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From http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/band .ht ml

Title I of the DMCA amends U.S. copyright law to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, adopted at the WIPO Diplomatic Conference in December 1996.
Two major provisions in the WIPO treaties require contracting parties to provide legal remedies against circumventing technological protection measures and tampering with copyright management information. To comply with these provisions, the DMCA adds a new chapter, Chapter 12, to Title 17 of the United States Code.

I'm assuming you mean that the :C:C is protecting copyrighted data in barcodes,

What I meant was that I was making an assumption about what the previous poster meant because I didn't understand them. Not an assumption about what the :C:C actually does.

This is what IS protected, and the DMCA states if you try to go around this scrambling you are "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title [DMCA]."

What copyrighted work are you claiming to be protected by the :C:C? Some copyrighted barcodes? The DMCA states, in the introduction:

• The DMCA prohibits gaining unauthorized access to a work by circumventing a technological protection measure put in place by the copyright owner where such protection measure otherwise effectively controls access to a copyrighted work

In other words, if there are thousands of other barcode readers, then the :C:C doesn't effectively prevent copying the barcode data.

Or are you claiming that the DMCA covers the :C:C in some other bizarre way? No other data is being copied with the Linux driver, so I don't see how it could be anything else.
--

How about

• The Digital Future Coalition
  
• The American Association of Law Libraries
  
• The District of Colombia Library Association
  
• The University of Maryland
  
• The Consortium of College and University Media Centers
  
• PBS
  
• The American Library Association
  
• The Association of Research Libraries
  
• The Special Libraries Association
  
• The Medical Library Association
  
• Georgetown University
  
• The California Digital Library
  
• The American Association of Universities
  
• The American Council on Education
  
• The National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges
  
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation
  

Speaking of librarians and freedom, you may be interested in this- a speech Bruce Sterling once gave to the association of research librarians on precisely this topic. Still topical, and still interesting.

This article mentions the Reverse Engineering exception in the DMCA. Here's a quote:

Reverse Engineering Exception. Section 1201(f) allows software developers to circumvent technological protection measures of a lawfully obtained computer program in order to identify the elements necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs. A person may reverse engineer the lawfully acquired program only where the elements necessary to achieve interoperability are not readily available and reverse engineering is otherwise permitted under the copyright law. Furthermore, a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent and make available to others the information or means for the purpose of achieving interoperability.

LiViD more clearly takes advantage of the interoperability exception than does DeCSS.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

Copyright doesn't generally cover the underlying information in copyrighted material; it just covers the "writing", or creative content. The law casebook and phone book publishers have been fighting this battle for some time, and mostly losing, both in the courts and in Congress.

The database vendors tried to get copyright protection for database content into the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but failed. In 1999, they tried a separate bill, H. R. 1858, deceptively named "The Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act of 1999", to restrict copying online databases, but Congress didn't fall for that one.

So eBay can threaten, but probably can't do much. If they had a solid copyright case, they could have used the awful "notice and takedown" provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to force this competitor off the net. But if that didn't happen, their case is probably weak.

The "trespass" argument sounds like a desperation move.

Technically, Napster is providing servers that do nothing other than show who else using the client is connected. The clients talk to each other for all other information (or so I'm led to believe).

When you "log in" to Napster, the client sends your list of available files to the server. Searches use the database on the server, for speed. (Could you imagine trying to search for a file by opening a socket to thousands of modem-connected Widows systems, and then asking these systems whether they have anything matching your search criteria?)

going after the people running a Napster server [...] What charge can you possibly bust this guy on? Facilitating the transfer of pirates audio?

Argh! Don't give them any ideas!

The scary part is that your flippant comment is much too close to reality. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which is now a US law -- no need to wait for the next millennium!) it's now illegal to circumvent copy protection (no matter how lame), or to create a program which enables other people to circumvent copy protection.

Now, that's not quite what Napster does -- there's no copy protection on a CD, so an MP3 ripped from CD didn't defeat any copy protection, and so the trading of ripped MP3 files via Napster doesn't have anything to do with copy protection. However, given the recent stupidity of Congress (like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and given the obvious influence that corporations have over the government, it's not just conceivable that Congress will pass a law as you describe, but likely.