Posted on 10/16/2002 3:03:29 AM PDT by JameRetief
Just wait for some Anonymous Criminal to post it on Slashdot.
(Don't click on that link! I'm warning you!)
Nahhh they're still in the nut-squeezing stage, not the knee-cap-busting-with-baseball-bat stage. That being the case, the government has little power to go after them :)
They invited impeached, disbarred ex-President Clinton to speak; they hired one of his top aides as a consultant. Oracle is really that bad.
Yes. Universal v. Reimerdes (a.k.a. the NY DVD case).
Eight major motion picture studios brought a suit under the DMCA against 2600 Magazine to enjoin it from publishing or linking to DeCSS, a computer program that circumvents the encryption on DVDs, called CSS. DeCSS was developed to help enable DVDs to be played on computers running the Linux system. It also allows the constitutionally protected fair use of DVDs, which is otherwise prevented by the encryption.
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) moved for an en banc hearing in NY, but was denied.
Then there's Felton and Sklyarov, who "almost" got pinched.
He was convicted of "circumvention of a technological measure used to protect a work", which is the heart of the DMCA. There's also a reference to a second case in Nebraska which involved mod-chipping a Playstation. That answers your original question, "has anyone been prosecuted successfully under this law?"
There aren't any convictions under the "disclosure" interpretation; but remember that Sklyarov was charged with trafficking in circumvention technology, even though he personally distributed no software, only information, and that is what has everyone so concerned about the possibilities.
Well, no U.S. official that respects copyright law can possibly know they published it...
Okay; I'll agree with you on that point. Elcomsoft clearly manufactured a circumvention tool and distributed it in the United States. My understanding is that Sklyarov's only culpability is that he authored the code. Suppose the government could come after me for some of the tools I wrote ten years ago? Hopefully not, since that pre-dates the DMCA.
But now lets consider the Felten case. SDMI threatened Felten with litigation and prosecution under DMCA if he published / presented his own intellectual property in a public forum. SDMI viewed Felten's freedom of speech as a circumvention device. SDMI subsequently backed off their threat, and the EFF filed suit to have the government restrain itself from using the DMCA to prosecute free speech... which suit was dismissed... the government refused to go on the record about this, even though Felten was assured by DOJ, RIAA and SDMI that he would not be prosecuted for his scientific pursuits.
Would YOU believe such assurances from these characters in the absence of a declarative ruling from a court?
.. the primary complaint being registered by people on this thread is that they can't even talk or write about security issues.
And they might be right! This is a Big Grey Area right now, and nobody wants to be THE test case.
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