“If I supply you with a tool to remove DRM (like some versions of Calibre), then I commit a felony and Amazon can have me sent to prison for five years for giving you a tool to move my book from the Kindle app to a rival app like Kobo. ... [E]ven though copyright law says you can format shift your books, music, videos, games, [etc.], DMCA 1201 (a ‘paracopyright law’) makes this an imprisonable felony if you have to break DRM first.” – @pluralistic
https://lifehacker.com/tech/you-can-remove-drm-from-your-digital-books-but-its-probably-illegal
@molly0xfff @pluralistic In Portugal, @ansol worked to change the law: when the DRM is used to stop you from doing legal things, it's not DRM (by law's definition), so you can break it. When the DRM is used to stop you from doing illegal things, continues to be DRM and you can't break it.
(AFAIK this new law was never tested in court)
@paulasimoes @molly0xfff @pluralistic @ansol Probably one ofthereasons it was never tested is that you need someway to break the DRM before the law may become applicable. Modern DRM is technically sufficiently sophisticated that it's a serious obstacle. And those working on breaking the DRM may not be protected by the law because their DRM-breaking efforts may also be used for illegal purposes 
I'm not sure if I understand your point. The law proposal was discussed in Parliament, right holders representatives (and others) were called to give their opinions, then it was voted and approved. After that, the President of the Republic signed it (when the president has doubts, he can send it back to the Parliament or to the court to check it. He didn't have doubts in this case).
So, the law is applicable.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen that sometimes courts don't interpret the law exactly as it was intended and then, in those cases, there are changes by the Parliament. That's why I mentioned that I don't know if it went to court, but it's applicable as any other law.
Let me add that we worked with the definition in the law. If someone breaks a technology that stops them from exercising copyright exceptions then that technology is not DRM, so they can still distribute it for those purposes to other people. Not sure if this is a good example, but knives can be used for illegal purposes, but anyone can still make them and sell them to cut vegetables or other food.
@paulasimoes @molly0xfff @pluralistic @ansol The issue usually is that the DRM laws usually come with far-reaching side-rules, most importantly they make it illegal to reverse-engineer a DRM-lock. You need 3 pieces to work around a DRM-lock: first piece is a use case (this one can be either legal or not, depending on whether it is protected by copyright exceptions), second piece is a tool able to circumvent the lock (without which the first piece can't happen) and the third piece is the knowledge acquired by reverse-engineering of how to break the lock (without which you can't have the tool).
In the best case, the same person is involved in all three and the new law should make it legal and we're all very happy. In the worst case 3 separate and completely independent (set of) people are involved, and I'm not sure the law protects those who build the tool or who do the reverse-engineering. To be effective, the law needs to clearly protect all three sets of people, otherwise it's too risky for researchers to embark on reverse-engineering, who may not have any specific use-case in mind.
@monnier @molly0xfff @pluralistic @ansol Sorry to get back to this only now. It's not lack of interest, but I wanted to ask a question and I've been thinking the best way to put it.
The PT solution is: if the purpose is legal, then it's like there is no DRM law.
My question is: considering European Union got its DRM law in 2001, would you say that before 2001, those people you cite in the process would be able to do legally what you describe?
Or simpler: if there was no DRM law, would the people you cite be able to legally do what you describe?
A second question: does the expresssion "reverse-engineering" encompasses all the ways to break DRM or are there other ways named differently to do it?
(If others in this thread want to give their input, please do)
Let me explain: the European Commission opened the copyright directive (approved in 2019), so we get some years before it opens it again, but when it does and if cites DRM (in 2019 because of TDM exception), associations like ANSOL and others will be able to ask members of the European Parliament to meke changes proposals. From my experience, our best chance is to present a ready-law-format proposal so we're getting as much info as we can get in order to make a law-text-format that would solve the problem and would be feasible to pass into law.
@paulasimoes @monnier @molly0xfff @ansol
We need not wait for the CD to re-open before reconsidering Article 6. There are at least two different paths to reforming A6:
1. We can call for a focused review of A6 alone, without re-opening the Copyright Directive;
2. We can include abuse of TPMs as a per se unfair practice in the new Fairness Directive.
As to whether firms could have reverse-engineered TPMs in embedded systems prior to 2001 - yes, but these effectively didn't exist then.
@paulasimoes @monnier @molly0xfff @ansol
Both because there were no legal protections for TPMs, which meant that a manufacturer who incurred the expense of building a wall around their product would be wasted as the wall was swiftly dismantled by rivals; and because SoCs and other lightweight chips were prohibitively expensive until the 2010s.
@paulasimoes @monnier @molly0xfff @ansol
Embedded logic in the 2000s was so primitive that its code wasn't even entitled to a copyright - for example, Lexmark lost its suit against Static Controls because the TPM it accused SC of circumventing only had 60 bytes of code, and the court ruled that this didn't rise to the level of a copyrightable work, so it was not possible to accuse Static of circumventing a copyright access control.
@pluralistic @monnier @molly0xfff @ansol thanks for pointing these two options, I'll check the procedures for the first one, but for the second (didn't make the connection or didn't know about #DigitalFairnessAct) it seems there's a public consultation on until 31st August so that could be a first step we can easily do to start with.
I leave the link to the consultation if anyone else needs it:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14514-Consumer-Agenda-2025-2030-and-action-plan-on-consumers-in-the-Single-Market_en
@paulasimoes @molly0xfff @pluralistic @ansol Yes, before the digital copyright thingy, reverse-engineering and developing circumvention tools was definitely legal. "Reverse-engineering" just means to investigate how something works. It can be (and usually is) a necessary element to break some DRM locks, but not always, no, tho I guess you could call most other ways as forms of reverse-engineering. Also sometimes breaking DRM requires illegal acts (like going against an NDA or other contract).
@monnier @paulasimoes @molly0xfff @pluralistic @ansol The 'illegality' is a constructed illegality -because those in power wre able to declared it 'illiegal'. There is no inherent illegality in taking something apart that you properly bought. But, greed and lust for power never sleeps.