CapITol Insider: Anger over copyright law

Computerworld - EFF to the rescue. The Washington-based privacy watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is preparing a detailed proposal for Congress on what it believes needs to be done to correct the chilling effect that the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is having on legitimate IT research and development. The issue came to a head at the 10th annual USENIX security symposium in Washington, where private-sector IT researchers waited in fear for a group of Princeton University professors to be hauled off to jail for detailing flaws in a security technology backed by the music industry. The DMCA bans the distribution or sale of any product, service or technology that circumvents access protections to copyrighted material. Despite the challenge to the law, there are new questions being raised about what it means for companies that may want to access third-party software code for the purpose of fixing bugs or for business-to-business integration work.
When a law professor from American University urged the crowd at USENIX to "push back" against the DMCA, Cindy Cohn, EFF's legal director, pledged that the EFF would become "push back central." EFF is handing out bumper stickers that read "Science is Not a Crime," and plans to be in court next month to challenge the government in the case of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov. He was arrested in Las Vegas last month for allegedly violating the DMCA over the development and alleged attempted sale of software made by his company. Other members of Cohn's staff are preparing legislative alternatives to the DMCA that she says will free scientists from its "shadow."
Industry as editor and arbiter. Meanwhile, Edward Felten, one of the Princeton professors and co-author of the study that revealed flaws in the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), charged the music industry with using its influence to gain "editorial control" over what IT researchers can write and say in public. According to Felten, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) allowed him to publish and discuss the paper at the USENIX conference, but offered no guarantee that it won't pursue legal actions if the research is discussed in other public forums. In June, the RIAA threatened to sue Felten for disclosing the contents of his research, but later gave in and allowed him to present it at USENIX only. "The scientific process will lead to better products," said Felten. "That's really what we're fighting for in this case." The RIAA argues that illegal production and distribution of music over the Internet costs the recording industry