[free-sklyarov] Fighting the DMCA

[Mickey McGown]

I argued exactly that point in my comments to the LOC last year:

 http://www.loc.gov/copyright/reports/studies/dmca/reply/Reply010.pdf

"Just as possession of a weapon does not imply participation in a crime, neither
does possession of circumvention tools imply participation in an infringing
act."

Didn't seem to sway them at all....

mickeym

Chad Horton wrote:

> I've had a thought that I've been tossing around for a few months now, but
> haven't had any idea what to make of it. With these new events, and the DMCA
> coming closer and closer to the public eye, I'm wondering if I might be able
> to contribute something useful to the fight to get rid of it.
>
> So far, most of the defenses of things like DeCSS that I've seen focus on
> arguing soruce code as a form of speech. IMO, this is a bit of a stretch and
> doesn't seem to have done all that good of a job. Has anyone ever considered
> an attack on the DMCA under the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms? As I
> understood it from my American Political Systems class, the 2nd Amendment
> was created to preserve the power of the people to stand up to the Federal
> Government if it ever got too Big Brother-like (Yes, I realize that specific
> term didn't exist at the time). In many ways, "circumvention devices" are
> much like weapons of the internet. This alone may seem like a bit of a
> symblolic stretch of the original intent, but dictionary.com defines arm(s)
> as "A weapon, especially a firearm", and also "(Law) Anything which a man
> takes in his hand in anger, to strike or assault another with; an aggressive
> weapon. --Cowell. Blackstone". With all the effort that the MPAA went
> through comparing DeCSS to a crowbar used to break into a museum, it could
> certainly be argued that things like DeCSS and the Advanced eBook Processor
> as weapons. Of course, pushing these as weapons could also do just as much
> damage if not handled carefully.
>
> I had made a post on slashdot.org about this awhile ago, under the username
> Gerad. I never got any interesting feedback about it, other than "Wow,
> that's a really interesting idea". If folks on this list think this idea has
> merit, I'm thinking about writing the EFF about it to see what they
> think.
>
> ----
> Chad "kupek" Horton | kupek at ntplx -dot- net
> ICQ:1994680 | AIM:KupekCH
> ~Free...The Dream Within~
>
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