As most of our regular users already know, Finland has adopted a new copyright legislation that will come in force on 1st of January, 2006. The new copyright legislation has been adopted to comply with European Union Copyright Directive, which was approved by European Parliament and European Commission back in 2001. Most of the other EU countries have already adopted the directive to their local legislations, Finland being one of the last countries which hadn't done so yet.
The Directive makes it very clear that each member of the Union has to make it illegal to distribute, manufacture, sell and advertise tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms. The directive doesn't state how effective or strong the protection has to be in order to be covered by the legislation, so basically the directive states that text which is written backwards can be considered a copy protected text and people can't provide tools to circumvent it. However, the directive leaves breathing room for each country to consider their own special needs -- part which Finnish parliament failed to consider, IMO. Additionally, Finnish parliament decided to make distribution of services and tools aimed to circumvent copy protection punishable upto 1 year in prison, which is the minimum punishment that provides police rights for full search warrant in suspects home, office, etc.
Most idiotic thing about the law is the fact that Finland has enjoyed one of the most relaxed copyright laws in Western World for ages. In Finland it has been legal to copy CDs and DVDs, even those borrowed from local library or from your friends, for personal use. Additionally, copying a copy of a CD or DVD (or book, etc) has been perfectly legal. This right has been compensated to copyright owners via blank media levy, sorta copyright tax added on blank CDs, blank cassettes, blank DVDRs, etc. Blank DVDR costs about 3 times the price that it costs in countries without levy, such as UK. People have accepted that levy quite widely, as they have understood that it compensates for their extended rights.
Now, the new copyright legislation makes it illegal to provide guides and software to circumvent copy protections, like CSS found on virtually all commercial DVD-Video discs. This effectively means that copying DVDs is considered to be illegal. Despite this, the blank media levy remains on blank DVDRs, CDs, etc. Same applies for copy-protected CDs -- two days after Finnish parliament approved the new law, Sony BMG Finland announced that all of their upcoming audio CDs released in 2006 and onwards, will contain some form of copy protection, thus making it illegal to copy them, even for personal use. And the blank media levy still remains on blank CDRs, portable MP3 players (its typically 25 euros per player), etc. And the most absurd fact is that the law was justified on grounds that only 2% of available audio CDs are currently copy-protected -- and MPs didn't even ask from media industry whether that ratio will stay the same if the law is passed. Well, now we know.. And DVDs weren't even mentioned in the parliament's discussions, considering the fact that more than 99% of all commercial DVDs are copy-protected already.
Considering the fact that several European Union countries added exceptions to their legislations that allow personal backups, distribution of copy-protection breaking tools for free, etc, I think that Finnish government and parliament failed miserabely to consider the law's effect on regular consumers. What makes the whole legislation hilarious is that downloading from P2P networks (assuming you don't upload anything that violates existing copyrights) is perfectly legal. So, share legal stuff via DC++ and download the already-ripped-and-compressed version of King Kong in DVDR format and burn it for yourself -- legal. Buy the same movie on DVD and make a copy for yourself because you're afraid that your kids will damage the disc -- illegal.
It should be also noted that while the old copyright legislation gave quite good rights for consumers, it also made it illegal to distribute copyrighted material to general public -- including sharing movies, music, etc via P2P networks. So, the general piracy via P2P networks was already well-covered under the existing law, the new legislation just annoys people's rights to make backups of movies, music, e-books, etc that they have purchased legally and doesn't limit piracy at all.
These are just my personal thoughts about the law that makes American DMCA to pale in comparison.
THIS LAW SUCKS
