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Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in
the United States in an effort to make the circumvention
of DRM systems illegal. It was passed without debate,
and without even token opposition, Congress being lobbied by the content industries
and apparently under the impression that it was a "technical" enactment,
without significant public policy implication. It has been widely imitated by
governments elsewhere.
Despite the passing of this law, which has since received
substantial opposition on Constitutional grounds, it
is easy to find DVD players which bypass the limitations
the DVD Consortium sought to impose. John Hoy, president
of the DVD Copy Control Association, in testimony to
the Library of Congress in 2003 stated "furthermore,
if a consumer in the United States desires to view
a DVD disc that has been region coded only for Europe,
then that consumer is free to purchase a DVD player
(either hardware or software) that is coded to play
European DVDs. No legal restrictions apply – either
through the CSS license or otherwise – to the
importation and use of non-U.S. region players in the
United States". (reply comments, comment 28, page
4, PDF document).
There has been a widely publicized arrest and arraignment
of a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, for violation
of the DMCA. He did the work cited for his employer,
Elcomsoft, while in Russia, where it was and remains
entirely legal. The product allowed those who were
in possession of a password, presumably lawfully obtained
along with the encrypted copy of the work, to make
copies without encryption locking them to use on a
single computer. Sklyarov was arrested on a criminal
warrant during a lecture visit to the US, and spent
several months in jail until a compromise was reached.
The ensuing criminal case against Elcomsoft (for whom
Sklyarov did the work) resulted in acquittal. See Professor
Edward Felten's freedom-to-tinker Web site [1] for
some observations on the DMCA, its proposed successors,
and their consequences, intended and unintended.
The DMCA is also causing a chill in the activities
of many prominent computer scientists. Professor Felten,
of Princeton, has had difficulty publishing papers
he and his students have written; they were related
to a contest sponsored by a security software company
inviting investigation of a product design. (See Internet
postings in Felten v. RIAA). Alan Cox, the Englishman
who was Linus Torvalds' chief deputy throughout almost
the entire first decade of the development of Linux,
has resigned his position due to his concern that a
criminal charge might be laid against him as a result
of some code in the Linux kernel. He has even declined
to post explanations of some changes made in the kernel
(the changelog is fundamental to the project) because
of his concern about his exposure to prosecution and
penalty under the DMCA; such explanations might be
seen as a DMCA "disclosure". He has also
declined to attend US software conferences for similar
reasons. Niels Ferguson, a Dutch cryptography expert
and security consultant, discovered a flaw in an Intel
security protocol, told Intel about it and was told
that Intel had no objection to his publishing a paper
about the problem. He has nevertheless decided not
to publish due to concern about being arrested under
the DMCA.
New and even more controversial DRM initiatives have
been proposed in recent years which could prove more
difficult to circumvent, including copy-prevention
codes embedded in broadcast HDTV signals and the Palladium
operating system. A wide variety of DRM systems have
also been employed to restrict access to eBooks. See
the TCPA/Palladium FAQ [2] maintained by Cambridge
Professor Ross J. Anderson for a clear discussion of
two prominent proposals.
Opponents of DRM, as envisioned and as currently implemented,
note that by delegating control of computer access
(or control of the ability to execute some programs,
or to execute programs only with certain data) to anyone
except the user and the machine's administrator(s),
there is a very considerable risk of problems caused
by such third party interference which go well beyond
the enforcement of copyright.
For instance, due to a bug (or misdesign, or misadministration
of an otherwise "reasonable" design) the
control software (eg, in a trusted computing system)
implementing the local part of a DRM scheme may prevent
a computer user from using his computer at all, or
from using programs (or using data as an input to a
program) when such use is actually completely legitimate
and not a violation of any copyright holders' rights.
Or, for another example, a legally obtained copy of
a DVD might be blocked or crippled because it is being
used on equipment which doesn't include the DRM function
permitting access to it, or which if included, doesn't
interoperate correctly. Currently, DVDs legally purchased
in some places are not playable in other places for
exactly these reasons, although in this case it is
marketing considerations, and not "security",
which is the reason for the restriction. DRM provisions
have appeared in released versions of some subsystems
of the Microsoft Windows operating system (e.g., Windows
Media Player) and are scheduled in more as Palladium
is implemented in currently planned, not yet released,
versions of Microsoft Windows.
Security protocols, software implementing security
protocols, and cryptography have historically proven
extremely difficult to design without vulnerabilities
due to bugs or design mistakes. This has been true
of designs from experienced and well respected professionals;
the record is abysmally poor for those inexperienced
in cryptography and security protocols.
Other copyright implications
While DRM systems are ostensibly designed to protect an author's right to control
copying, this protection is only half of the bargain between the copyright
holder and the state. The other half of the bargain is that after a statutorily-defined
period of time the copyright work becomes part of the public domain for anyone
to use freely. DRM systems currently employed are not time limited in this
way, and although it would be possible to create such a system (under compulsory
escrow agreements, for example), there is currently no mechanism to remove
the copy control systems embedded into works once they enter the public domain,
after the term of copyright expires.
Furthermore, copyright law does not restrict the resale
of copyrighted works (provided those copies were made
by or with the permission of the copyright holder),
so it is perfectly legal to resell a copyrighted work
provided a copy is not retained by the seller—a
doctrine known as the first-sale doctrine in the US,
which applies equally in most other countries under
various names. Similarly, some forms of copying are
permitted under copyright law, under the doctrine of
fair use (US) or fair dealing (many other countries).
DRM technology restricts or prevents the purchaser
of copyrighted material from exercising their legal
rights in these respects.
Moreover, the scope of legal rights cannot, in principle,
be fully encoded in technical access/copying restrictions.
For example, a photograph generally falls under the
copyright of its photographer, and may not be reproduced
in an unlimited way by other persons. A photographer
wishing to enforce her copyright might attach some
DRM codes to a digital version of her photograph that
indicate "may not be copied." However, the
photographer might subsequently sign an agreement with
another party authorizing such duplication (either
for monetary payment, or to serve some other public
or private purpose). Under law, the moment such an
agreement is signed, copying (under the terms set forth)
becomes legal; but the DRM software cannot know that
people with pens affixed their name to the contract,
and thereby changed legalities.
An oft-cited example of DRM overreach is Adobe Systems'
release in 2000 of a public domain work, Lewis Carroll's
Alice in Wonderland, with DRM controls asserting that "this
book cannot be read aloud" and so disabling use
of the text-to-speech feature normally available in
Adobe's eBook Reader.
DRM has been used by organizations such as the British
Library in its secure electronic delivery service to
permit worldwide access to substantial numbers of rare
(and in many cases unique) documents which, for legal
reasons, were previously only available to authorized
individuals actually visiting the Library's document
centre at Boston Spa in England. This is an interesting
case where DRM has actually increased public access
to restricted material rather than diminished it.
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Activates & Opponents
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Legalities
of DVD Copying - Intro to DRM 