Starting tomorrow December 31st 2006, reading a DVD protected with CSS (as most DVD are) is illegal in France when it is done with a software allowing to circumvent the protection, such as VLC or mplayer which can both use the libdvdcss library. Today’s Journal Officiel (where laws and executive orders are published) says that you may be fined 750€ (around $985) for doing so. This includes watching any DVD that you have legally purchased.
Edit 2007-02-21: the fine is 750€, not 135€ as I wrote earlier! Thanks to the two people who pointed at this mistake in the comments.
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Y a pas à dire mon pays des droits de l’homme est vraiment un chouette pays où il fait bon vivre.
Pourquoi est ce qu’on fait de ce pays, un pays de merde ?
Et le pire c’est qu’on y est encore pour 5 ans…
Roliticians betray their countries, it’s the same around the world.
Les politiciens trahissent leurs pays, c’est pareil autour du monde.
The IP paranoia is hurting the world. Let me make this clear: The IP paranoia is hurting the world!
We, the normal people on this earth hate, despise and loathe you, who think you have a right to limit our music choice, limit the way we can use the inventions available to us, limit the hardware we have made or purchased, and at the heavy end of the scale, confiscate our things just to see if you can find something that may be a violation of YOUR laws, that nobody asked for.
Let me make on more thing clear: NO, it will not work. No, you will not succeed in limiting the majority of people in how they live their lives. There are alternatives, and there will be alternatives to come.
P.S. Anyone considering to install Windows Vista on a PC-like machine should read the articles describing how it WILL CRIPPLE your system as a preemtive measure to ensure you can not view HD content properly. It WILL CRIPPLE your machine even if you do not have any intention of pirating anything. IT WILL CRIPPLE your machine because it can, and because you let it be. Just having any copyrighted HD material on your machine WILL CRIPPLE it under the DRM of Vista.
Sorry for being so plain about this, simple is beautiful. RIAA sucks.
Vista stands for Viruses Intruders Spyware Trojans and Adware (see http://theblog.europe2blog.fr/the_blog/images/vista.jpg)
Not to mention Vista eats too many system resources delivers no additional features (quite the reverse in my opinion)
Intelectual Property? Show me the deed for it.
Confiscate is just a fany word for theft. (Takeing something without the owners permission)
Crap ! Software has changed the world and people must understand that in order to be successful in today’s world change must be adopted. Instead of putting restrictions, which can more often that not be circumvented, a different solution must be sought for and adopted. A software solution could be adopted for this software problem.
[...] I don’t know how this will effect the distribution of VLC (if at all) but according to Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, “Starting tomorrow December 31st 2006, reading a DVD protected with CSS (as most DVD are) is illegal in France when it is done with a software allowing to circumvent the protection, such as VLC or mplayer which can both use the libdvdcss library.” [...]
I think It coulb more than 135€, the law allow 750€ (~990$)
Ludovic: only if you don’t pay the initial fine within a few months.
OMG WTF France?!…
Ok, the title is a bit over the top but seriously, this is insane. At the same time, it doesn’t surprise me. According to “Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde,” Samuel Tardieu’s dual-sided blog, using a media player such as VLC or mPlayer to p…
[...] Informatik : Reading a DVD with VLC or mplayer is now illegal in France publié au J.O. (tags: informatik justice privacy) [...]
My Question and not to be wise really! Will this actually stop anyone, and how do they plan on catching you? Some type of call to home protection in every dvd now? This is a honest question.
as usual the world is getting shittier and shittier….
lolz, thats one useless law, and one corrupt government
Good god, I thought we in the USA here had some stupid DRM rules, way to top us France!
Good thing I use Ubuntu and OSX now, buh bye billy boy and your crazy monkey named balmer
I’m french and when i look at this news, i thinking there a fucking country where i live.
“# gregf Says:
December 31st, 2006 at 6:24 pm
My Question and not to be wise really! Will this actually stop anyone, and how do they plan on catching you? Some type of call to home protection in every dvd now? This is a honest question.”
Exactly what I was wondering.
How soon before mpaa and their ilk start sending out scanbots to find libdvdcss on your machine so they can start spamming us with lawsuits?
Creepier every day, really.
Un mot -> merde.
The funny thing is that VLC is developed mostly by people from one of the top elite engineering school (Ecole Centrale)…
Catch me if you can!!!!!!!…… I see a “great” future of our world!! Welldone!!
When will they learn that anti-piracy and stupid laws like this only hurt the legitimate users… It’s crap like this that only does more harm than good.
[...] Reading a DVD with VLC or mplayer is now illegal in France Kein Kommentar… (tags: urheberrecht frankreich) [...]
How does the French government plan on enforcing this law? If the government can’t enforce this law, there is no point of having it. And I don’t think that it can. (Not to mention that a €135 fine is hardly an effective deterrent).
Ok #1 the software is still LEGAL its the playing off DVD’s that isnt. #2 The only way they would know is if another person reports them. #3 france sucks. Canada Rocks
in regards to laws that is.
So, I am from Europe with a large collection of European purchased DVDs now living in the US. I also own US Region 1 dvds. I run the DVD43 software on my computer so that my drives dont lock up when I switch between discs, (lock after switching regions 5 times). So why should that be illegal. I want to watch discs I legally purchased on a computer I legally purchased using software that of itself is not illegal.
Man, if I go shopping in the US but use a carrier bag I bought in Europe to carry it home, will that soon be illegal.
