The Finnish Ministry of Education has published a new draft copyright law. The new proposal does not differ a lot from an earlier version that was rejected by parliament last February. It is still highly complicated and overzealous.

On the positive side the so-called 'community first sale doctrine' is now limited to commercial entities only. Also, DVD-country codes are now clearly defined to be outside the anti-circumvention rules. On the negative side the proposal only allows circumvention of copyright protection in case of listening or watching, but not for private copies. The proposal also forbids the reverse engineering of software if the software is used as a technical protection measure. This is not based on the directive but is a purely Finnish 'invention'.

Electronic Frontier Finland has been asked to write a statement about the law and also to participate in parliamentary hearings, which will be held in the last week of August. Participation is technically open to anyone and thus not limited to Finnish organisations. For example, last time the MPAA produced a written statement about the draft law. This means that if somebody wants to try to explain why limiting otherwise totally legitimate reverse engineering is a bad idea or something similar, it can be done. The deadline for statements is 5 September. Please contact EFFI if you want to help so that we can co-ordinate the effort and give more detailed information about the law.

Ministry of Education's EUCD-page (in Finnish)
http://www.minedu.fi/opm/tekijanoikeus/direktiivin_voimaan_saattaminen...

(Contribution by Ville Oksanen, EFFI)