doodledee

There was a ruling today on an important case involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The DMCA is a law that makes it a crime to create a technology that circumvents a different technology that protects copyrighted material. In simpler speak, it makes it illegal to create a computer program that breaks the 'security' that protects something that is copyrighted.

As an example, every DVD has some fancy encryption stuff built into it so that it's impossible to make a copy of it. A few years back, some dudes in Europe figured out how to break the copy protection. Because the content of the DVD itself - a movie - is copyrighted, the DMCA says that by creating a technology to circumvent the copy protection, the programmers have broken the law.

Well, you say, what's the big deal? You probably just want to give your friend a copy of your wide-screen Attack of the Clones anyway, right? The big deal is that giving away a copy has always been illegal under existing copyright law. Under that same law, however, making yourself a 'backup' copy isn't illegal, because you own it and that's 'fair use'.

As another example, think about buying a CD. It's considered fair use to take that CD home and copy it as many times as you want (within reason, obviously). Now you can't give those copies away and you can't sell the copies and, in fact, you can't even legally keep a copy and sell the original. While you own it, however, you can use what you purchased in the way you see fit.

So according to copyright law, DVD owners should be able to use the DVD copying program to legally make copies for themselves. Unfortunately, the DMCA makes it a crime to even write the program in the first place. Whaa?

All this upsets a lot of people, especially geeks. Geeks are pissed because it prevents us from learning about how bad existing encryption techniques are or how good new ones can be. It prevents innovation, because we can't look at how something 'really works' and try to improve it. We're also pissed because it's a poorly worded, stupid law.

Non-geeks should be pissed, too. The DMCA is more restrictive in protecting the protector than the laws that protect what is trying to be protected. Glory, that's crazy.

So hey, get mad.

Then go drink some eggnog and chill out. Life's too short to be cranked up all the time.