Finish CSS decision overturned

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The Helsinki Court of Appeal overturned the initial decision taken by the
Helsinki District Court ruling that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used
in DVD movies is “ineffective”.

The decision of the Court of Appeal was taken a year after the first ruling
concluded that “CSS protection can no longer be held ‘effective’ as defined
in law.”

The defendant’s counsel Mikko Välimäki explains on his blog that the Appeal
Court said that circumventing an access control would have been lawful. But
the court considered that the defendants circumvented a full copy protection
system (CSS), not just an access control, which is actually wrong.

Also Välimäki points out that the court considered that “it is ok to
circumvent if the circumvention happens without installing additional
software. The court claimed that you always need to install some kind of
“hack” software for Linux systems in order see DVDs. Again, the court erred.
In fact, you only need a (legal) player software like VLC or Mplayer, and
with some Linux distros player cabale of showing DVDs comes standard. In the
district court the technical witness from the Finnish criminal police
answered as questioned that with his Ubuntu installed fresh on the system
you just throw the DVD in and it shows the movie’s icon on the destop, there
you just double-click and voilá. You don’t need *any* additional software in
that case.”

The counsel announced that the decision would be appealed to the Supreme
Court in Finland, because the Appeal Court decided on the case and made
these errors because it took the decision only based on the case
documentation.

Usually, it takes between 3-5 months for the Supreme Court to decide whether
they take the case.

Court of Appeal overturned the CSS decision (26.05.2008)
http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=156

Finnish Appeals Court Overturns Decision That Said It Was Okay To Circumvent
Ineffective DRM (28.05.2008)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080527/1606231237.shtml

EDRi-gram: CSS protection used in DVDs is “ineffective” (6.06.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.11/css-dvd-finland