In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”.

Oh joy! Oh 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0! Boy am I relieved to hear this decision. It means that I no longer need to be on the look out for the police when watching a DVD on Linux. I can now safely admit that I have libdvdcss installed on my computer. All the guilt and shame has finally been lifted off my shoulders. To watch a DVD on Linux no longer means you’re a criminal (in Europe at least).

But wait, there’s more:

According to the court, CSS no longer achieves its protection objective. The court relied on two expert witnesses and said that “…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. [...].” Thus, the court concluded that “CSS protection can no longer be held ‘effective’ as defined in law.”

According to Finnish copyright law and the underlying EU directive, a protection measure is effective if it “achieves the protection objective” – that is, if it has not been “broken” or circumvented. Any protection measure which has been cracked is thus not effective, and it is legal to crack such a protection measure. This means that it is only illegal to crack protection systems which have not, or cannot be cracked. Wow, what a smart EU directive! Imagine if there was a law banning the picking of a lock which cannot be picked. That would just as smart.

It’ll be really interesting to see what happens to HD-DVD and Blu-ray. There will very likely soon be software to crack both, and following this court decision it should be legal to use such software.

So, kudos to the Helsinki District Court!

09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0

… and face up to two and a half years in prison.

It seems that the MPAA is sending DMCA takedown notices to sites all over the net. These attempts have caused a massive backslash, especially at Digg.com. How long will it take them to figure out that you can’t censor a number? It should be clear to everyone that DRM just doesn’t work, especially when it needs silly laws to protect itself.