An opening for OpenOffice.org [LWN.net]

An opening for OpenOffice.org

Posted Sep 11, 2003 22:33 UTC (Thu) by grahammm (guest, #773)
In reply to: An opening for OpenOffice.org by zonker
Parent article: An opening for OpenOffice.org

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.

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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.