[free-sklyarov] New stuff up on EFF

[Matthew T. Russotto]

Check out the EFFs website; there's some fairly recent stuff on the Felten
case.  The government has submitted a motion asking to be dismissed from
the case because it isn't "ripe".  Apparently if you aren't behind
bars yet, you don't get to challenge the law, in the goverment's view.

The motion is worth a read.  There's some interesting sophistry --
the govt wants the government to dismiss the claim that the DMCA is
invalid on its face, among other reasons, on the grounds that the
plaintiff's conduct does not violate the DMCA.   But they ALSO (in a
footnote) do not want the court to issue the declaratory judgement
that the plaintiff's have asked for.  Further, while in the main text
they claim that there is no problem publishing a paper on
circumvention methods, in another footnote they reserve the right to
change their mind.  And they ask the court to believe that something
intended for scientific research can not be covered under the DMCA
because it covers only products designed or marketed for circumvention
-- despite the fact that the whole controversy over Felten's research
is it was specifically designed for circumvention, despite being
scientific research.

The government REALLY does not want this case to go forward.  The
plaintiffs are bona-fide scientific researchers, and (despite the
sophistry in the govt motion arguing that since they did eventually publish
they weren't chilled) they have the smoking gun of the RIAA/SDMI
letter to prove they were in fact threatened.  Obviously the best case
for us is for the DMCA to be declared unconstitutional.  Then Dmitry
goes home, everyone chilled gets unchilled, and the SSSCA probably
goes away too.  However, even a judgement that Felten's conduct
doesn't violate the DMCA would severely limit the government and the
copyright industry's ability to use it as a club.  _Their_ best case
is to never actually have _any_ case go to a higher court, so they can
use the mere threat of prosecution to keep people in line without ever
having to actually defend their actions.
s