DMCA in Court
A very nicely written analysis of the recent DMCA-related court decisions in the Lexmark and Chamberlain cases.
Comments
Clive Robinson • February 25, 2005 7:34 AM
The document makes interesting reading,
From a laypersons perspective it might appear that Microsoft’s installation CD’s not being encrypted might not be covered by the DMCA, unless they could argue that their CAB format or some other asspect of the data on the CD was encrypted.
It just goes to show that even a simplification document does not realy help when it comes to the likly interpretation a Judge is going to make over a peice of broad ranging legislation.
Nick • February 25, 2005 9:13 AM
Here:
http://www.law.com/jsp/ltn/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1109128218592
is another article written about the same two cases. It’s not exactly written for the layperson, but removing all the “chapter 12 article 13″‘s and similare you can get down to the meet of things as per how the rullings where viewed from the people who are doing the work in these cases.
It’s rather similare to the article Bruce posted, but it dosn’t leave open several avenues of attack acompanies can make on the DMCA by quoting several key parts of Judge Gilbert S. Merritt’s statements.
“…We should make clear that in the future companies like Lexmark cannot use the DMCA in conjunction with copyright law to create monopolies of manufactured goods for themselves just by tweaking the facts of this case: by, for example, creating a Toner Loading Program that is more complex and ‘creative’ than the one here, or by cutting off other access to the Printer Engine Program. The crucial point is that the DMCA forbids anyone from trafficking in any technology that ‘is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a [protected] work.” — Judge Gilbert S. Merritt as reported by the Alan J. Hartnick in the New York Law Journal Feb 24, 2005.
I am not trying to make the DMCA sound good or anything, but at least there are people trying to limit it’s generalization and loose terminology.
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Andrew Stephen • February 24, 2005 2:42 PM
My favourite DMCA abuse so far was HP threatening to sue a group of researchers who discovered a vulnerability in Tru64using the DMCA (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947325.html).