Digital Restrictions Management (originally introduced by the entertainment industry as Digital Rights Management), are technologies that prevent, control, or restrict the use of hardware, software, or other creative works like books, films, music, etc.. They are also known as anti-copy technologies. In 1998 in USA and in 2001 in Europe, these technologies were given legal protection by the lawmakers. Copyright holders convinced the lawmakers that they needed DRM to be protected by the law in order to stop file-sharing without commercial purposes. This legal protection meant that breaking the DRM started to be illegal or a crime. In Portugal, for example, breaking the DRM had a penalty of up to one year in prison, until 2017. Even if you did something legal. In Europe, we have a set of copyright exceptions to guarantee fundamental rights. These are uses of the work we are allowed to do without having to ask permission to the rightholders and authors. Depending on the law in your country, you can make a private copy, use works or parts of works for education and scientific research, quotations for criticism or review. Libraries and other cultural heritage institutions have a set of exceptions that allow them to make available works to the public and to digitally preserve those works, and the press also has a set of exceptions to guarantee the right to information. These exceptions are described in article 5 of the InfoSoc European Directive. When lawmakers gave legal protection to DRM, they didn't really protect these exceptions, which meant that while citizens have these rights, they cannot exercise them, since there is no way to exercise most of them without breaking the DRM. For instance, if you bought a music CD and your country has a private copy exception[^1], you can make a digital copy to listen to its music on your mobile phone. But, if the CD has DRM, while you still have the right to make a copy, you cannot exercise it, since there is no way to make a private copy of a DRMed CD without breaking the DRM, which you are not allowed to do. [...] With the knowledge of how to exercise our rights, we decided to test the law. We got a DVD with DRM and contacted IGAC telling them we wanted to make a private copy, and asked them for the "means" to make such private copy without breaking the DRM. This would be a copyright exception in Portugal, and thus a legal action. The first request we actually made was for the means to legally watch a DVD with DRM on our GNU/Linux laptop, but IGAC didn't understand this request, so we used the private copy exception, which seems to be easier to understand. After pointing IGAC to the law and which exact articles we were trying to exercise, they told us they couldn't give us what we asked since they didn't have those "means", as the rightholders had not deposited them. That is a situation the law didn't foresee, therefore there was no penalty for rightholders that didn't make such a deposit. We made sure to get a written statement from IGAC saying they didn't have those "means" (either to that DVD or anything else), which was important for us to use as a proof that the law at that moment didn't work. [...] During the discussions in the Portuguese Parliament, we pointed out that the law at that time didn't work since IGAC didn't have the "means" needed. We went a step further and claimed that, if they didn't want to change the law as we proposed, they had to at least change it to establish a punishment for the rightholders not handing those "means" over, and that the parliament should invite them to speak, and explain why they didn't do it. Both IGAC and the rightholders were called to the Parliament. Both admitted they didn't have the keys, and the rightholders even added they would never get the keys from the companies that made the DRM systems. # Present your alternative At this point, our feeling was that most members of the parliament knew we were right: the solution the law had didn't and couldn't work. So, they were ready to approve the change in the law. The approved law was proposed by the Left Bloc, with the votes in favour of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Greens Party, and the Persons, animals, and Nature Party and was promulgated by the President of Portugal on 2nd of June of 2017. The law also prohibited DRM in public domain works, in new editions of public domain works, and in works published by public entities or funded by public money. Continua su https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20191113-01.en.html Giacomo