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posted by cmn32480 on Friday July 22 2016, @01:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the currently-we-have-no-digital-rights dept.

From the EFF press release:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the U.S. government today on behalf of technology creators and researchers to overturn onerous provisions of copyright law that violate the First Amendment.
...
Ostensibly enacted to fight music and movie piracy, Section 1201 has long served to restrict people's ability to access, use, and even speak out about copyrighted materials—including the software that is increasingly embedded in everyday things. The law imposes a legal cloud over our rights to tinker with or repair the devices we own, to convert videos so that they can play on multiple platforms, remix a video, or conduct independent security research that would reveal dangerous security flaws in our computers, cars, and medical devices. It criminalizes the creation of tools to let people access and use those materials.

Copyright law is supposed to exist in harmony with the First Amendment. But the prospect of costly legal battles or criminal prosecution stymies creators, academics, inventors, and researchers. In the complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., EFF argues that this violates their First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

Section 1201 of the US Copyright act restricts the Circumvention of Technological Measures: more commonly known as Digital Restrictions Management.

I have always hated how DRM allows copyright holders to restrict what I do with my personal property: while being backed by the force of law.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22 2016, @10:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22 2016, @10:47PM (#378829)

    In fact I'd rather have DRM than copyright law, because usually people can find a way around technological restrictions.

    This is something of a strange comparison to make, like saying "I'd rather have cars than gasoline." I assume you'd rather have "only technical restrictions" than "only legal restrictions."

    To your point, don't be too sure of them. I have some old games on CD, and the ones which had DRM on them made it effectively impossible to run. If there were not legal restrictions I suppose I could reverse engineer the technology, but really who would do that. Moreover, I'm not convinced I'm good enough to outdo the work of lots of smart people who spent a lot of time and money back then, and not all old software is "high profile" enough to get some group of hackers to crack the thing.

    In contrast, if it is just a legal restriction, then it would be easy for it to be a scoff-law. I doubt any prosecutor or company would bring a lawsuit against using software I had legally purchased 15 years ago and wanted to use again; and look how music and software piracy have thrived in the past.

  • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday July 23 2016, @01:03AM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Saturday July 23 2016, @01:03AM (#378866) Homepage Journal

    I have some old games on CD, and the ones which had DRM on them made it effectively impossible to run. If there were not legal restrictions I suppose I could reverse engineer the technology, but really who would do that.

    There are people doing it all the time. A story about that sort of thing was reported here just the other day.

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