Judgment in Stevens v Sony on Australian paracopyright laws

Well, the High Court has pronounced. And the Full Federal Court has been overturned - unanimously, as it turns out. All three of the judgments have concluded that a narrower approach to construing the meaning of 'technological protection measure' should be preferred.

The upshot is that the technical measures used by Sony on their PlayStation games, which prevent disks without the proper 'code' from being played in PlayStation machines, are not 'technological protection measures' within the meaning of the Australian Act; and hence selling devices to 'circumvent' the Sony measures was not a breach of s 116A of the Australian Act. In short, the High Court have reinstated Justice Sackville's interpretation of 'TPM' from his decision at first instance:

'A 'technological protection measure', as defined, must be a device or product which utilises technological means to deny a person access to a copyright work [or other subject-matter], or which limits a person's capacity to make copies of a work [or other subject matter] to which access has been gained, and thereby 'physically' prevents or inhibits the person from undertaking acts which, if carried out, would or might infringe copyright in the work [or other subject matter]'

On this definition, Sony's device is not a TPM, because all it does is prevent infringing copies from being played in Sony PlayStation devices - the effect on infringement is deterrent, rather than to 'physically' prevent infringement.

[snip]

-- via Weatherall's Law

FUCKING A! This is a good decision.

I praised the decision of Sackville in my article on the Economics of Piracy two years ago, and I'm glad the High Court has recognised it. Yay.

TAKE THAT COPYRIGHT INDUSTRIES! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA.