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posted by janrinok on Saturday August 20 2016, @01:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the fight-back-begins dept.

Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently filed a lawsuit challenging Section 1201 of the US's Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which provides legal reinforcement to the technical shackles of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Defective by Design applauds this lawsuit and agrees with the EFF that Section 1201 violates the right to freedom of speech. We hope that excising Section 1201 from US law can be the beginning of the end for DRM.

DRM is regularly cracked, or "circumvented," by skilled technologists. Many of them make tools to automate the process, which, in the hands of the public, can be used to defang DRM on a mass scale. Frustrated by this challenge to their authority, the media lobby and their friends in government created anti-circumvention laws like Section 1201 and others around the world, to make it illegal to circumvent DRM or share tools for circumventing it. Since the 90s, these laws have propped up DRM. Hopefully, when 1201 is gone, circumvention tools will spread more widely and it will be so difficult to restrict users with DRM that companies will just stop trying. To make this a reality of course, others around the world will have to take up the torch from EFF and eliminate anti-circumvention laws that play the role of 1201 in their own countries.

It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security.

Bruce Schneier

Copyright © 2006—2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 license (or later version)Why this license?


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  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday August 20 2016, @11:49PM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Saturday August 20 2016, @11:49PM (#390790) Journal

    1.

    This Constitution

    2.

    and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof

    3.

    and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;

    Interesting. Thank you. (I've read the Constitution but I don't have every clause memorized.)

    So there are potentially three sources of supreme law here.

    But #2 says "in pursuance thereof" which would seem to say that laws NOT made "in pursuance thereof" are not superior or even equal to the Constitution. As I would expect. Thus the Constitution still retains supremacy over other laws.

    For #3 it says "under the authority of the United States". Now where exactly does the United States get authority to do anything? From the Constitution, no? So while not quite so clear, this would still seem to assert Constitutional supremacy.

    I don't give a rats ass what various courts have ruled. They are obviously corrupting the original language, which, as already cited, is superior -- even to their rulings, because the Constitution established the judiciary in the first place!

    Again, if we were to accept that an agreement between states can overrule the Constitution, doesn't that pretty much let lawmakers out of the fence the Constitution was written to create? In other words, any law is fine, as long as you can get your buddy in some other country to agree he wants to rape his citizens too. That doesn't seem credible as original intent.

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  • (Score: 2) by jelizondo on Sunday August 21 2016, @01:02AM

    by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 21 2016, @01:02AM (#390808) Journal

    any law is fine, as long as you can get your buddy in some other country to agree he wants to rape his citizens too

    Bingo!

    The powers-that-be have found ways to do whatever they want to make a profit and to hell with me, you and everyone else.

    Don't believe it? How come Gitmo was created? How come we have torture by government agents? How come now it is harder and harder to use copyrighted material in what used to be called "fair use"? They don't give a rats ass, as you say, but their saying it is stronger because they have power.

    The language of the Constitution can be interpreted to mean the Constitution, the laws and the treaties are at the same level but in practice, laws and treaties deal with matters on which the Constitution is silent, for example, how much taxes you have to pay on what (think "sin" taxes) or if you need a license to drive a car.

    Now, most of the stuff is not contrary to the Constitution, for example, when under the TPP copyright terms are extended and service providers are obliged to "police" their users' content for copyright violations, there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids that from happening, however the normal process of law (introducing a bill, discussing it, passing it by Congress and Senate, signed by the President) is short-circuited and bam! you get a new law saying copyright terms are extended or that ISPs have to police content.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good explanation [eff.org].

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:03AM (#390952)

      Another AC told you about this [soylentnews.org] post. The fearmongering about treaties overriding the Constitution is just that: Fearmongering.

      Now, most of the stuff is not contrary to the Constitution

      Some of it might be on the federal level. The Constitution lists the powers that the federal government has, as well as few things it really can't do, and so if the Constitution does not give the federal government the power to do X, then it doesn't have the power to do X. Car licenses are state matters, for example.