The
EU Directive 2001/29/EU (also known as the European Copyright Directive) has made it "a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection or access control systems on digital content such as music, videos, eBooks, and software".
Since today, at least in Germany there is one notable exception: The
Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany's national library and bibliographic information center, has
received a "license to copy", i.e. the official authorization to crack and duplicate DRM-protected e-books and other digital media such as CD-Audio and CD-Roms.
The Deutsche Bibliothek achieved an agreement with the
German Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the
German Booksellers and Publishers Association after it became obvious that copy protections would not only annoy teenage school boys, but also prohibit the library from fulling its
legal mandate to collect, process and bibliographic index important German and German-language based works.