I am not in the habit of buying DVDs. I own only a handful, most of them gifts. The reason is that I feel guilty about supporting a system that is crooked and violates basic consumer rights. But that's not the topic of this post; instead I want to raise a question about CSS (Content Scramble System), a form of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) that is used in pretty much all commercial DVDs.

Now, CSS was famously compromised a few years ago; it really is a joke from a security point of view. Today, millions of people all around the world don't give a second thought that they are actually circumventing CSS every time they watch a DVD on their Linux systems. Technically, this is illegal in some places (well, in one place: the US), but thankfully no one really gives a damn. (The law that makes circumventing CSS illegal — the DMCA — is so fundamentally flawed that history will have a few laughs on its account). Anyway, the point is that in its "natural state" a DVD is protected in such a manner that one does not have access to the information therein contained.

The expiration term for copyrighted material varies from country to country. The Berne Convention states a minimum of 50 years for cinematographic work, and in the particular case of the US the term is 95 years after the date of first publication for corporate authorship. So, imagine you were to hold on to your DVDs for 95 years (of course kept in an environment that would prevent their degradation). After this term, the copyright would have expired, and you would be able to redistribute the content as you see fit. But hold on, you can't, because CSS prevents you from doing so. Shouldn't there be guarantees in place assuring that after the copyright term has expired, the original copyrighted work would be freely available?