--------------8C31D89C2F314F6342B1DD8E Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Although I agree with your sentiments 110% or more, the unfortunate truth is that this case is not the perversion of copyright law you seem to suggest. Instead, it reflects the fact that copyright law itself has been perverted into something that you, and common sense, would find unacceptable. Specifically: JHBrandt@aol.com wrote: > > > Oh, puhlease. This case had nothing to do with parents vs. pornographers and "merchants of death and violence" (whoever that is). It was a classic copyright case involving reverse engineering, which has long been held legal under U.S. copyright law. Under the so-called "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (now there's a "puhlease" for you!), the "classic" copyright law regarding reverse engineering (assuming there really was such a thing, about which there is good argument; reverse engineering probably is more classically a part of trade secret law, not copyright) has been explicitly rejected. Whether or not it violates "classic" doctrine, the DMCA seems to absolutely forbid any attempt to decrypt encrypted code in cases like this. I think this is disastrous, it may be of questionable constitutionality (requiring really nuanced argument as well as forbidding expenses to test) but it is nevertheless as clear statutory text as you could normally expect. So much for "classic" copyright doctrine; it has been fundamentally changed by the DMCA. > > > It seems that what really bothered Mattel was the thought that people could now see their blacklist, warts, mistakes, "hidden agendas," and all, for themselves. At any rate, it's difficult to see how Mattel, let alone Judge Harrington, could have made this into a copyright infringement case. I guess it's possible that the decryption program "copied" the decryption routine from Cyber Patrol itself, but that seems unlikely, and it would obviously be easy to get around in any case. I think you see that, because of the DMCA, it is a very simple and obvious copyright infringement case and very possibly impossible to get around without a frontal assault upon the DMCA. Mickey Davis --------------8C31D89C2F314F6342B1DD8E Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> Although I agree with your sentiments 110% or more, the unfortunate truth is that this case is not the perversion of copyright law you seem to suggest. Instead, it reflects the fact that copyright law itself has been perverted into something that you, and common sense, would find unacceptable. Specifically:JHBrandt@aol.com wrote:
Oh, puhlease. This case had nothing to do with parents vs. pornographers and "merchants of death and violence" (whoever that is). It was a classic copyright case involving reverse engineering, which has long been held legal under U.S. copyright law.
Under the so-called "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (now there's a "puhlease" for you!), the "classic" copyright law regarding reverse engineering (assuming there really was such a thing, about which there is good argument; reverse engineering probably is more classically a part of trade secret law, not copyright) has been explicitly rejected. Whether or not it violates "classic" doctrine, the DMCA seems to absolutely forbid any attempt to decrypt encrypted code in cases like this. I think this is disastrous, it may be of questionable constitutionality (requiring really nuanced argument as well as forbidding expenses to test) but it is nevertheless as clear statutory text as you could normally expect. So much for "classic" copyright doctrine; it has been fundamentally changed by the DMCA.It seems that what really bothered Mattel was the thought that people could now see their blacklist, warts, mistakes, "hidden agendas," and all, for themselves. At any rate, it's difficult to see how Mattel, let alone Judge Harrington, could have made this into a copyright infringement case. I guess it's possible that the decryption program "copied" the decryption routine from Cyber Patrol itself, but that seems unlikely, and it would obviously be easy to get around in any case.
I think you see that, because of the DMCA, it is a very simple and obvious copyright infringement case and very possibly impossible to get around without a frontal assault upon the DMCA.
Mickey Davis