[free-sklyarov] WIPO Regulations

[Seth David Schoen]

Austin Hook writes:

> Re: WIPO language   (caution: IANAL)
> 
> Condensing (cutting and pasting) to the critical point (see original
> quoted text at the bottom):
> 
> > (1) Contracting Parties shall provide effective legal remedies against
> > any person knowingly altering any electronic rights management
> > information [while also] knowing that it will facilitate an
> > infringement of any right covered by this Treaty or the Berne
> > Convention
> 
> However, if rights management information is merely the author and
> copyright ownership information, along with a list of the rights that are
> intended to be conveyed, then so long as that information is not damaged,
> it is not necessary under WIPO to forbid removing associated encryption or
> usage crippling technology.
> 
> The thrust of it seems to make illegal the act of the first person who
> removes the copyright ownership or terms of use information, and doing
> that so to cause the material to get into circulation without the
> copyright information being attached.  It doesn't seem to worry about
> transformations that do not alter the "[Copy]rights Management
> Information" (CMI), even if they facilitate a second person doing such a
> nasty thing.  It's the stage at which the CMI itself is damaged, rather
> than the technological protections surrounding it, where legal action is
> called for.

However, there is _another_ WIPO treaty which actually has the
technology-based anticircumvention rules.  The above language is not
the basis for the anticircumvention provisions in the U.S. DMCA.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Its really terrible when FBI arrested
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | hacker, who visited USA with peacefull
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF) | mission -- to share his knowledge with
     http://www.freesklyarov.org/      | american nation.  (Ilya V. Vasilyev)