Tag: DMCA

This week the Federal Circuit court ruled that Chamberlain, a maker of garage door openers, cannot use the DMCA to stop Skylink, a competitor, from making universal remote controls that can operate Chamberlain openers. This upholds a lower court decision. (Click here for backstory.) This is an important step in the legal system’s attempt to…

Big tech companies, including Intel and Sun Microsystems, and ISPs, including Verizon and SBC, will announce today that they have banded together to form the “Personal Technology Freedom Coalition,” to support Rep. Rick Boucher’s DMCRA bill (HR 107) to reform the DMCA, according to a Declan McCullagh story at news.com. The Boucher bill would reform…

In his testimony at the House DMCA-reform hearing today, Jack Valenti quoted me, in support of a point he wanted to make. The quote comes from last year’s Berkeley DRM Conference, from my response to a question asked by Prof. Pam Samuelson. Here’s the relevant section from Mr. Valenti’s testimony (emphasis in original): Keep in…

Today a congressional committee will hold a hearing on the Boucher-Doolittle bill (H.R. 107), known as the DMCRA, that would reform the DMCA. The hearing will be webcast, starting at about 10:00 AM Eastern. Look here for a witness list and link to the webcast. The DMCRA would do four main things: require labeling of…

The U.S. Copyright Office has issued its report, creating exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions for the next three years. The exemptions allow people to circumvent access control technologies under certain closely constrained conditions. The exemption rulemaking, which happens every three years, was created by Congress as a kind of safety valve, intended to keep…

An important ruling was issued yesterday in the Chamberlain v. Skylink lawsuit. (See this previous post for a summary of the case.) The court denied Chamberlain’s motion for summary judgment. Although this is only a ruling on a preliminary motion, the judge used it to offer her analysis of how the DMCA applies to the…

Seth Finkelstein points to a rather sloppy analysis by Peter Davies of the Felten v. Recording Industry lawsuit. There is enough of this sort of thing going around that I feel compelled to rebut it. [Background on the lawsuit: In 2001, recording industry organizations threatened to sue me and seven of my colleagues if we…

A news.com story by David Becker reports that a Federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction against Static Control in the DMCA lawsuit brought by Lexmark. To review, Lexmark makes printers, and Static Control makes replacement toner cartridges for Lexmark printers. Lexmark’s printers do a cryptographic handshake with Lexmark-brand toner cartridges, and Static Control cartridges…