EFF: Digital Copyright Law Still Damaging After All These Years

Communications Today, Oct 9, 2003

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has updated its landmark report on problems with digital copyright. In the report titled "Unintended Consequences: Five Years Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)," the San Francisco-based EFF points out that Congress intended the DMCA to target criminals who pick digital locks to engage in mass piracy. "Yet in practice the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions have stifled the legitimate activities of scientists, scholars, business competitors, journalists, publishers, consumers, and the general public," EFF Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze told Communications Today.

Additions to the report include sections that explore the chilling effects on scientific research and freedom of expression, anti-competitive uses of the DMCA and the stifling of technological innovation, and new use of Section 1201 in the Act as a broad general-purpose ban on accessing a computer system.

"The DMCA has emerged over the past five years as a significant threat to a number of important public policy principles," Hinze said. "Congress should amend copyright law to preserve the constitutionally-mandated balance between private incentives and public rights."

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