Anticircumvention Laws Seen as Threat to Science

Scott_Marks writes: "Science magazine has a review by Pamela Samuelson on the effect of anticircumvention rules on the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The abstract: 'Scientists who study encryption or computer security or otherwise reverse engineer technical measures, who make tools enabling them to do this work, and who report the results of their research face new risks of legal liability because of recently adopted rules prohibiting the circumvention of technical measures and manufacture or distribution of circumvention tools. Because all data in digital form can be technically protected, the impact of these rules goes far beyond encryption and computer security research. The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules.'"

Comments

Hmm

[AntiFreeze]

I see these laws as a threat to anyone who thinks "Hmm, I wonder how that works."

Scientists, hobbyists, you name it: everyone is effected by these laws.

All that I can say is what hundreds of people have already said: write your congressmen and senators! Do NOT let these laws pass.

Scientific American on Dmitry

[Black Parrot]

There's a one-page article about Dmitry in the October '01 Scientific American.

It makes the oft-made point that what he did wasn't illegal back home in Russia, but adds a further point that I haven't heard before: in Russia it is illegal to interfere with the user's right to make copies. A lawyer is quoted as saying that you could probably win a class action suit against Adobe in Russia.

The article also touches on the depressing effect on science; the first sentence is -

Imagine Carl Djerassi, inventor of the birth-control pill, arrested at an endocrinology conference in Japan during the decades before 1999, when oral contraceptives were illegal there.

Too early

[Spankophile]

I must be half asleep still, I read that as

Anticircumcision Laws...

improving anti-circumvention laws?

[firewort]

I'm sorry, but the only way to improve anti-circumvention law is by revoking it.

Reverse engineering has value in gaining greater understanding of existing technology, maintaining, and improving upon it.

If wily customers choose to violate warranties and license agreements, it certainly poses a problem for companies, but in no way should laws be passed to prohibit them, for the damage such laws do to legitimate research. If companies need a legal method of deterring such behaviour, let them sue for violating a license agreement that specifies no reverse engineering. They should not need, nor get, a stronger remedy.

In fact, remedies like DirectTV used (the small incremental updates of ROM code that eventually locked out hackers) should be applauded. (Even if it was a bummer to those getting free services) DirectTV needed no legal recourse, but preserved their business through creative techological means.

The point is simply this:
Just because a company has made money in the past, there should be no law guaranteeing them that they will continue to do so in the future. It is not up to Congress to preserve the business models of corporations. That duty lies with a CTO, CIO, CFO, and board of directors.

A Copyright Proposal

[Grech]

It is clear, to both sides, that the copyright system is broken, although the two sides disagree as to how. What is needed is, I believe, some way to balance the intrests of the corporations on one side, and the people on the other.

While I believe the most egregious pieces of the current trade alphabet soup need to be elminated, I think a longer-term solution would be the restructuring of copyright duration.

Rather than making copyrights last for some large X number of years, or the life of the author + X years, why not make a copyright short term, but infinately renewable, at an exponentially increasing cost? This will allow corps to protect their most valuable content, while forcing them to relinquish claims on anything that does not sell enough to cover the cost of renewing its copyright.

I do not claim to know what durations and costs would be required to make it work, here balancing the needs of the small publisher for protection, with the need for a large corps content to expire sometime, but I think it's an idea that's worth a thought.