Slashdot Mirror
Interview with DMCA-challenger
BrianWCarver writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with Ben Edelman, the Harvard law student and internet researcher who is bringing suit against the DMCA with the ACLU. Slashdot covered the announcement of this legal challenge. To refresh your memory, Edelman wants to be able to research the lists of sites blocked by internet filtering software, and to be able to publish his research. He's no lawyer yet, but he responds quite well to several objections to the case."
I was under the impression that Mr. Edelman was the plaintiff in this case.
(Following is a short excerpt from the article.)
Did you actually read the article? The above is from the second paragraph, for crying out loud.
No wonder you post anonymously.
That's pretty well how it is. You either need to be a lawyer, or invest so much time that you could be, to have read everything relevant.
Should it be that way? Hell no. I've often proposed that the entire legal code an individual be subjected to be readable and roughly memorizable by "the average non-college educated person". So IMHO the legal code should be no longer than a reasonable read for a grade-12 student, use no words they aren't likely to have seen, and not be so complex as to confuse them. This does mean a very simple legal code, but it also means lawmakers would have to pick and choose.
(The "exception" would be that the description of the spirit of the law wouldn't have to be included, just the actual rules you have to follow.)
There is some legal precedent for this. Many judges are finding that ignorance *is* an excuse, at least in contract law with one uninformed party and one informed party where the uninformed party is shown a 20-page contract that they have to sign if they want a job/healthcare/a house/etc.
In a system where the legal code was required to be understood by the majority of the people they'd either have to simplify it, or increase the level of education of the people and include legal classes as standard curiculum (this really should be, even now).
It's old news, but people who are interested in the Cyber Patrol case mentioned in the interview could do worse than to read this FAQ posted by one of the programmers. He also has a links page covering the ongoing fight against DMCA-style copyright extension in Canada.