[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Will this column land me in federal prison under the DMCA?



------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Thu, 02 Jan 2003 10:52:18 -0800
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Will this column land me in federal prison under the DMCA?
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com



http://news.com.com/2010-1028-978636.html

    Perspective: Will this land me in jail?
    By Declan McCullagh
    December 23, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

    WASHINGTON--It's not every day that I fret about committing a
    string of federal felonies that could land me in prison until
    sometime in 2008.

    But right now I'm wondering about whether the Digital Millennium
    Copyright Act (DMCA) means that I might get an all-expenses-paid
    vacation to Club Fed.

    It turns out that software company executives like the ones at
    ElcomSoft, whom a federal jury acquitted on Dec. 17 on charges of
    violating the DMCA, aren't the only people who might want to have
    a defense lawyer on retainer. Journalists might be affected too.

    Our story starts with the Transportation Security Administration
    (TSA) Web site, which has an area called "Security and Law
    Enforcement" featuring four password-protected Microsoft Word
    documents. No password is necessary to download those encrypted
    documents, but a password is required to open and read them.

    According to the brief descriptions on the TSA Web site, the four
    files cover airport security procedures, the relationship between
    federal and local police, and a "liability information sheet." A
    note on the site says this "information is restricted to airport
    management and local law enforcement." (Who knows? Maybe the
    sure-to-be-convincing reasoning behind banning those deadly nail
    clippers will be revealed.)

    Anyway, a confidential source recently gave me what I believe is
    the correct secret password to the documents.

    But here's the catch, and it's a pretty silly one: If I type the
    password into Microsoft Word or even tell you what it is, I could
    be liable for civil and criminal penalties under the DMCA. Section
    1201 of the law contains two prohibitions: First, "no person shall
    circumvent a technological measure" that controls access to
    copyrighted information, and second, no one may publish
    information such as a password that's designed to circumvent "a
    technological measure that effectively controls access" to a
    copyrighted document.

    [...]




----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing
list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this
notice. To subscribe to Politech:
http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is
archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs
are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Like Politech? Make a donation here:
http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles:
http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
---

------- End of forwarded message -------


-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: debate-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: debate-help@lists.fitug.de