Monday, January 31, 2005

Heise gets circumvention cease and desist

Heise Online are not impressed at receiving a cease and desist letter from music industry lawyers.

"On behalf of several major firms in the music industry (BMG, edel, EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music), the Waldorf law firm of Munich sent Heise Zeitschriften Verlag a dissuasion this Friday. Among other things, the letter accuses the publisher of violating § 95a of the German Copyright Act (UrhG) in an article in the news ticker heise online (AnyDVD überwindet Kopierschutz von "Un-DVDs"). In addition, heise stands accused of spreading illegal "devices to get around anti-piracy measures". This law forbids, among other things, the manufacture, import, dissemination, sale, rental, and advertising of such software and hardware that circumvents copy protection measures.


According to the music industry, simply providing a link to the start page of the web site of a copying software manufacturer constitutes a violation of this law."

Here we go again with the legality of linking debate.

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