EFF sues US government over dmca
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or dmca, deprives citizens of the right to freedom of expression in lawfully obtained copyrighted material.
The right to freedom of expression is enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, while under Section 1201 of the DMCA it is unlawful to modify or examine copyrighted material such as movies, music, or code.
According to the EFF, the ban makes it impossible, for example, to examine software that is embedded in everyday utensils for errors. Also, technically it would not be allowed to ‘tamp’ with one’s own stuff or to repair these types of devices.
Other examples are changing the file format of a video in order to play it on another device, remixing videos or doing independent safety research on, for example, cars or medical instruments. In addition, it is not permitted to develop tools that provide access to the materials that fall under the dmca.
The EFF is representing two prosecutors in the case, Andrew “Bunnie” Huang and Matthew Green. Huang is a researcher, inventor and owner of Alphamax. Green is a security expert at Johns Hopkins University.
Alphamax makes video stream editing devices that allow users to provide their paid video streams with other options, such as attaching captions to a video stream with comments from Twitter or remixing video.
Green conducts research into devices that communicate with the outside world. He looks at the reliability of such devices and whether they do what they say, for example in financial transactions or sending medical information. Green had already had to request an exemption from the Library of Congress for his security research last year.
Common examples of misuse of the dmca, according to the EFF, include creating software to work with Microsoft’s Kinect, requiring iPhone users to only use the App Store to obtain apps, using “time- shift’ functions on TVs and media players, making toner for Lexmark printers by third parties, and the mod chips for Sony’s PlayStation.