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”. The legislation is based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001. According to both Finnish copyright law and the underlying directive, only such protection measure is effective, “which achieves the protection objective.”

My god it's amazing to see common sense win out. CSS was never a "copy-protection" mechanism to begin with. Any idiot with a bitcopier could readily copy a DVD and never even know CSS was there, supposedly "protecting" the data. CSS is, and always has been, a distribution channel protection mechanism that allows DVD manufacturers to eliminate competition by rendering importing agencies powerless, and to charge what they feel the market will bear in each, individual market without having to worry about anyone being able to question it or sell discs to a different market. Afaik, this sort of pricing would be illegal if it was done from one state to the next in the USA.

Finland drops protections for /ineffective/ copy-protection mechanisms!