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CircumventionCircumventionPosted Oct 6, 2006 6:50 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Similar in spirit? by sepreece Parent article: Similar in spirit?
It is not illegal to circumvent if you have the copyright holder's permission.IANAL, but paragraph 1201 says that No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.Then there are exceptions for certain classes of copyrighted works (as published by the Librarian of Congress) and uninfringing uses. I'd say it is illegal. Then it says that No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that [...] is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.This means that you cannot even get the circumvention from someone else; this time the Librarian has nothing to say. DRM didn't take away any rights you had [though the DMCA did].DRM is bad enough without DMCA, its evilness only tempered by the fact that it is probably doomed to fail. Combined with the DMCA, it is positively evil. Right now the DMCA is in effect (and we have a similar law in Europe); when it is repealed this argument may not be valid, but until then it looks like it is illegal to circumvent even for your own holiday pictures.
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Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 13:25 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Yes, but you're missing the definition of "circumvention" in (a) (1) (3): "to descamble, to decrypt ... without the authority of the copyright owner". So, if you have the copyright owner's permission, it isn't circumvention [so, I misworded my statement, too].
Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 13:34 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] For circumvention to be illegal, it is enough that there is one work under valid copyright, not necessarily the one you want to access. Suppose you try to crack Microsoft's DRM scheme to gain access to: some outdated tunes from the 20's, a few excerpts for an academic study, or your own music. Since the "effective technological measure" also "controls access to a work protected under this title", you cannot circumvent it or even get a means to circumvent it from a third party.
Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 17:10 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Yes, if you had your own content protected by the same DRM as other content, then it would be illegal to circumvent that protection. It's not necessarily a bizarre scenario, either, but one I would recommend avoiding.
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