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An opening for OpenOffice.orgAn opening for OpenOffice.orgPosted Sep 11, 2003 10:04 UTC (Thu) by zonker (guest, #7867)In reply to: An opening for OpenOffice.org by grahammm Parent article: An opening for OpenOffice.org The DMCA states that it is only illegal to circumvent the protection without the permission of the copyright holder. If someone sends you a document then does that not constitute permission (from the copyright holder) to read it? The copyright holder here is Microsoft. Microsoft would be able to use the DMCA in the same way that the DVD CCA are using the DMCA to stop Andrew Bunner from posting DeCSS and in the same way that Adobe went after Dmitry Sklyarov -- remember, neither Bunner nor Sklyarov were accused of actually illegally copying a copyrighted work, just of creating or publishing a method of circumvention.
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An opening for OpenOffice.org Posted Sep 11, 2003 20:22 UTC (Thu) by grahammm (guest, #773) [Link] Unless Microsoft wrote the document then surely the copyright owner is the author of the document you wish to access. I don't think that the DMCA states that you need the permission of the access mechanism supplier but rather it states that you need the permission of the copywrite owner. I think that it would need a very poor understanding of the English language to take this to mean anything other than the owner of the copyright to the protected (not protecting) work.
An opening for OpenOffice.org Posted Sep 11, 2003 22:13 UTC (Thu) by zonker (guest, #7867) [Link] Microsoft is the copyright holder of the copyright protection system in question. Circumvention of such a system is illegal according to the DMCA. See here: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html
(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter. As I read this, it doesn't matter whose copyrighted work is being accessed -- it matters that someone attempts to circumvent the system. If I send you a perfectly legal copy of The Godfather on DVD, and you write a piece of code to access it on Linux, you're in violation of the DMCA. If the DVD CCA complains -- not the copyright holder of The Godfather, the owner of CSS -- you're in for some legal headaches. By the same token, if I send you an IRM-encrypted e-mail from Outlook 2003, and you write a program to decrypt it and view it in Pine, Microsoft can take legal issue with you even if I've given full permission for you to view that document. Particularly if you actually distribute the system of access. The developers for OpenOffice.org would be open to serious legal problems if they were to add IRM-decryption to OpenOffice.org without getting permission from MS, which is highly unlikely. Again, neither Sklyarov or Bunner were accused of accessing copyrighted material -- they were brought up on charges of creating a circumvention system.
An opening for OpenOffice.org Posted Sep 11, 2003 22:33 UTC (Thu) by grahammm (guest, #773) [Link] Yet, section (3)(A) states(A) to circumvent a technological measure means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner The only person able to give authority to access the work is owner of the copyright of the work which is 'protected'. If I have a file/CD/DVD containing a work "protected under this title" then the supplier of the protection "measure" does not have the authority to give me the authority to gain access to the 'work. Therefore this clause must be refering to the owner of the copyright of the "protected" work, Also, the technological measure may not be subject to copyright protection, it could be a patented hardware device - which further supports my view that it is the permission of the copyright owner of the protected work which is required not that of the supplier of the protection mechanism.
An opening for OpenOffice.org Posted Sep 11, 2003 23:49 UTC (Thu) by zonker (guest, #7867) [Link] which further supports my view that it is the permission of the copyright owner of the protected work which is required not that of the supplier of the protection mechanism.So far, your view isn't the one that has been held by the courts. Neither Adobe nor the DVD CCA showed evidence that someone had read, copied or viewed a copyrighted work without the copyright holder's permission -- only that someone had come up with a technological means of defeating a copyright protection mechanism. Now, if you write a script or something that accesses Microsoft Word IRM'ed documents and use that for your own purposes, I doubt the FBI will be bashing down your door. If you write a program that opens IRM'ed Word docs and distribute that program, I guarantee you'll be in court within six months. More than likely, you will also lose. You keep writing about one specific document or one specific instance where you grant someone else permission to read a document -- but that's not a scenario that allows someone to distribute OpenOffice.org with IRM-decryption. It's only a scenario that gives one individual permission. If that were the case, it'd be perfectly legal for Andrew Bunner to create a single DVD and distribute DeCSS so that people could view it, along with every other DVD, of course -- and I do not see a court upholding that. So far, all of the cases that have gone to court involve a third-party system, like the MS IRM system, that is used to protect other works. When you buy a DVD, it is implied that you have permission to watch that DVD -- I've never seen a DVD that says "you can only watch this on hardware sanctioned by DVD CCA or with properly-licensed software" and (if I recall correctly) the courts have thus far held that fair use rights and the obvious implied rights to view a DVD do not give one permission to distribute a circumvention system. I don't see where you'd be able to get away with the scenario of the OpenOffice.org folks buying a copy of MS Office and distributing one document with it. It simply wouldn't fly.
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