Few things are designed as shoddily as the latest round of CD copy-protection technology, which Princeton grad student Alex Halderman pointed out last week can be defeated by holding down the "shift" key. But we have a candidate: the law that allowed the technology's maker, SunnComm, to threaten Halderman with a lawsuit.
The law, called the DMCA, makes it a crime to "circumvent" technologies that try to limit your access to creative media. This means security researchers can be hauled into court for probing consumer products — Halderman and his thesis advisor have both been threatened with suits before — but it's not just the experts who need to worry. Once media companies learn from their current mistakes and develop control technology that actually works, the DMCA will force every consumer, by law, to play by whatever rules the corporations choose. Charges for copying music to your iPod? A fee every time you listen in your car? A subscription you have to keep paying in order to listen at all, or to keep a library of movies? These ideas may sound crazy, but the DMCA makes them possible.
The threats Princeton researchers are facing should serve as Exhibit A in a campaign to fix the law now, before media companies figure out how to use it. Daily Princetonian editorials are written by the Editorial & Opinion Editors, Managing Editors and Editor-In-Chief.
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