EFF Sues US Government To Void 'Onerous' Copyright Rules

[HardOCP News]

The folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are taking on the government in an effort to overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ban on circumventing digital anti-piracy protections. I'm not sure how this case will come out but, if anyone can get it overturned, it's the EFF.

Section 1201 was originally enacted to combat piracy, but has instead has "served to restrict people's ability to access, use and even speak about copyrighted materials," the EFF says. It can inhibit, for example, a buyer's ability to repair their own device, remix music or video and study software installed in cars, computers and other devices. Firms often sue users even when they make "fair use" of content for things like satire or criticism, a practice that's full protected by free speech laws.

 

[grtitan]

Time to donate to the EFF.

 

[Armenius]

The EFF is one of the few organizations left that actually care about us .

 

[Tak Ne]

Ironically, they'd be doing themselves a favour by overturning it. Part of the $600m copyright infringement case against the US Navy is about how they disabled the DRM portion of the software package.

 

[tetris42]

Ironically, they'd be doing themselves a favour by overturning it. Part of the $600m copyright infringement case against the US Navy is about how they disabled the DRM portion of the software package.

No they wouldn't. Congress gets paid way more than that from related business interests each year. That's the reason we have copyright mania in the first place, but can't repair our crumbling infrastructure.

 

[nilepez]

Ironically, they'd be doing themselves a favour by overturning it. Part of the $600m copyright infringement case against the US Navy is about how they disabled the DRM portion of the software package.

What software package?

I mostly agree with this, but I think they could avoid the entire suit if they'd just have a consumer friendly solution. For Example, have a way to d/l a video to your server that's of roughly the same quality as the disk you bought and it doesn't require an internet connection every time you play it (though I can see saying you must authenticate 1/month which should be fast and authenticate every single movie like this that you own.

That said, anyone that wants to do this can just download ANYDVD (or similar) and rip it. If people would just quit stealing stuff all the time, we could have this without going to court or buying anydvd.