Unintended Consequences: Five Years Under the DCMA
“Since they were enacted in 1998, the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act, have not been used as Congress envisioned. Congress meant to stop copyright pirates from defeating anti-piracy protections added to copyrighted works, and to ban “black box” devices intended for that purpose.
In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to several important public policy priorities …” Great detailed analysis of how a law to prevent one thing has been used to prevent many things well beyond the scope of the law. (Note, the analysis is provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group.) Found through OLDaily.
URLs:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/DMCA/20031003_unintended_cons.php
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/research.cgi?item=1065437163
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