There has been a lot of press about a new law coming into force in France that impact on DRM technologies.  But I wonder how many people have actually read the law (it’s in French, but if you fancy a go have a look at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_d%27auteur_et_droits_voisins_dans_la_soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_de_l%27information and enjoy).

It may be irritating to understand that not all countries have the same view of Copyright as the USA, but it’s a fact.  In the US it is a constitutional matter (which basically means don’t even think about changing anything because it’s damn near impossible) but French law dates from 1789, so you can figure out for yourself who might have got there first.

Apple are on record as saying this proposed law will run a coach and horses through their DRM controls, although many blog commentators don’t seem to be able to agree with them and prefer to shoot at the record publishing industries instead.

So what’s actually going on here?

Well, cast your minds back to the introduction of DVD region controls.  This was an attempt by some industries to say that if you purchased something in one region of the world, then you had to find yourself a player for use in that region of the world if you wanted to play it.  They managed to create a load of enemies from the tourist trade – who wanted to buy something on holiday that wasn’t worth jack when you got home?  And never mind the chaos it created for the DVD player industry.

Well, today that stupidity has been and gone because the commercial world has seen to it.  DVD players are multi-region despite the desires of the people who tried to impose the control.  Manufacturers even make available on the Internet that convert their products from being single region to multi-region so you can play back the products you bought.

And that, strange though it may seem, is basically what the French law seems to be addressing.  They are taking the view that players ought to be multi-standard so that they will play whatever you stick in them.  They are not taking the view that players ought to be able to allow you to copy anything, anytime, anywhere.  Because that would conflict seriously with their approach to Copyright and the author’s inalienable rights (which the US don’t like since it simply doesn’t fit with their approach). 

So maybe the French approach actually makes some sense.  That whatever the protection regime used to protect the DVD, a device for playing DVDs should play them regardless of the DRM mechanism in force.  If player manufacturers choose to provide devices that can copy those DRM protected works, the Copyright owners are not short of ways of suing the hell out of them, starting with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and moving on up from there extremely rapidly.  What industry should be concentrating on are the people producing copiers and not those producing players – that is where the real problem lies.  After all, if technology exists that ensured that original DVD cannot be copied then there would be no need for DRM controls on DVDs.

Aaagh you may shout.  What about my rights to make a copy for legitimate purposes in case I lose or break my original DVD?  Well how many of you take a copy of a paperback book you have purchased for that very reason and why should rights on what you can do with a DVD be any different?

DRM technology is not fundamentally evil.  But sometimes the things implemented with it are questionable at best.  Trying to say that if you buy something in the USA you cannot use it in Europe is proven to be economically flawed, especially if you think you can charge different amounts for the product when all reality is screaming at you that there is a global market thanks to the Internet.  Today, boundaries are created, maintained and enforced by Customs and the Revenue Service rather than by manufacturers and suppliers, who might be powerful lobby groups with a thirst for profit that sometimes seems to override even common sense.

And even if the player manufacturers do provide copiers does it really matter?  Going back only a few years the cassette tape industry produced the cassette tape copier.  The music industry said it should be prevented, but failed to get any support from the copier manufacturers or the consumers.  So industry settled for having an extra tax on the sale of blank tapes instead.  Industry then created the DAT tape system, but the copying controls were so tight and so ridiculous that the consumer simply would not buy it at any price, and that industry segment died, and the technology with it. 

Maybe the entertainment industry, like Belshazzar who went before them, can see but will not read the writing on the wall.  Perhaps it is in French?