[free-sklyarov] NYT on DMCA "Software Double Bind"

[Roger Sperberg]

Amy Harmon of the New York Times wrote a long, thoughtful column in
the Business Day section of today's paper, called "Software Double
Bind."

(The link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/13/technology/ebusiness/13NECO.html)

Here's the first paragraph:

"Call it the digital copyright equivalent of having your cake but not
being able to eat it. The case of Dmitri Sklyarov, a Russian computer
programmer arrested last month in Las Vegas, is drawing attention to
a double bind in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law
that some legal experts say extends rights to consumers even as it
effectively prevents them from exercising those rights."

And here's the last paragraph:

"'The inequity is of greatest concern to the law where there's a
constitutional interest at stake,' said Pamela Samuelson, co-director
of the Center for Law and Technology at the University of California
at Berkeley. 'If there is a constitutional-based interest in fair
use, it shouldn't just be someone with a Ph.D. in computer science
who can circumvent an access control — just like you can't say people
who own property can vote, but poor people can't.' "


And there's a lot in-between worth reading.


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