July 18, 2001

4:50 AM

A Russian security expert has been arrested for showing how easy it is to crack an e-book. All hail the DMCA! Some information is just Too Dangerous to be Revealed! (See also wildly detailed coverage, including the affidavit, from Planet eBook.)
posted by davidchess (6 comments total)

I've already emailed about every PR address at Adobe I could get my hands on (in the slashdot thread here) and my local congresspeople.

Not only is the DMCA a bad law, but Adobe's use of it for the purpose of silencing a white hat hacker like Mr. Sklyarov is despicable, oafish and stupid. I hope everyone will let them know how they feel on this issue. I sure did.
posted by Kikkoman at 9:45 AM on July 18, 2001

Dan Gillmor has some good insights on it...

I've already said enough about the DMCA elsewhere. This is a horrible law, as Kikkoman said, and the applicable use of it is spreading.

On that note, I asked in a previous thread (which seems to have died due to MetafilterScroll) about the possibility of Microsoft using the DMCA to thwart anyone trying to hack the Windows XP product activation measures.

Does anyone here have a sense on its applicability in that situation?
posted by fooljay at 1:22 PM on July 18, 2001

hmmm. Well, the DMCA is an entertainment industry law, so its intent isn't to protect industrial software producers, but it seems to me that Section 1201 applies to any technology used to protect access or copying of a copyrighted work. Software is copyrighted, so the DMCA should apply.

Section 1201 of the DMCA (and the corresponding Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty it implements) is a fairly direct violation of the First Amendment. If money didn't buy justice, I'd love to be a test case for this steaming pile. As it is, I don't have a half billion dollars lying around.
posted by Vetinari at 2:57 PM on July 18, 2001

Thanks for the assessment. I'm pretty sure it applies as well, but wanted to get other's opinions on this.

If you can't afford a half billion dollars, perhaps a small donation to the EFF and a letter to your Congressman might be helpful. If we all did this, I think we might get some headway...
posted by fooljay at 3:23 PM on July 18, 2001

Microsoft softens XP anti-piracy feature

Uhhh, yeah, maybe because it doesn't work?
posted by fooljay at 10:03 PM on July 18, 2001

Web site supporting this: http://www.boycottadobe.org/
posted by greyscale at 7:11 PM on July 20, 2001