[free-sklyarov] Security warning draws DMCA threat

[Xcott Craver]

On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, Seth Finkelstein wrote:

> First programmer jailed from DMCA charges - Dmitry Sklyarov
> First American programmer jailed from DMCA charges - [to be determined]
> First (insert-type-here) research threatened by DMCA - Felten, SnoSoft, etc.

       While I personally am a bit of a cynic regarding the ultimate
       usefulness of watermarking, I generally regard steganography
       research (along with cryptography research) as falling under the
       general topic of computer/information security.

       The HP threat is actually a very important first:  it's the
       first time the DMCA was used to censor research that had nothing
       whatsoever to do with copyright protection.

       This is important because we always worried that it would happen.
       Due to the broad nature of the DMCA, and the confusing nature of
       computer science concepts to the courts and legislature, companies
       are able to make any act of reverse-engineering, alteration, or
       unintended use of their product a DMCA violation.  MicroSoft could
       sue software vendors whose product reads and writes Word files
       or WMF files, arguing that the file formats protect copyrighted
       materials.  Of course, any cracked cipher could have been used as
       part of a DRM system.  I guess here, HP was going to argue that
       their operating system was a copy protection mechanism???

       When we fear that a law is too broad, there are critics who argue
       that we are presenting woulda-coulda scenarios that will not
       occur in real life.  HP's threat may be the first real example of
       the extreme vagueness of the law.

	                                               -X