:: Digital Millenium Copyright Absurdity ::

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Certain states (oh, let’s say about 16-ish) are considering or have passed laws extending the DMCA which have been so egregiously drafted that when adhering to the exact letter of the law such acts as possessing technology capable of concealing the origin and/or destination of any transmission would be illegal. While the intent is admirable (stopping illicit use of cable, telecom, and data services) this is common practice in the world of network security, to such an extent that almost every operating system has included this, in some form or another (NAT or Network Address Translation, for example; also heavily utilized by firewalls), for upwards of 4 years. If fully regulated, these statues would make 95% of computer users criminals. This is clear evidence that, in the words of Lawrence Lessig, "these laws look like they have been drafted by people who have lived on another planet these past 5 years." It’s just ignorant and inept lawmaking, exacerbated by the zealous lobbyists from the RIAA and MPAA. It’s like trying to stop drunk driving by making it a crime to operate an internal combustion engine - noble goal, ignoble approach.

And this is only one provision of the bills.

Edward Felten, who has blogged about this issue fervently, has an excellent summary page as well.

UPDATE: Here's an example of how it can be used maliciously and predatorily. If you leave loopholes/ambiguities of this size open for abuse, someone will inevitably abuse them (although this particular case is a pretty clear-cut violation of non-DCMA copyright laws - but the fact that Lexmark even brought the DCMA into it is scary).

Posted by morland @ 04:00 PM

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