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Colbert

In Finland, in order for DRM to be enforceable by law, the DRM product has to be determined to be “effective”. That means if I hop over to my copy of Visual Basic and start coding up my new Cryptographic Recursive Application Protection ™ System chances are it would not be considered a viable piece of digital rights management software.

Early today, Finnish courts ruled that the CSS (Content Scrambling System) that is commonly used in DVDs for encrypting data is ineffective. The court ruled that CSS no longer achieves it’s protection objectives.

…since a Norwegian hacker succeeded in circumventing CSS protection used in DVDs in 1999, end-users have been able to get with ease tens of similar circumventing software from the Internet even free of charge. Some operating systems come with this kind of software pre-installed.

That’s right, children all across the country have been able to download software to descramble content for their parents new High Definition Television’s for almost a decade now.

While this is no where near the end of DRM, it can be considered a shot over the bow. It also gives future litigants in other countries with similar laws ground to stand on. Technology has to be effective in order to hold legal weight? Imagine that.

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