Electronic Frontier Foundation: Controversial copyright law unconstitutional

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the government to remove a controversial clause in a long-controversial copyright law. The digital liberties organization is suing to remove "anti-circumvention" restrictions from Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), long a thorn in civil libertarians' craw. The DMCA was signed in 1998. Originally intended to protect the arts industries from online privacy, it included “anti-circumvention” provisions that prohibit breaking any digital safeguards that protected copyrights. For example, a user could no longer disable the copy protection on a video tape.

The rule bothers groups like the EFF because it limits what people can do with the devices and products they own, even when it has nothing to do with violating the actual copyrights. On July 21, the EFF filed a lawsuit stating that anti-circumvention provisions violate the constitutionally protected freedom of expression. “If future generations are going to be able to understand and control their own machines, and to participate fully in making rather than simply consuming culture, [anti-circumvention] has to go,” said EFF attorney Kit Walsh in a press release announcing the suit