USAF Violates DMCA, Escapes Unscathed

eldavojohn recommends coverage at Ars on a Byzantine case just thrown out by an appeals court. The US Air Force cracked the code that would expire a piece of software. For this they were sued under the DMCA in Blueport v. United States. The Court of Federal Claims heard it and threw it out. "The reasoning behind the decisions focuses on the US government's sovereign immunity, which the court describes thusly: 'The United States, as [a] sovereign, "is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued... and the terms of its consent to be sued in any court define that court's jurisdiction to entertain the suit."' ... 'The DMCA itself contains no express waiver of sovereign immunity,' the judge wrote, 'Indeed, the substantive prohibitions of the DMCA refer to individual persons, not the Government.'"

Comments

Re:What's the fuss?

[PhasmatisApparatus]

Right. And I'll rename myself Anonymous Coward. Er,.. wait.

Re:Double standards are new?

[Martin Blank]

No one has said that Iran (or Libya before them) were prohibited from developing civilian nuclear energy. There's lots of help for that, as demonstrated by the recently-concluded talks with India to help develop the civilian nuclear program there.

However, signatories to the NNPT are required to be completely open about their civilian reactors and facilities. They are also, with the exception of the admitted nuclear-armed states, prohibited from undertaking anything that would lead to a nuclear weapons program. Failure to follow the requirements to the letter tends to raise suspicion.

And just to be pedantic, the US has about 3700 strategic nuclear warheads in active service.