honest. It'd be nice to see more countries going with
solutions like that, rather than the old "Do as I say or I'll beat you over
the head"

~~~
pdkl95
>> an extra tax on storage

Who cares about due process and the market, just presume everybody is liable
and tax them to guarantee profit to an industry? What a complete perversion of
basic capitalism and rule of law.

> It'd be nice to see more countries going with solutions like that

It's nice to pay an extra tax to prop up a poorly-run industry?

>>> There will also be an exception for private copying.

While it's not clear precisely what is meant by "private copying", time-
shifting was ruled a fair use in the Betamax case, without the need for a
levy.

~~~
lightbyte
>a complete perversion of basic capitalism

I'm pretty sure that was the whole point. Capitalism is not a magical faery
solution to everything, it obviously was not working in this industry so they
are trying someone new.

~~~
pdkl95
> Capitalism is not a magical faery solution to everything,

I completely agree, but the solution to that is not granting _guaranteed
profits_ to an industry. They are already granted a _monopoly_ market with
copyright. Why should they also get to skip the entire legal system and having
to actually produce a product people want and jump straight to profits?

We're talking about luxury goods, not healthcare.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
If the fund is distributed according to sales, how does any of that apply?

They still have to compete for profits to get a share, their sales are just
worth a little bit extra to offset the cultural benefit of more freely
available music. (Eg, for each dollar they take in, they actually get $1.01.)

In the sense you're using "luxury goods", they're still essential to human
cultural and psychological well-being, even if not base survival.

~~~
pedrocr
So why don't they just raise their prices to 1.01 and not take money from
people who have no interest in their content?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
It baffles me there is anyone who would argue against this position.

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potato_mOWX2EVX
It's not a ban on DRM, just make provisions that DRM can't infringe on legal
rights.

In others, you can rip DVDs for private use (private copies of copyright
materials) by overcoming DRM technology is now protected by the law.

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userbinator
_The draft also outlaws the use of DRM on copyright works that have fallen
into the public domain_

That reminds me of all the sites which sell PDFs of old equipment service
manuals, many of which would've become public domain due to their age.

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dogma1138
In Spain you used to be able to buy modded consoles and mod chips were sold
legally be even large retailers, iirc Portugal wasn't much different.

This isn't about banning DRM it's about not restricting your legal rights
under ownership.

In both cases it can be "fixed" by changing the terms of sale to a lease.

~~~
icebraining
I don't remember it being _that_ accepted in Portugal, but chip modding
services weren't hard to find.

How would the "lease fix" work? I don't think the law restricts itself to
purchased products.

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hedora
I think the idea is that you pay a one time fee to lease your game console for
life. If you mod it, then you have vandalized someone else's property.

The US has something called the "first sale doctrine" that essentially outlaws
such schemes by simply treating such leasing schemes as sales.

The first sale doctrine has been constantly under attack (for a century, at
least) by vendors that want to shut down markets for used goods, avoid
allowing their own customers a license to use patented products as they see
fit. Printer ink manufactures like lexmark are a good modern example.

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lithos
I feel like legislatures will eventually learn to propose and 'bring close to
the floor' all kinds of stuff that aggressive businesses wouldn't like, just
so that they increase lobbying efforts.

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jbmorgado
Lobbying is ilegal in Portugal (and I think all of the EU for that matter).

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dagw
_I think all of the EU for that matter_

Nope. Rules differ from country to country and even within EU-the-organisation
each institution sets their own rules and guidelines as to how much lobbying
they allow.

That being said, nowhere in the EU is lobbying anywhere near the levels seen
in the US.

