Portugal Bans Use of DRM to Limit Access to Public Domain Works | Electronic Frontier Foundation
►https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/portugal-bans-use-drm-limit-access-public-domain-works
The amendments to Articles 217 and 221 of Portugal’s Code of Copyright and Related Rights do three things. First, they provide that the anti-circumvention ban doesn’t apply to circumvention of DRM in order to enjoy the normal exercise of copyright limitations and exceptions that are provided by Portuguese law. Although Portugal doesn’t have a generalized fair use exception, the more specific copyright exceptions in Articles 75(2), 81, 152(4) and 189(1) of its law do include some key fair uses; including reproduction for private use, for news reporting, by libraries and archives, in teaching and education, in quotation, for persons with disabilities, and for digitizing orphan works. The circumvention of DRM in order to exercise these user rights is now legally protected.
Second and perhaps even more significantly, the law prohibits the application of DRM to certain categories of works in the first place. These are works in the public domain (including new editions of works already in the public domain), and to works published or financed by the government. This provision alone will be a boon for libraries, archives, and for those with disabilities, ensuring that they never again have to worry about being unable to access or preserve works that ought to be free for everyone to use. The application of DRM to such works will now be an offence under the law, and if DRM has been applied to such works nevertheless, it will be permitted for a user to circumvent it.
Third, the law also permits DRM to be circumvented where it was applied without the authorization of the copyright holder. From now on, if a licensee of a copyright work wishes to apply DRM to it when it is distributed in a new format or over a new streaming service, the onus will be on them to ask the copyright owner’s permission first. If they don’t do that, then it won’t be an offence for its customers to bypass the DRM in order to obtain unimpeded access to the work, as its copyright owner may well have intended.
If there’s a shortcoming to the law, it’s that it doesn’t include any new exceptions to the ban on creating or distributing (or as lawmakers ludicrously call it, “trafficking in”) anti-circumvention devices. This means that although users are now authorized to bypass DRM in more cases than before, they’re on their own when it comes to accomplishing this.
