Caltech/Loyola DMCA Mock Trial: MPAA+DOJ v. EFF

Seth Schoen writes "Caltech and Loyola Law School students will argue Friday over a scenario in which a student creates a distributed computing application to crack DRM systems, leading to DMCA criminal prosecution of everyone involved. Those in the Los Angeles area might enjoy attending the 5th annual "At the Crossroads" mock trial (free, Friday May 21 at Caltech in Pasadena). The case will have many realistic touches. A real Federal judge will hear it; the prosecution will be advised by L.A. Federal prosecutors and the defense by an EFF attorney. Expert testimony for the prosecution will be given by MPAA's Brad Hunt and for the defense by EFF's Seth Schoen."

Comments

And distributed is different how?

[TheSHAD0W]

I don't see how this is any different from the prosecution of one person. Either they're all guilty of the DMCA provision, equating them to owning and using lockpicks together... Or the DMCA is judged invalid, and it wouldn't make any difference whether the culprit were one person or many. If something is wrong, it doesn't matter how many people vote to make it right. This is the fallacy of democracy. Personally, I think the scenario was devised simply to create more buzz.

Re:And distributed is different how?

[Carnildo]

Either they're all guilty of the DMCA provision, equating them to owning and using lockpicks together... Or the DMCA is judged invalid, and it wouldn't make any difference whether the culprit were one person or many. If something is wrong, it doesn't matter how many people vote to make it right. This is the fallacy of democracy. Personally, I think the scenario was devised simply to create more buzz.

The hypothetical situation here is:

1) For a class project in encryption technologies, a student makes a distributed system for cracking encryption -- basic proof-of-concept work.
2) Said student gets a large number of people at the school to run said program.

At this point, everything is perfectly legal. What comes next is where the trial comes in:

3) The encryption technique being broken is very similar to the one used to protect digital movies. Again, as proof-of-concept, the distributed system is used to crack the encryption on a sample video that the course professor encoded.
4) The decryption keys generated in step (3) can be used to decrypt any protected movie.
5) The MPAA notices, and arranges for criminal prosecution against the professor of the course, the student who made the program, and everyone who ran the client.

The question is: are the students who ran the client criminally liable? They had no knowlege of (3) and (4). What they knew about was (1) and (2), which were perfectly legal.