Olly.
I am so sick of these old paranoid dinosaurs talking about technology that they do not know anything about. This crap stupid law better not come to the U.S , well it may after all the Dummy Repiblicans are in power, so anything could happen, but me for one I bought my computer so I choose to do what ever I want with it and all of these old dinosaurs better just bite a big one because us the geeks run it and we will until we throw dirt over those old AZ dinosaurs pigs, so I say keep using VLC like I am going to and if a old idiot says something so what because you payed for your pc and the stinken gov did not, so use it how you choose because I will until and after the dirt is poured on my geeky grave. VLC til the end. dinosaurs shut-up!
This doesn’t make any sense… Are they seriously expecting the average end user to be aware how the application they’re using might interact with the dvd’s copy protection? I use VLC because it works fine both on windows and osx and have yet to find a video format it cant play “out of the box”, not to crack dvds…
What’s next? Banning operating systems because they allow users to use software that could possibly be used to circumvent a DVD’s copy protection?
Maybe in a few years from now they’ll come up with a law that makes it illegal to watch a dvd movie on a computer unless you’re using windows media player, running windows vista and using an hdcp monitor…
RIAA == Racketeers Industry Assoc of America.Vista is intended to take your rights away.Whole crap!Just do not buy DRMed shit!Return it to shops and require vendors to properly publish info about DRM systems involved (like CSS is).Wtf I should buy something unknown, then discover my rights were crippled without warnings?Is this legal?DRM should be illegal, because it ignores basic law principle: “everyone is innocent unless proven guilty”.Duh.Why not just jail everyone because “he\she can theoretically kill someone in future so we better about to jail ‘em all”?That’s how DRM works.Why they can ignore law principles and we’re can not?Laws should be equal to anyone.But today, laws are protecting media mafia only, not even composers or musicians or programmers or whoever else, just media racketeers corporations are protected but they’re should be ELIMINATED ’cause they’re just bunch of racketeers :\
[...] Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde Juha [...]
Politicans aren’t so smart in France I guess :S
The APRIL has filed a case to the Council of State (Supreme court in the administrative order) to have that executive order canceled. I’m planning to write a post on that. Unfortunately guys, it will be in French. See:
http://www.april.org/articles/communiques/pr-20070221.html
for more information about this.
Sam, I’m afraid the price for this is 750 Euros. This is a “Contravention de 4ème classe”, and you can get the “discount price” only if a specific executive order says so. It is not the case so far, as you can see in article 529 and R48-1 of the penal procedure code.
GroM: you’re right. I’ll edit the post.
Wow. Why can’t you do what you want with a dvd that you legally bought?
because of stupid law
This doesn’t surprise me at all, and I’m sure it doesn’t surprise the majority of us who have to endure the ridiculous European Union lawmakers. Yes I know this is a French Government law, but it is the same people in power in Paris who are supporting the fools in Brussels.
I am one of the few pro European supporters who live in the UK (yes there are a few EU supporters here), but every time we get a law passed like this it makes the job of us becoming more involved with the politics of Europe much more difficult.
How will they prove it ?
VLC will not send a user-agent like “hey i’m playing a dvd which is protected by css, catch me if you can !”
VLC is cool and no one of the fu..ing lawyers will ever know what the people are watching.
Sven: proving it is a different thing. The fact that they cannot prove anything doesn’t make it legal.
This doesn’t make any sens Are they seriously expecting the average end user to be aware how the application they’re using might interact with the dvd’s copy protection? I use VLC because it works fine both on windows and osx and have yet to find a video format it cant play “out of the box”, not to crack on
the law is an ass. its aparantly illegal to sell region 1 dvd’s in the uk, yet the law is only enforced on smaller sellers.
[...] http://www.rfc1149.net/blog/2006/12/30/reading-a-dvd-with-vlc-or-mplayer-is-now-illegal-in-france/ [...]
Thats another one of those laws that can never be enforced and is useless!
The fine for contravening this ridiculous and utterly fascist piece of legislation can be up to €3750 in the instance cited in blog post, and up to €30000 for those who produce and distribute the likes of VLC or MPlayer. See http://eucd.info/index.php?2006/06/30/335-what-does-the-new-french-copyright-bill-do for more info. Its high time legislators were given a salutary lesson in WHO they are supposed to be serving… whose taxes pay for their fat, lazy corrupt asses to sit in the parliaments.
The thing with unenforceable laws is it’s relatively easy to pass them without causing alarm, but when you have enough of them, you can “selectively enforce” the laws when “necessary”.For this reason deeming normal behaviour illegal is standard practice in most totalitarian states. It’s very handy when everyone’s guilty of something.
How about something more credible than a blog. No one wants to read your blog post a legitimate article from a legitimate journalist who has people to answer to if he lies or makes things up.
I hate Vista, and I am so glad I do not have to use it anymore. I hate how they are making this illegal, but it does not make that much of a difference as I usually get my movies off of a utorrent site, which is not illegal. You should all give it a try.
And how can such a usage of DVD be controlled? Again laws that exist without its purpose. However, there were always people who write laws and the others who break them. I think this is personal decision that should be undertaken according to normal moral and ethical norms. This is just my opinion.
This is just hilarious. Who is going to be watching what software people use to watch dvd’s and who cares anyways. For some companies it would matter if they are displaying something in the public areas or schools if they even follow these guidelines. I know our school did show pirated movie when we watched some students movie in school without a doubt.