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EFF Is Suing the US Government To Invalidate the DMCA's DRM Provisions (boingboing.net)
Cory Doctorow, writes for BoingBoing: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit that challenges the Constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "Digital Rights Management" provision of the law, a notoriously overbroad law that bans activities that bypass or weaken copyright access-control systems, including reconfiguring software-enabled devices (making sure your IoT light-socket will accept third-party lightbulbs; tapping into diagnostic info in your car or tractor to allow an independent party to repair it) and reporting security vulnerabilities in these devices. EFF is representing two clients in its lawsuit: Andrew "bunnie" Huang, a legendary hardware hacker whose NeTV product lets users put overlays on DRM-restricted digital video signals; and Matthew Green, a heavyweight security researcher at Johns Hopkins who has an NSF grant to investigate medical record systems and whose research plans encompass the security of industrial firewalls and finance-industry "black boxes" used to manage the cryptographic security of billions of financial transactions every day. Both clients reflect the deep constitutional flaws in the DMCA, and both have standing to sue the US government to challenge DMCA 1201 because of its serious criminal provisions (5 years in prison and a $500K fine for a first offense).Doctorow has explained aspects of this for The Guardian today. You should also check Huang's blog post on this.
You might want to put a link to EFF's donate page. Thanks.
Since you didn't bother reading the article, I will give you the relevant part. Their complaint "builds on two recent Supreme Court precedents (Golan and Eldred), in which the Supremes stated that the only way to reconcile free speech with copyright's ability to restrict who may utter certain words and expressions is fair use and other exemptions to copyright, which means that laws that don't take fair use into account fail to pass constitutional muster."
and then on the plank . . .
I wish them well with this and I'm going to give them money, but money of course is a huge problem now. This is a government and a court that finds things Constitutional or not based on what corporations want, and corporations and law enforcement want broad, hard to interpret laws that can be used to put little people in jail for the 'crime' of bothering the powerful. The DMCA is a terrible law that has been abused more than used, just like how the allegedly anti terrorism Patriot Act is mostly used to prosecute petty drug crimes, quell dissent and anti corporate behavior and other things nobody wants to give up a shred of freedom over.
Well if you are going to invalidate a US Congressional Approved Law that was Signed by the President of the United States (2 out of the 3 parts of the US Checks and Balances). You better be sure that you have as much data to prove your case to the Judicial System as possible. Poorly presenting your case and if it goes to the Supreme Court and your loose makes it nearly impossible to fight the case again.
Much like how the conservatives fought over states rights for same sex marriages, in essence caused it to be legal in the entire state, because their defence of their stance wasn't backed up. If they didn't bring the case up, they may had a chance keeping what they perceive as a problem limited to only those LiBeRaL states.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here is the complaint, in case anyone wants to read it.
Their argument in brief: those provisions of the DMCA are preventing people from expressing themselves (free speech) which violates the first amendment. The Library of Congress is supposed to approve various exemptions to the DMCA for the purpose of research (or other), but the LoC failed to do so (in 2015). Even if the LoC had correctly fulfilled their duty, having them as a gatekeeper on what speech is allowed violates the first amendment.
This is a great lawsuit, I can't wait to see what the government's response will be. Incidentally, there is a third plaintiff besides the two mentioned in the summary, a company called Alphamax (but I've never heard of them).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's worth mentioning that the DMCA has a provision for "fair use" sorts of things, which is that the library of congress (every three years) will review what you want to do, and then approve it or disapprove it. So they had to wait until the Library of Congress actually met, and then disapproved something that is quite reasonable and likely to win a case.
So finally, in 2015, the Library of Congress met and rejected certain things that seem quite reasonable and defensible under the first amendment. In response, the EFF is not only asking that those things be approved, but also that the entire "Library of Congress as gatekeeper" thing be ruled unconstitutional.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't recall copyright having an amendment. Don't Constitutional rights trump pretty much everything else, period?
Copyright is one of the enumerated powers of Congress (U.S. Const. I.8): "The Congress shall have power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This power is subject to other rights retained by the people, such as freedom from Congressional interference with freedom of speech (U.S. Const. Amendment I).
I am unsure why the DOJ is on the list.
Because the law has criminal penalties. Suing the sitting Attorney General for an injunction on enforcing a law is the standard legal fiction used to challenge a criminal statute's constitutionality in the United States.
Tell that to Red Bull. You're mostly right -- there are only certain companies licensed to trade in coca leaf, probably because it'd be too easy otherwise to trade coca leaf under the cover of it being de-cocanized coca leaf -- but Stepan can sell to other beverage makers besides TCCC.
It should provide safe harbor protection without requiring content take down notices be processed. For example of abuse look at the Gavin E Long videos on YouTube; he filmed himself and uploaded blog videos as the sole owner of the videos. Then he died after doing a mass shooting. In response provocateurs submitted fake DMCA copyright claims and now all the videos are offline, but only he could access his account to submit counterclaims to have the videos put back up. YouTube follows the DMCA which requires the videos or content to be taken down even if the request is invalid, because without the due process checks of a judge or jury there is no way to know if the content is infringing or not.
No one but Gavin could defend himself but in the case a judge or jury were involved, they might never issue take down orders because the requests were obviously frivolous.
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