Protection of technological measures: juridical definition of a technical tool

  • Authors:
  • Lígia Lopes de Sousa Carreto

  • Affiliations:
  • Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Lisboa

  • Venue:
  • EATIS '07 Proceedings of the 2007 Euro American conference on Telematics and information systems
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The present work aims to bring to discussion and to analysis, the texts of the 6th article of the 2001/29/EC Directive (22nd of May) and the 217th article of the Portuguese law 50/2004 (24th of August) that talk about protection of technological measures designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right. These texts have many technical terms that describe technical tolls of Computer Engineering. However, in our modest opinion, these technical terms do not facilitate at all the interpretation of the law, since it is necessary to enter a technical universe of a specific science very distant from the Law Science. Furthermore, we believe that the laws are made to be understood beyond the jurists, that is, by laypeople, and we believe that it is impossible to jurists to legislate about rights in the Information Society without the correspondent partnership between them and the computer scientists and technicians. We analyse the technical definitions in use, and serve ourselves of the juridical hermeneutic to interpret the legal texts. To conclude, we point out our certainties and uncertainties that we expect will be object of debate.