[ILUG] Legality of commercial DVD playback.

[Owen Brady]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 1:54 PM, Phil Bradley <philb at vodafone.ie> wrote:

>
> My totally unqualified response:
>
>
> As far as I can tell, the latest act in Irish law relating to copyright is
> the Copyright and related rights act, 2000. Section 81 states that you can
> adapt a computer program in order to achieve interoperability as long as you
> don't go beyond what is necessary to do so. This doesn't exactly cover the
> case of decrypting the data on a DVD but it is close. It makes no reference
> to copy protection mechanisms as far as I remember. The relevant section is
> below:
>
> http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2000/en/act/pub/0028/sec0081.html
>
>
> The EU Copyright directive (EUCD) 2001/29/EC does give legal protection to
> technical copyright measures (basically, DMCA for Europe) but rights holders
> must allow usage which is consistent with existing copyright provisions in
> each member state (EUCD doesn't get into what these usages are, that's for
> the states to decide).
>
> I don't know what the legal status of EUCD in Ireland is, I would imagine
> that since it was introduced in 2001 that it has been transposed into Irish
> law but I can't find a reference for it.
>
> So, my (non informed) summary is that in Ireland, breaking copyright
> protection mechanisms is probably illegal but only if used for purposes that
> are not legal in the first place. If you're just playing DVDs, you should be
> fine.
>
>  -phil
>
>
>
>
>
> Gareth Eason wrote:
>
>> Owen Brady wrote:
>>
>>> This was mentioned before on this list, but how does the use of libraries
>>> such as libdvdcss/libdvdread
>>> in ireland affect me?. Is it Illegal to actually read commercial dvd's
>>> using
>>> libdvdcss and Mplayer for
>>> example.
>>>
>>
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It appears the law here isn't very clear on this issue.
I guess I will just continue using libdvdcss : )

Thanks everyone,

Owen