DRM illegal in France

Susan Crawford is not convinced that the recent decision of a French appeal court to outlaw drm access controls on DVDs is likely to do any real damage to the widespread deployment of such drm.

"The US content industry often cites the success of DVDs as evidence that consumers don't expect to make their own copies of this format -- and don't seem to care that they can't. The DVD closed-circle, chain-of-licenses story is told over and over again in this country. "See?" the industry says, "People just want to be entertained."

But in France, Germany, and Spain (three reasonable countries), people do apparently expect to be able to make private copies of things they take home with them -- and the law supports this understanding. If this decision takes hold (and I can only imagine the resources being devoted right now to make sure that it is deep-sixed and tagged as downright un-European by some more captive law-making body), and is joined with some other European precedents on the consumer-unfriendliness of DRM, it might just cause a little wrinkle of change.

But I have to say I'm not sanguine about this. I'm sure there are treaties being whipped up that will enshrine DRM as a human right ("consumers require choices of content; such choices can only be made available if adequate legal controls are in place; private copying is in derogation of the Rights of Man" -- something like that), and those French people wanting to make copies for maman will be sent meekly back to the store to buy again. "