
Portugal Bans Use of DRM to Limit Access to Public Domain Works - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/portugal-bans-use-drm-limit-access-public-domain-works
======
icebraining
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).

~~~
rspeer
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?

~~~
sergiosgc
It's a plurality. "Relative majority" is a direct translation from the
Portuguese expression "maioria relativa" .

~~~
icebraining
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.

------
phjesusthatguy3
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.

------
627467
"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.

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

~~~
nusq
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.

------
zokier
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
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
And if you don't know the copyright status, you've got bigger problems.

------
xnyhps
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.

------
shmerl
Good, they should ban DRM in general.

