Three Years Under the DMCA

willybur writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation just released a report (pdf) today detailing the last three years under the DMCA. It describes how the DMCA has been used to unfairly attempt to prosecute all of the various parties over the years, and gives yet another argument of why the DMCA needs to be struck down. It's worth a read." Slashdot has covered most of the incidents listed, but this is nice summary to hand someone who hasn't been following these issues.

Comments

Expanding the DMCAA

[Alien54]

This fits in well with this list of Ten New Copyright Crimes as seen posted over on the LawMeme website.

Which, if anything, is an indicator on where things are going.

Welcome to the world of Max Headroom!

Chilling effect of DMCA on anti-censorware work

[Seth Finkelstein]

I can attest to the chilling effect of the DMCA. It's severely hindered my anticensorware work. That effect on me, and others, was responsible for one of the two anticircumvention exceptions granted by the Librarian of Congress, in the Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works (Compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by [censorware] ... )

Nete, the DMCA Slashdot incident, Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers' Posts, was exactly one of the DMCA incidents in mind as a factor when I made my Slashdot article code proposal in order to get some support for publishing anti-censorware code. Too bad nothing came of it (I don't say Slashdot had to help me out, I'm just pointing out the connections). But the DMCA chilling effect on me for anticensorware work is very real, and well-ground in DMCA court cases. `

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Legitimate use of DMCA?

[Mekanix]

With all these examples of how the DMCA have been used to stiffle competition, kill free speech, hinder research and bury fair use I'm wondering if the DMCA ever have been used in legitimate cases; ie. cases that actually involved piracy/copyrightinfringement?

Re:No No No, Wrong Wrong Wrong!

[camusflage]

Interesting, but irrelevant. You have no legal "right" to play DVD's wherever you want to. That's why the algorithms are licensed.

The problem, legally speaking, comes in because they take away your right of fair use. Fair use is given to the public in exchange for strong copyright laws. In this case, the DVDCCA wants to have its cake (strong copyright laws) and eat it too (not allowing fair use).