From ZDnet.com
In its new “Unintended Consequences” report released Thursday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lists a variety of cases triggered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law passed in 1998 designed to bring copyright law into the digital age.
Hollywood studios, record labels and other intellectual property holders lobbied hard for the law, fearing that the Internet would become a forum for rampant piracy because it allows people to easily copy and distribute digital products. Unlike analog copies, which lose resolution with each replication, digital copies of products maintain their high quality.
In its report, the EFF said aggressive applications of the law have reached beyond the intention of the measure. The EFF said the DMCA has had a threefold effect: chilling free expression and scientific research; jeopardizing fair use; and impeding competition.
“In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy,” the study’s authors wrote.
The study examines the fallout of a particular portion of the DMCA, known as the anti-circumvention provision, which prohibits cracking protections on copyrighted works, in most cases, or even telling people how to break into the software. Aside from narrow exceptions related to research or to reverse engineering, the law doesn’t consider whether a person cracking the code plans to do so for legitimate purposes.
You can read the entire article here
Related Posts
- Implications of the DCMA for Innovation, Stanford Speech
- DMCA can lead to abuse
- Hollywood Using DMCA as a Club
- Who enforces the DMCA – Chilling Warning
- Has Copyright Law (DMCA) Met Its Match?
Loading ...
