Quote:
Originally Posted by Piper_
It seems the ruling of the 5th circuit court of appeals would be relevant here... ? They said that DCMA couldn't be used to prosecute someone for bypassing encryption for the purposes of using or viewing something when doing so was not itself a breach of copyright.
I'm probably hacking the words up, but there are some quotes from the judge here:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/23/29099.htm
"Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act's) anti-circumvention provision,"
"The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners."
"The owner's technological measure must protect the copyrighted material against an infringement of a right that the Copyright Act protects, not from mere use or viewing."*
That remains standing as the last word from the US courts, AFAIK. |
Actually, there's a fairly new issue that's cropped up recently thanks to Tor and John Scalzi. Tor was releasing John Scalzi's book
Redshirts as their first DRM free (for sale) eBook and because some eBookstores were not setup correctly for this, they sold it (initially) with DRM. On John Scalzi's blog, he mentioned that if you bought a copy with DRM, you could either contact Tor to get it without DRM from Tor or you could strip the DRM and he linked (I forget if it was a direct link to the tools or to the blog to get the link to get the tools) so you could get the tools to strip the DRM. So the author (John Scalzi) gave permission for people to get the tools and use them to strip the DRM from his eBook. Does that then make the tools and stripping DRM actually legal since it was authorized by a rights holder (author and maybe publisher)?